36S CHAPTER XXIX.

THE FIGHT FOR THE HILL OF SAN JUAN. \ CCORDING to General Shaffer's plan, the L\ Spanish outpost on his"own left at San -*■*~ Juan hill was not to be attacked till Lawton, having got into El Caney, could cooperate. But events so worked that General Kent, whose division fronted San Juan, carried out his part of the day's work on lines not contemplated in the plan dictated by the headquartersof the army.

from its guns could be plainly seen hanging in the still air iike a white sunny cloud. The trenches on San Juan hill could be easily made out, andbeyond,the blockhouseson the edge ot the city. But the Spaniards made no sign ot fight for awhile, and the wholescene as viewed fromElPozo suggestedpeace manSuvres rather than war.

But this wasnot to last long. Though noone could see where was the battery from wdaich it came (for the Spanish guns used smokeless powder),a screaming roar in the air told thata shrapnel was wingingits waytowardsthebattery. As it burst— luckily a little short— the group of distinguishedspectatorsboltedpell-mell forcover on the reverse slope of the hill. "Is this kind of thingallowed?" askedanartist correspondent, engagedin his first battle,of the officer who lay down beside him. "Well," was the answer,"I don't suppose either you orIcouldexactly stop those shells." It was clear the Spaniards had the range;the second shell burst in the farmhouse and turned out the Cubans, killing and wounding several of them. Another burst among the guns. Another,going alittleto the right, laidlow severalof the regular cavalrymen, who had been so placed that any shell going wide of the battery burst among them. The Cubanscarriedaway their woundedonimprovised stretchers, and one of the spectators remarked that it took about ten Cubans to carry every woundedman.

On the previous evening his division, consisting,like Lawton's,of three brigades of three battalionseach, had tramped up the muddy trail to the edgeof the woods. Like his colleague,he bad for all his artillery a single battery of four small guns. It was under the command of Captain Grimes,anditsposition was the lowhill on which stands thefarm of ElPozo.

Shortly before eight a.m. Grimes's battery opened fire from the hill. Its target was the Spanish blockhouse on the top of the opposite hill of San Juan, 2,400 yards away. Between was a mass of jungle-like forest, traversed near its edge by the double stream of the San Juan river, and with open ground beyond. There were some Cubans in El Pozo farmhouse, and behind the battery and a little to its right were two dismountedregiments of regular cavalry. General Wheeler had been officially' placed on the sick list, and General Sumner commanded the cavalry brigade, which, however, did not prevent" fighting Joe Wheeler" from hurrying up to the front as soon as he heard the firing. Sumner's cavalrymen were tramping up the track through the woods and forming to the right frontof El Pozoon themarginof the bush. To the left,packed close together on themuddy trail, the infantry regiments of Kent's division were workingto the front.

The Spanishfire came from guns on the flank of San Juan, and further to the rear, near the margin of the citv. They were so well masked that, thanks to the smokeless powder, it was a long time before their position could be made out from the American lines. The attempt to silence them proved a failure. Allthe morning the Spanish artillery had the best of the fight.

The Spanish infantry holding the San Juan hilland the trenches beyond it now perceived that the American troops were moving on the edges of the woods,and crowdingup to the wellknown openings from the bush, and on these points they concentrated a deadly fire. They must have also fired at random into the trees, For fully a quarter of an hour the Spaniards made no answer to the fire of the American battery. A crowd of correspondents,artists, and foreign naval andmilitary attaches stoodcloseto theguns, chatting, smoking, sketching, watching the front through their glasses, and guessing as to what was happening awayto theright,whence came the distant boom of Capron's battery in action against El Caney. The mass of smoke