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He glanced up at the mast to see that the press-boat's signal was conspicuous, they were drawing within range. With the naked eye, Channing could see the monster, mouse-colored war-ships, basking in the sun, solemn and motionless in a great crescent, with its one horn resting off the harbor-mouth. They made great blots on the sparkling, glancing surface of the water.
It's just the same old harbor-mouth, and the same old Morro Castle, and same old ships, drifting up and down; the Brooklyn, full of smoke-stacks, and the New York, with her two bridges, and all the rest of them looking just as they've looked for the last four weeks. There's nothing in that. Why don't they send me to Tampa with the army and Shafter that's where the story is."
He took his station off the port, and kept a close lookout for fear his enemy would again elude him. But the precaution was unnecessary, for Semmes had decided to offer battle. Four days passed, however, with the Kearsarge keeping grim guard. Then, on Sunday morning, June 19, as the crew of the Kearsarge was at divine service, the officer of the deck reported a steamer at the harbor-mouth.
It was, indeed, a memorable sea-picture, the sturdy Pickering riding deep with her burden of sugar and seeming smaller than she really was, the Achilles towering like a frigate, and all Bilbao turned out to watch the duel, shore and headlands crowded with spectators, the blue harbor-mouth gay with an immense flotilla of fishing boats and pleasure craft.
Dashing at full speed from the harbor-mouth, outlined by the smokeless flames of her forward turret and port batteries, Admiral Cervera's flag-ship was quickly headed to the westward, and for the most open point of the blockade. Behind her steamed the Vizcaya, Colon, Oquendo, and the torpedo-boats Furor and Pluton.
The boat, with such a force behind it of will power, would, I believe, have gone through anything. And, after seeing the heavy breakers through which we were guided, loaded with their heavy ice battering-rams, when at last we ran through the harbor-mouth with the boat on our return, I knew well what wives and children had been thinking of when they saw their loved ones put out.
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