it's a good thing the skirmish was executed in extended order by direct command, for column formation wouldn't have done at all. The men would have made it extended order, anyhow. They all wanted to be in front, the further in front the better. We had to do a good deal of firing for general results, on account of the screen from the shelter of which the Spaniards fought, but there was some very brave and chesty ducks on the other side who stood right out in the open and blazed away at men in our line that they picked out deliberately. These nervy Spaniards got plenty of credit from our men for their gameness, too. One of them, a young, small-looking fellow, stood on a little level plateau, within dead easy range, letting us have it as fast as he could, for fully five minutes before he went down. If he wasn't simply crazy with the excitement of the game, then he surely was about as game a kid as they make 'em. He was noticed by about a dozen men near me, and one of them said:

"That little monkey's too good, and I guess I'll just let him have one or two."

Sympathy for a
Spaniard who
Fought Well.

"Ah, let him alone," said another fellow; "there are so few like him in that bunch on the other side that he ought to have a show for his taw alley."

The nervy little Spaniard's work became altogether too accurate and vicious, however, and we got a volley from about a dozen of our men, and he went down in a heap and rolled down the hill from his little rock-table like a log.

While there wasn't a single case of the yellows on our side, it would be plain tommyrot to say that none of us was nervous. I was a heap nervous for one, and I've been in the outfit a long while, and I heard a lot of the roughies say, after the scrap was over, that they saw the gates ajar in a whole lot of different colors by the time the action was fully under way. One of the roughies, an Illinois fellow, that had to be simply pushed back two or three times, he was so eager to break out of the line all by his lonesome and go at 'em single-handed, was talking with one of his friends after the firing

had ceased:

"I never felt so wabbly in my life," he said, "and it was nothing but pure hysterics that kept me going. I had to keep saying to myself all the time, 'Steady, there, old fellow, and see to it that you don't welch,' and every time I tussled with a think like this I made a jump forward and got out of line.

One of the Rough Riders from New York, an educated fellow, who'd probably had his little whirl at playing the horses when he had nothing else to do, said after the fight was over :

Holy gee, but that game is decidedly more nerve-sapping than dallying with 100 to I shots."

I had often read about men in action dodging bullets out of nervousness, but I never took any stock in those stories until this fight. Then I found out that it was true. Men do dodge bullets. I caught myself doing it half a dozen times, and nearly all the other fellows did it. They didn't dodge all the time, but only when the Spaniards were engaging in volley firing. When the sound of the volley reached them, although the volley's bullets had long passed them, they involuntarily gave little ducks of the head, like a man does in a boxing match. They didn't know that they were doing it. I called the attention of one of my bunkies, who fought alongside of me, to his imbecile game of ducking his head, and he turned to me and said:

Why, you jay, I've been watching you do the same thing for the last fifteen minutes," and he was right.

There's a mean kind of a squat cactus growing around the woods down there, and the digs of the cactus point fooled a lot of the men into believing that they had been pinked in the legs. I saw one of the regulars, a corporal, sit down suddenly and rub his left leg down near his foot.

"Been nipped ?" asked one of his swaddies.

"Yep, in the ankle," was the reply.

Then he pulled up his trouser leg, lowered his sock,

and saw nothing but a little abrasion of the skin, from Shot in the Ankle by a Cactus Thorn. which the blood was trickling. He had struck his ankle against a cactus point. He got up suddenly, looked at the cactus for a second, and then trampled it into the ground.

"I won't get fooled that way again," he said. He got a ball in his left shoulder later on.

A lot of the fellows were gagging and whistling and humming during the whole thing-not loud, but just loud enough to hear themselves. When the firing was the hardest along the left of the line, a half dozen of the fellows, I heard afterwards, struck up the coon song, "Get Your Money's Worth," and kept it going until another bunch in the same outfit drowned 'em out with another coon song, "I Don't Like No Cheap Man," which they twisted into "I Don't Like No Cheap Span."

There were very few of the fellows who were killed who didn't have some kind or other of a girl trinket on them when they were laid out in the rear. The officers went around and gathered these things together, making notes of them on pads which they carried around with them. A good many of these lockets and miniatures and little strands of sweethearts' hair were

sent to the people back home of the boys killed, on the dispatch boat Dolphin," that brought me over from Cuba.

The Spanish soldiers had the bulge on us during the engagement in this respect, that they fought without any gear whatever except their rifles and ammunition belts. All of their individual belongings, such as knapsacks, haversacks, ponchos, and so on, they left behind them with storekeepers, and they didn't have any packing to do during the scrap. A good many of the troops on our side fought in practically heavy marching order -that is, they went into the fight that way. They didn't all come out that way, though. The temperature was something fierce, and the way they chucked gear right and left was a caution. Most of them hung on to their

a High and a Low Ball.

canteens, though, for water certainly tasted sweet in that Difference Between heat. The thrown-away gear was nearly all gathered together after the rumpus was over, and the men got their belongings back, and without having anything said to them for throwing it away, either. It was funny to hear the talk of some of the Rough Riders at mess that night.

"What I want, and want right now," said one of them to his companions, "is twenty-seven Scotch high-balls and a caviare sandwich."

"Stop your kidding," one of them replied, "you're in luck that you didn't get one Spanish low ball."

One of the boys of Hamilton Fish's outfit sang in a very sweet tenor voice "The Vacant Chair," at mess that night. It was enough to choke a man up.

Edward Marshall, that newspaper correspondent who was hit in the spine early in the fight, was a game man all right. He was conscious when they picked him up.

"Where did you get it, Marshall ?" he was asked before he was examined. "I pass," said he, for he didn't know where he was hit himself, the bullet made him so numb. "Any old place from hat to moccasins, I guess."

I

PRAISE FROM THE FOE.

A Tribute From 11,000 Spanish Soldiers.

T is very doubtful if the annals of warfare have ever recorded such a document as the farewell address which was presented on August 21,

1898, to the American army at Santiago by 11,000 Spanish soldiers on the eve of leaving Cuba for their native country.

This tribute to our gallant boys reads as follows:

"Soldiers of the American army:

"We would not be fulfilling our duty as well-born men in whose breasts there live gratitude and courtesy should we embark for our beloved Spain without sending to you our most cordial and sincere good wishes and farewell. We fought you with ardor, with all our strength, endeavoring to gain the victory, but without the slightest rancor or hate toward the American nation. We have been vanquished by you (so our generals and chiefs judged in signing the capitulation), but our surrender and the bloody battle preceding it have left in our souls no place for resentment against the men who fought us nobly and valiantly.

"You fought and acted in compliance with the same call of duty as we, for we all represent the power of our respective States. You fought us as men face to face and with great courage, as before stated, a quality which we had not met with during the three years we have carried on this war against a people without religion, without morals, without conscience and of doubtful origin, who could not confront the enemy, but, hidden, shot their noble victims from ambush and then immediately fled. This was the kind of warfare we had to sustain in this unfortunate land.

"You have complied exactly with all the laws and usages of war as recognized by the armies of the most civilized nations of the world; have given honorable burial to the dead of the vanquished; have cured their wounded with great humanity; have respected and cared for your prisoners and their comfort; and, lastly, to us, whose condition was terrible, you have given freely of food, of your stock of medicines, and you have honored us with distinction and courtesy, for after the fighting the two armies mingled with the utmost harmony.

"With the high sentiment of appreciation from us all, there remains but to express our farewell, and with the greatest sincerity we wish you all happiness and health in this land, which will no longer belong to our dear

Spain, but will be yours, who have conquered it by force and watered it with your blood as your conscience called for, under the demand of civilization and humanity.

"From 11,000 Spanish soldiers.

"Pedro Lopez de Castillo, Soldier of Infantry.
"SANTIAGO DE CUBA, August 21, 1898."

T

THE MOST HEROIC ACT OF THE WAR.

True Story of How Hobson Sank the "Merrimac."

HE wars of the nation, from Revolutionary days of '76 to the present, are punctuated by deeds of extraordinary courage, but history has never recorded a more heroic act than that performed by Assistant Naval Constructor Richmond P. Hobson, on the night of June 3, at the entrance to Santiago Harbor. Lieutenant Cushing's feat in blowing up the Confederate ram "Albemarle," in Albemarle Sound (October 27, 1864) and Lieutenant Somer's fatal exploit in destroying a Moorish ship in Tripoli Harbor (May 25, 1804), were regarded as being the most noteworthy examples of sailor daring in the annals of American seamanship, but desperate as were these undertakings, they were not more so than was Hobson's dashing attempt of June 3, to block Santiago's harbor, thereby to prevent the escape of Cervera's fleet which was shut within.

When Rear-Admiral Sampson joined Commodore Schley, the latter had already ascertained that it would be impossible for the fleet to crawl into the rat hole in which the Spanish fleet had taken refuge. The mines across the entrance and the batteries which commanded it made the mere contemplation of it an act of folly. Commodore Schley was inclined to think the dynamite cruiser "Vesuvius" might be able to countermine, but the ships would have to go in single file and if one were sunk in the channel the progress of the others would be blocked. It was then that Lieutenant Hobson conceived the scheme of sinking a big collier across the harbor entrance and asked to be allowed to execute it himself. It seemed certain death and almost certain failure, as the odds were overwhelmingly against reaching the entrance before discovery; but Hobson was so enthusiastic that his confidence was infectious, and the Admiral finally but yet reluctantly gave his consent.