," he said, "of torpedo-boats. If you show up at night in the
neighborhood of this ship, we shall fire on you first and ask questions
afterward."

"But how are we to know where you are?" inquired the correspondent.

"That's your business," replied the officer; "but if you approach us at
night, you do it at your own peril."

When we had returned to the despatch-boat, Mr. Chamberlain said to me:
"Of course that's all right from their point of view. I appreciate their
situation, and if I were in their places I should doubtless act
precisely as they do; but it's my business to watch that fleet, and I
can't do it if I keep five miles away at night. I think I'll go within
two miles and take the chances. Some of us will probably lose the
numbers of our mess down here," he added coolly, "if this thing lasts,
but I don't see how it can be helped."

The difficulty of keeping five miles away, or any specified distance
away, from a blockading fleet of war-ships at night can be fully
realized only by those who have experienced it. Except on Morro Castle
at Havana there were no lights on the northern coast of Cuba; if it was
cloudy and there happened to be no moon, the darkness was impenetrable;
the war-ships did not allow even so much as the glimmer of a binnacle
lamp to escape from their lead-colored, almost invisible hulls, as they
cruised noiselessly back and forth; and the correspondent on the
despatch-boat not only did not know where they were, but had no means
whatever of ascertaining where he himself was. Meanwhile, at any moment,
there might come out of the impenetrable darkness ahead the thunder of a
six-pounder gun, followed by the blinding glare of a search-light.
Unquestionably the correspondents were to be believed when they said
privately to one another that it was nervous, harassing work.

But the list of difficulties and embarrassments which confronted the
correspondent in his quest of news is not yet at an end. If he escaped
the danger of being sunk or disabled by a shell or a solid projectile at
night, and succeeded in following a fleet like that of Admiral Sampson,
he had to take into serious consideration the question of coal. Fuel is
quite as essential to a despatch-boat as to a battle-ship. The commander
of the battle-ship, however, had a great advantage over the
correspondent on the despatch-boat, for the reason that he always knew
exactly where he was going and where he could recoal; while the
unfortunat