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near the harbor entrance, but at 10.30 A.M.
they shifted their moorings farther in and out
of sight.
There was then a month of

close blockade."

To follow now the movements of the St. Paul after she left Key West to scout for Cervera, we learn that she arrived off Santiago on May 22d and found the harbor unguarded by any American ship. As none of the Spanish ships was disposed to come out, Sigsbee threw overboard a target and proceeded to exercise his men (chiefly naval militia) with the fiveinch guns the ship carried. Both ship and target were within range of the forts, but the Spaniards looked on quietly while the green gunners proceeded to show their natural ability by shooting the target to pieces.

For three days the St. Paul lay quietly off the harbor, and then, on the 25th, the British steamer Restormel, with 2,400 tons of good Cardiff coal for Cervera on board, was seen ploughing along toward the harbor at a twelveknot gait. The St. Paul went after her in a hurry, and when she was within three miles of the Morro stopped her, as related above, and sent her with a prize crew to Key West. The most disgusted man afloat that day was the captain of the Restormel. He had not ended expressing his feelings when he reached Key West. That the Spaniards should have allowed an un

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turned her stern to the enemy. She was at work one-quarter of a mile from the beach for fifty minutes.

Going thence a few miles east to Guantanamo, the cable-cutters ran in there, and the Wompatuck got hold of a cable, but here the shore fire was hotter, while the St. Louis was unable to reach well with her little six-pounders, and she was compelled to order the Wompatuck out. Captain Goodrich had to signal a second order before she abandoned the attempt. Jungen was from the Maine.

Perhaps the most important fact about this cable-cutting expedition, is that the high-power cannon at Santiago were silenced by the sixpounders of the St. Louis, and the threepounder of the Wompatuck. That is, the men were driven from their guns. The St. Louis fired one hundred and seventy-two shots, and the Wompatuck seventy-six. The Wompatuck was at work on the cable for fifty minutes on May 17th, and a total of two hundred and fortyeight of these tiny shells sufficed to protect her from the modern guns mounted on shore at the mouth of Santiago harbor, during that time.

CHAPTER XIV

THE BLOCKADE OF SANTIAGO

DISPOSITION OF THE SQUADRON-THE STORY OF HOBSon's Futile BRAVERY—IT WAS ANOTHER PROOF THAT CULTURE AND COOL COURAGE GO HAND IN HAND-THE FORTS BOMBARDED-GOOD WORK OF THE VESUVIUS.

ADMIRAL SAMPSON having reached the station off Santiago and found Cervera still within, at once planned to hold him there permanently. It is easy to say that he succeeded, but wholly impossible for anyone who has had no such experience to fully understand the strain that the work involved. Nevertheless, even a landsman can gather some idea of the situation from the facts. Here was a harbor, the entrance channel to which was but three hundred and fifty feet wide at the narrowest point, while the cliffs on each side rose two hundred feet or more above it. In the night-shadows of these cliffs, that entrance was a very black hole. Within this black hole lay four cruisers rated as twentyknot ships, with two destroyers that had made thirty knots—they could cover one sea mile in