arrying war
correspondents to their respective despatch-boats, and naval officers to
the monitors and the huge four-masted colliers; a long line of
party-colored flags was displayed from the signal-halyards of the
_Miantonomoh_; two or three fast sea-going tugs carrying the naval
commandant and other harbor officers started seaward at full speed, with
long plumes of black smoke trailing to leeward from their lead-colored
stacks; and the eight hundred marines on the auxiliary cruiser _Panther_
swarmed on deck and crowded eagerly aft to gaze at the dim, distant
outlines of the newly arrived vessels.

About the middle of the forenoon the swift, heavily armed gunboat
_Scorpion_ entered the harbor flying the commodore's pennant, and was
received with a salute of eleven guns from the monitor _Miantonomoh_.
The remainder of the day passed without any other unusual or noteworthy
incident, but sometime in the night the fleet of Admiral Sampson joined
the Flying Squadron in the offing, and Thursday morning the people of
Key West saw, in their harbor and at sea off Fort Taylor, the largest
and most powerful fleet of war-vessels that had ever assembled, perhaps,
under the American flag.

All day Thursday the harbor was the center of incessant movement,
activity, and excitement. The lighter vessels of the Flying Squadron,
which had come in to coal, rejoined the heavier cruisers and
battle-ships in the offing, and their places were taken by the big
monitors _Amphitrite_ and _Terror_, the cruisers _Detroit_ and
_Marblehead_, and the gunboats _Wilmington_, _Helena_, _Castine_, and
_Machias_, which steamed in one after another from the fleet of Admiral
Sampson. When all these vessels had anchored off Fort Taylor and the
government wharf, there were in the harbor more than twenty ships of
war, including three torpedo-boats and four monitors; six or eight armed
yachts of the mosquito fleet; twelve or fifteen big transports,
troop-ships, and colliers awaiting orders; twenty-two Spanish prizes of
all sorts, from the big liner _Argonauta_ to the little brigantine
_Frascito_; and, finally, a fleet of newspaper tugs, launches, and
despatch-boats almost equal, numerically, to the fleets of Commodore
Schley and Admiral Sampson taken together. The marine picture presented
by the harbor with all these monitors, cruisers, gunboats, yachts,
transports, troop-ships, torpedo-boats, colliers, despatch-boats, and
Spanish prizes lying at anchor, with f