and as such it was now his duty to inform Captain Nat Ponsberry that a storm was approaching.
To those of my young friends who have read "Under Dewey at Manila" and other volumes of the "Old Glory Series" Larry Russell needs no introduction. He was one of three brothers, who, left in the charge of a miserly step-uncle, had thought it best to go away from home and seek fortune in various parts of the globe. Larry had drifted to San Francisco and then to Honolulu, where he had fallen in with Captain Nat Ponsberry and the Columbia, as already mentioned. He, with his sailor friend, Luke Striker, had been cast away, and while adrift on the Pacific had been picked up by the Asiatic Squadron under Commodore (afterward Admiral) Dewey, to serve with honor during the memorable battle of Manila Bay.
Since those days a great many things had occurred to the Russell boys. Ben, the oldest of the three, had served as a young volunteer in Cuba during the advance on Santiago, and as an officer with the army in the Philippines, and Walter, the third brother, had served in the navy in Cuban waters and elsewhere. In the meantime the miserly step-uncle had reformed, and now thought "his three boys," as he called them, "the best young fellers in all America, barrin' none!"
