to the yard above his head, and while yet they were travelling to the yard, the helm of the Nashville was put hard over to port and she turned sharp off to cross the merchantman's bow. When barely a ship's length from the squadron line, Lieutenant Dillingham, her executive officer, ordered Gunner Patrick Mallia to fire a blank shot from the after gun (a fourinch rifle) on the port side of the ship. The puffing smoke, the splash of the wad a hundred yards away, and the roar of the discharge mystified the merchantman.

"What kind of a manoeuvre are those warships going through that one should do that?" he said to himself, as he held on his way, but before his propeller had turned over a dozen times more the gun spurted flame and smoke again and this time something went screaming away across his bows, clipping wave-crests as it sped, until it finally tumbled and disappeared a half mile beyond his ship. There was no mistaking that. A solid shot had been fired across his bows, and he clawed the air in his haste to stop his engine and get his flag down. Running down close to the Spaniard the Nashville sent Ensign Thomas P. Magruder with a prize crew on board. They found that she was the Buenaventura, Captain Lazarraga, of Bilboa, Spain, bound from Pascagoula, Mississippi, to Rotterdam, with $20,000 worth

of lumber a ship of 1,741 tons, in very good

order.

The Nashville escorted her into port, where thousands of people flocked to the water-front to see her and cheer her captors, while the

The First Prize of the War, Buenaventura, showing some of the Prize Crew on Deck.

cable carried reports of the event that were printed in newspaper extras throughout the nation within two or three hours after the first shot was fired.

The unaccustomed spectators of the morning's events off Key West, who had found

themselves unable to realize fully the import of the movement of the squadron were roused to a full sense of what it meant by the sight of the Nashville's flashing guns, and the echoes of that shot, as they were carried by the cable around the world, told the most unwilling lis tener that war with Spain was actually begun.

CHAPTER IX

BRAVE WORK ALONG SHORE

CUTTING CABLES WITHIN NINETY FEET OF THE BEACH AT CIENFUEGOS UNDER THE FIRE OF 1,000 SPANISH SOLDIERSWOUNDED WHO SUFFERED IN SILENCE LEST GROANS UNNERVE THEIR SHIPMATES-THE WINSLOW AT CARDENAS-A TORPEDOBOAT SENT TO CUT A GUN-BOAT FROM THE PIERS OF A WELLDEFENDED CITY-A TALE OF RARE HEROISM AND RESOURCEFULNESS REMARKABLE TESTS OF COURAGE IN THE FACE OF SUPERIOR FORCES AFLOAT-RETURNING FIRE FROM THE SHORE --AT MATANZAS AND CABANAS.

IN proclaiming a blockade of the Cuban ports it was manifestly the belief of President McKinley that Spain had been waiting for us to make an actual display of force that would satisfy her honor so that she could then say she had held out until she had to face a vastly superior force. The extent of Spanish ignorance of our power-the fact that they really expected to conquer us, was, on the whole, inconceivable on this side of the water. Many naval officers, however, scouted what was denominated the "peaceful blockade." An immediate assault upon Havana was what they wanted. In fact,

plans for an assault on Havana were made by Sampson and distributed among our ship commanders.

The

These plans would have been carried out, and with entire success, too, but for the fact that our army was insufficient in numbers. We had been dominated by the idea that a regular army of more than 25,000 men might subvert the liberty of the other sixty millions of the nation that even that handful was aristocratic and dangerous! At any rate, our army legislation had been based on some such ideas. truth is we did not have enough men to protect our forts from deterioration, let alone adequately defend them from foreign attack, and we had, therefore, to depend wholly on our navy for aggressive action, until we could recruit, equip, and train an army to hold such territory as our ships might capture. Meantime, the rainy season was at hand in Cuba -the season of fevers deadly to all unacclimated sojourners. Weyler, the former Captain-General, in an interview, expressed the belief, founded on hope, that we would effect a landing and that half our force would die of fever. In view of all of the conditions there was but one thing that we could do, and that was to blockade the coast and wait for the healthy season, with the chance, meantime, that the Spanish would send over the fleet that