in his work. The rammer was finally placed in the bore and the shell ejected, and MacNeal resumed his duties as coolly as if what he had done were a matter of everyday routine."

This chapter may be fitly concluded with Commodore Schley's account of his consideration of the men below decks, and his interesting description of how the only man killed on the American side in the battle met his death. He said,

"I took it for granted that every man on the ship was just as much interested in how the fight was going as I was, but the men behind the casements and those below decks, of course, could not see what was going on. During the battle I sent orderlies among them telling them what was happening and what effect their shots were having.

"Then, when the Vizcaya struck and only the Colon was left, I sent orderlies down to the stokeholes and engine-room, where the men were working away like heroes in the terrible temperature.

"Now, boys,' I sent them word, 'it all depends on you. Everything is sunk except the Colon, and she is trying to get away. We don't want her to, and everything depends on you.'

"They responded nobly, and we got her."

Of the death of young Ellis, the only man killed on the Brooklyn, he said,

"He was a bright lad, from Brooklyn, who enlisted to go before the mast; but he was a hard worker, studied navigation with the young officers of the ship, and had risen to the rank of yeoman.

"As I stood talking with Captain Cook, while we finished the Vizcaya, it seemed that our shots were

falling a little short. I turned to Ellis, who stood near, and asked him what the range was. He replied, Seventeen hundred yards.'

"I have pretty keen eyesight, and it seldom deceives me as to distances, and I told him I thought it was slightly more than that. 'I just took it, sir, but I'll try it again,' he said, and stepped off to one side about eight feet to get the range.

"He had just raised his instrument to his eye when a shell struck him full in the face and carried away all of his head above the mouth. A great deal of blood spurted around, and the men near were rattled for a

moment.

"Shells are queer things," he continued, after a moment's silence. "I noticed one man standing with his hand grasping a hammock rail as a shell struck the ship, ricocheted, and burst. One piece of the metal cut the rail on one side of his hand, another on the other side, so that he was left standing with a short section of the rail still grasped in his hand. Another portion of the shell passed over his shoulder and another between his legs. He was surprised, but wasn't hurt."

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SIEGE AND FALL OF SANTIAGO.

ON July 3, at 8.30 A. M., General Shafter sent a flag of truce to the Spanish lines with a letter, in which he threatened to shell Santiago unless surrender was made, and gave until ten o'clock of the next morning for the removal of the women and children and the citizens of foreign countries. This was no empty threat, for the positions gained during the battle of the 1st and 2d had given his batteries command of the city, which lay under his guns. General José Toral, who had succeeded to the command of the Spanish forces on account of the serious wounding of General Linares, replied that he would not surrender, but would inform the consuls and people of the permission to remove. At the request of the foreign consuls, the bombardment was deferred until noon of the 5th, it being stated that fifteen thousand or more people, many of them old, would probably leave the city.

The offer to escape was gladly taken advantage of by the people of Santiago, particularly by those of foreign birth, and during the next day there was a pitiful scene as the fugitives swarmed in hosts out of the city and trudged wearily over the road to El Caney, San Luis, and other towns in the vicinity. All day long the hegira continued, the fugitives struggling painfully onward under the blazing sun, and over a road in many places ankle-deep in mud. Tottering old men and women