Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/516

ADMIRAL SAMPSON'S FLEET BEARING DOWN UPON HAVANA IN LINE OF BATTLE.

speck of a vessel which was steaming along very close in shore. It was soon evident that the chase was no match in speed for the "New York," and long before sunset we had her almost in range. She was thought to be an auxiliary cruiser of the Spanish Transatlantic Company, and so, of course, carried guns; so the bugle blew to general quarters as we came within range. The vessel was making every possible effort to escape; the black smoke rolled out of her stack in columns, and the captain was heading straight on to the reefs, apparently preferring shipwreck to capture. About six o'clock we gave him an eight-pounder across his bow, and she came around upon the second, and slowly steamed towards us at half steam. It was a merchant steamer, the "Pedro," of about 3,000 tons, with an assorted cargo, and before the night closed we had put a prize crew on board and sent her in to Key West.

About ten o'clock in the evening we picked up the fleet off Havana. The Spaniards were firing very freely the guns of the shore battery on the Mulatto ridge, on the east, and from the Santa Clara and the other Vedado batteries, on the west. We were certainly seven miles out, and well beyond range of all but the most lucky of chance shots. Perhaps they were only trying the metal of their guns, and perhaps they were only firing to alarm the countryside and give warning to the ships at sea that the blockade had begun. We were floating idly on the tide about eleven o'clock, when suddenly the farol, or beacon, of the Morro, by the light of which we held our position, was suddenly extinguished, and to me the night seemed brighter as the great light was blown out like a candle in the breeze. For it was the light which had shone for so many years over that great yellow fortress which in Cuba I had learned to know as a cesspool of iniquity, the scene of inhuman and almost incredible crime, as the last stronghold of mediævalism upon American soil. And as the great light was extinguished, the insurgent fires, which we had already noticed burning to the eastward, sprang up into view upon the crest of every hill. The mountain bonfires were carrying through the island the glad tidings of our intervention to shield and to save what there was left to save of human life and property upon the desolate island.

Before midnight each vessel of the fleet had sailed to take up its appointed station, and before morning the naval cordon had been completed and was drawn about the island from Cardenas around Cape San Antonio to Cienfuegos on the south. When the last electric signal had flashed from the signal tower and the torpedo boats were despatched upon their midnight mission, all lights were extinguished and the fleet rode in utter darkness. Only the "New York," the "Iowa," and the "Indiana" remained on guard off Havana. Now and again in the darkness we would catch sight of the great battleships to the right and to the left of us, standing upon our flanks like great fortresses and stable upon the restless waves.

PREPARING TO FIGHT THE "VIZCAYA."

It began very suddenly; almost before I knew it we were in the midst of the most exciting episode of the cruise. I had found a roll of canvas in a shady nook in the signal tower; a feeling of drowsiness was creeping over me as the flagship rolled softly up and down over the waves of the Gulf Stream. Suddenly the great ship seemed to rise to a wave which was greater than any we had