Holding on in the Trenches

News of the Escaping Fleet

ive men. The only thing to be done was to keep what they had gained, get rest, and hold on for reinforcements. Their weakened state was of course not known by the enemy, and when they so boldly demanded the surrender of the city, the Spanish were too concerned over their own losses to build hopes on the weakness of the American army.

That Sunday afternoon General Chaffee, riding along the front of his brigade, said to Col. O'Brien and Major Brush of the Seventeenth Infantry: "Gentlemen, we have lost all we came for; the game has flown; the Spanish fleet is forty miles away on the high seas."

A Fateful Hour

The Waiting Fleet

CHAPTER VIII

Destruction of Cervera's Fleet.

NDEED, that Sunday morning (the 3rd of July, 1898)

IN!

was a fateful hour in the history of the world's contest for freedom. While the army behind the city of Santiago held the ground they had gained at such cost, and waited for the next onset knowing how serious it must be, the battleships and cruisers in Admiral Sampson's squadron were riding at the mouth of Santiago Bay,-waiting, waiting, and hoping for the moment when the trying routine of watching would be dropped for the roar and dash of a great naval engagement.

There was the armored cruiser Brooklyn, capable of twenty-one knots an hour, with Commodore Schley, the second officer in the squadron, on board-the same Schley who years before took out of the Arctic snows the dying survivors of the Greely Expedition and brought them home. There was the first-class battleship Oregon, fresh from her long journey of fifteen thousand miles from Puget Sound, around Cape Horn, and her sister ship the Indiana, both with their eighteen-inch walls of steel and thirteen-inch guns which throw a projectile five miles. Every charge in these guns requires more than five hundred pounds of powder; every shell weighs more than half a ton; and

The Commander Absent

every discharge, at the pressure of an

Sunday Inspection

electric button,

There was, the hoodoo" because of her

costs five hundred and sixty dollars. battleship Texas, called a "hoodoo many misfortunes, but now to become famous for her brilliant work. There was also the battleship Iowa with "Fighting Bob" Evans in command. In the neighborhood was the battleship Massachusetts, as well as other cruisers, torpedo boats, and ocean-liners and pleasure yachts converted into ships of war.

The commander of the fleet, Rear-Admiral Sampson, was absent for the first time in many weeks. Under the orders of President McKinley and knowing the extremity in which the army was placed he had steamed a few miles east with the flagship New York to confer with General Shafter, and if possible afford relief. He had repeatedly said, "If I go away something will happen.

This morning was not unlike most of the others during the five weeks of waiting. The sun was hot and the water calm. The ships drifted about in the deep waters and occasionally steamed up to keep their positions. As it was Sunday, at nine o'clock the men were rigged in clean white suits ready for inspection and for religious service. Everyone looked forward to another day of tedious watching.

At about half-past nine, just as the bugle sounded for service upon the Texas, the navigator on the forward bridge of the Brooklyn called out through his megaphone: "After bridge there! Report to the Commodore and the captain that the enemy's ships are

The Alarm

The Rally

coming out." At the same instant the boom of a gun on the Iowa attracted attention and a string of little flags up her rigging signaled: "The enemy's ships are escaping to the westward."

In an instant, on every vessel, all was commotion where a moment before there had been perfect order. But even the excitement showed absolute system, for with a rush every man in all the crews was in his place for battle, every vessel was moving up, and every gun was ready for action. From the first warning of the lookout to the boom of the guns it was less than three minutes.

The New York was just ready to land Rear-Admiral Sampson at a point seven miles east of Morro Castle. In twenty minutes he would have been riding over the hills to the headquarters of the army. But the leap of the ships was seen and the flagship was instantly put about and started under highest steam for the fray, while all on board wondered at the cruel fate which had made it necessary for her and the commander to be away on that particular morning.

The increasing clouds of black smoke in the bay showed beyond doubt that at last the enemy's fleet had started upon a grand and desperate dash for liberty. Directly, the Spanish flagship, the Maria Teresa, thrust her nose out of the opening and was followed by the other armored cruisers, the Vizcaya, Cristobal Colon, and Almirante Oquendo, and the torpedo-boat destroyers, Pluton and Furor. The vessels were from eight hundred to twelve hundred yards apart and oc