from the smoke ahead Papa Isio's mad mountaineers emerged in convulsive charge. A drainage ditch cut the town transversely and the Scouts dropped neatly into it; then their rifles slid out between the grass tufts like venomous things.
"Fire at will!" bellowed the Commandant.
Here the Regulations, which hitherto had unwaveringly rewarded Hafner for his respect of them, suddenly went faithless.
"During the final rush of the attacking party," they say, categorically, "firing should be at will, for then the rapidity of fire and the flatness of trajectory are more to be relied upon than accuracy."
But—alas!—the peculiar moral characteristics of the Balangilang Scouts had not been considered when the Regulations were elaborated.
The flatness of trajectory worked poorly. At first pop the majority of the Scouts emptied their magazines like bunches of firecrackers. Most of the bullets sped towards the rising sun, to whisper the story of their masters' unsteady nerves to the trees in the hills. To be just, however, it must be recorded that some ploughed up the ground directly beneath the marksmen's noses. Even then the mere noise—which was positively tremendous—might have checked the advance of the attackers had they not been Papa Isio's own Dios-Dios crew of mad, weird fellows, hurled on
