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Thousands of fiery sparks shot up suddenly from the dark cloud the night closed completely round him deep, impenetrable night, and still, solemn silence. Major Hermann Heideck had found a hero's death. A torpedo-boat that had been summoned by signal hurried up at full speed to the Admiral's flagship which was lying on her side.
The first ship was beached at Nima, nine and one-half miles west of the port; the second at Juan Gonzalez, six miles west; the third at Acerraderos, fifteen miles. The torpedo-boat destroyers were both sunk, one near the beach, the other in deep water about three miles west of the harbour entrance.
Matanzas and Cardenas, both under blockade, were passed during the night, and while off the latter place Dick Comly told Ridge the story of his classmate, Ensign Worth Bagley, who lost his life on board the torpedo-boat Winslow, in Cardenas Bay, on May 11th, or less than one month before, and who was the first American officer killed in the war.
Admiral Sampson with the "New York" was far away, and Commodore Schley with the "Brooklyn" commanded the fleet. The odds were not so greatly in favor of the Americans, for the Spaniards had four armored cruisers and two torpedo-boat destroyers, while the Americans had five battle-ships, one armored cruiser and a yacht. The superiority of the Spaniards in rapid-fire guns was very great.
He then stopped his engines altogether, and, when the torpedo-boat had come to a standstill, he proceeded to listen with all intentness for suspicious sounds. But everything was as still as the grave, and Douglas began to hug to himself the conviction that events seemed to be turning out fortunately.
I not only acted with justice, but with courtesy toward them. I put every battleship and every torpedo-boat on the sea under the American flag and Dewey, with instructions to hold himself ready in entire preparedness to sail at a moment's notice. That didn't mean that we were to have war. Dewey was the greatest possible provocative of peace.
If a torpedo, shot from a torpedo-boat, and speeding swiftly by its own powers beneath the waves, should strike the submerged hull of a crab, there would be one crab the less in the English Channel. As has been said, the Llangaron came rushing on, distancing everything, even the torpedo-boats.
In fact, by the time the torpedo-boat reached the Ting Yuen it was possible to make out no fewer than thirteen coils of smoke away on the eastern horizon, showing that the enemy's fleet was arriving in force, steaming in line abreast, and that it outnumbered the Chinese squadron by three ships.
By a conference of both branches of Congress a naval bill of $49,277,558 was agreed upon. It stands as the heaviest naval outlay since the civil war, providing for the construction of three battle-ships, four monitors, sixteen torpedo-boat destroyers, and twelve torpedo-boats.
I climbed into one of these, and sounded with my stick on the off-side barely three feet; and the torpedo-boat melted out of my speculations. The stream, I observed also, was only just wide enough for two barges to pass with comfort.
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