lags and signals flying in the
clear sunshine and on the translucent green water of the tropics, was a
picture of more than ordinary interest and beauty, and one that Key
West, perhaps, may never see again.

About two o'clock in the afternoon I was able, through the courtesy of
Mr. Trumbull White in offering me the use of the Chicago "Record's"
despatch-boat, to go off to the flagship _New York_ and present my
letter of introduction from the President to Admiral Sampson. I was
received most cordially and hospitably, and, after conferring with him
for half an hour with regard to the plans and work of the Red Cross, so
far as they depended upon or related to the navy, I returned to the
_State of Texas_. The fleet sailed again at half-past ten o'clock that
night for the coast of Cuba.

After the departure of the blockading fleet and the Flying Squadron on
May 19 and 20, the small army of war correspondents at Key West had
little to do except watch for the arrival of vessels with news from the
Cuban coast. Most of them regarded this work--or rather absence of
work--as tedious and irksome in the extreme; but if they had been living
on board ship instead of at the hotel they would have found a
never-failing source of interest and entertainment in the constantly
changing picture presented by the harbor. Six or eight war-ships,
ranging in size and fighting power from monitors to torpedo-boats, were
still lying at anchor off the custom-house and the Marine Hospital;
transports with stores and munitions of war were discharging their
cargoes at the piers; big four-masted schooners, laden with coal for the
blockading fleet, swung back and forth with the ebbing and flowing tides
as they awaited orders from the naval commandant; graceful steam-yachts,
flying the flag of the Associated Press, were constantly coming in with
news or going out in search of it; swift naphtha-launches carrying naval
officers in white uniforms darted hither and thither from one cruiser to
another, whistling shrill warnings to the slower boats pulled by sailors
from the transports; officers on the monitors were exchanging "wigwag"
flag-signals with other officers on the gunboats or the troop-ships; and
from every direction came shouts, bugle-calls, the shrieks of
steam-whistles, the peculiar jarring rattle of machine-guns at target
practice, and the measured beats of twenty or thirty ships' bells,
striking, at different distances, but almost synchronously,