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What possible object could the Spanish war-vessels have in this, was a question asked by every one, as soon as the intelligence became known. The balloon which rose from the "Numancia" had a car attached, but there was clearly no one in it. Therefore the balloons were not to be used for purposes of observation.

During this Sunday night the Vesuvius again discharged her dynamite guns, with the western battery as a target, and because of the frightful report which followed the second shot, it was believed a magazine had been exploded. June 20. The fleet of transports arrived off Santiago at noon on the twentieth, and hove to outside the cordon of war-vessels.

Such was the impression here on the spot; such in plain terms the statement of Count Hatzfeldt to Lord Salisbury at home: that the neutrality of Apia was only "to prevent the natives from fighting," not the Germans; and that whatever Becker might have promised at the conference, he could not "restrict German war-vessels in their freedom of action."

The war-vessels, which Caesar had given orders to build in the Gallic, Sicilian, and Italian ports, were not yet ready or at any rate not on the spot; his squadron in the Adriatic had been in the previous year destroyed at Curicta; he found at Brundisium not more than twelve ships of war and scarcely transports enough to convey over at once the third part of his army of twelve legions and 10,000 cavalry destined for Greece.

The General Armstrong hailed from New York, and her captain was named Reid. She had a crew of ninety men, and was armed with one heavy 32 pounder and six lighter guns. In December, 1814, she was lying in Fayal, a neutral port, when four British war-vessels, a ship of the line, a frigate and two brigs, hove into sight, and anchored off the mouth of the harbor.

At the Hague the deputies were heard on the 22nd August, 1590. They complained to the States-General of "brandschatting" on the border, of the holding of forts beyond the lines, and of other invasions of neutral territory, of the cruising of the war-vessels of the States off the shores and on the rivers, and of their interference with lawful traders.

Perhaps the most precious result of the expedition, was the lesson which the Englishmen had thus learned in handling the great galleys of Spain. It might soon stand them in stead. The little war-vessels which had come from Plymouth, had sailed round and round these vast unwieldy hulks, and had fairly driven them off the field, with very slight damage to themselves.

In vain he treated the cities subject to him with every sort of consideration; in vain he sued for the favour of the communities and diets by fair- sounding words and still better-sounding gold; he had to learn that his presents were declined, and that all the statues that had formerly been erected to him were broken in pieces and the honorary tablets were melted down, in accordance with a decree of the diet, simultaneously throughout the Peloponnesus . The name of Perseus was on all lips; even the states that formerly were most decidedly anti-Macedonian, such as the Achaeans, deliberated as to the cancelling of the laws directed against Macedonia; Byzantium, although situated within the kingdom of Pergamus, sought and obtained protection and a garrison against the Thracians not from Eumenes, but from Perseus, and in like manner Lampsacus on the Hellespont joined the Macedonian: the powerful and prudent Rhodians escorted the Syrian bride of king Perseus from Antioch with their whole magnificent war- fleet for the Syrian war-vessels were not allowed to appear in the Aegean and returned home highly honoured and furnished with rich presents, more especially with wood for shipbuilding; commissioners from the Asiatic cities, and consequently subjects of Eumenes, held secret conferences with Macedonian deputies in Samothrace.

Perhaps there was not a man from commodore to seaman, who believed it would be possible for the war-vessels to enter the bay without giving an alarm, and yet the big ships continued on and were nearly past Corregidor Island before a gun was fired.

He learned how cannon were built, and studied the manufacture of all kinds of firearms. About the same time he became deeply interested in ship-building, and determined to build a fleet of war-vessels on Lake Plestchéief.