heartily,
as if it were the funniest of jokes. "Even the _Texas_ didn't show me
any mercy; but Bob Evans knew the difference between a railroad-train
and a torpedo-boat, and didn't shoot. I told him, the last time I saw
him, that he was clearly entitled to take a crack at me. Every other
ship in the fleet had had the privilege, and it was his turn. I'm the
only man in the navy," he said, with renewed laughter, "who has ever
sustained the fire of a whole fleet of battle-ships and cruisers and got
away alive."

After Captain Philip had made his call and taken his leave, I explained
to Captain McCalla the object of our coming to Guantanamo Bay, and asked
whether there were any Cuban refugees in the vicinity who needed food
and could be reached. He replied unhesitatingly that there were. He was
in almost daily communication, he said, with General Perez, an insurgent
leader who was then besieging Guantanamo city, and through that officer
he thought he could send food to a large number of people who had taken
refuge in the woods north of the bay and were in a destitute and
starving condition. He had already sent to them all the food he himself
could spare, but it was not half enough to meet their wants. With
characteristic promptness and energy he called his stenographer and
dictated a letter to General Perez, in which he said that Miss Clara
Barton, president of the American National Red Cross, had just reached
Guantanamo Bay in the steamer _State of Texas_, with fourteen hundred
tons of food intended for Cuban reconcentrados, and asked whether he
(Perez) could furnish pack-animals and an escort for, say, five thousand
rations, if they could be landed on the western side of the lower bay.
This letter he sent to General Perez by a special courier from the
detachment of Cubans then serving with the marines, and said that he
should probably receive a reply in the course of two or three days. As
nothing more could be done at that time, I returned to the _State of
Texas_, reported progress to Miss Barton, and then went on shore to send
a telegram to Washington by the Haitian cable, which had just been
recovered and repaired, and to take a look at the camp of the marines.

When, on May 26, Commodore Schley, with the Flying Squadron, arrived off
the entrance to Santiago harbor, and began the blockade of that port,
the great need of his vessels was a safe and sheltered coaling-station.
The heavy swell raised along the southern coa