"They're driving us back!" he shrieked.
"Chaffee's killed, an' Roosevelt's killed, an' the whole army's
beaten!" He waved his arms wildly toward the glaring, inscrutable
mountains. The volunteers and stevedores and Cubans heard him, open-
mouthed and with panic-stricken eyes. In the pitiless sunlight he was
a hideous and awful spectacle.
"They're driving us into the sea!" he foamed.
"We've got to get out of here, they're just behind me. The army's
running for its life. They're running away!"
Channing saw the man dimly, through a cloud that came between him and
the yellow sunlight. The man in the saddle swayed, the group about
him swayed, like persons on the floor of a vast ball-room. Inside he
burned with a mad, fierce hatred for this shrieking figure in the
saddle. He raised the tin cup and hurled it so that it hit the man's
purple face.
"You lie!" Channing shouted, staggering. "You lie! You're a damned
coward. You lie!" He heard his voice repeating this in different
places at greater distances. Then the cloud closed about him,
shutting out the man in the saddle, and the glaring, inscrutable
mountains, and the ground at his feet rose and struck him in the
face.
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