out eleven thousand men.

The hardships on the transports were very great.

The Massachusetts carried three troops of cavalry from New York and
Pennsylvania to Porto Rico and the events of the voyage have been thus
narrated by an eye-witness:

"With the penetrating of the tropics come days of languor and nights of
inactivity so delicious it seems profanation to move. More than one
thousand men, who boarded the Massachusetts with the vigor of the North
in their veins, have succumbed, one by one, to the lethargy of the soft
breeze of the Bahamas.

But an awakening is at hand. Pumps that have been running steadily day
and night slow down and stop. Troopers had become so accustomed to the
quick beating of the smaller machines that the cessation of throbs
between the slower pulsations of the heavier engines is noticed
instantly. A quick inquiry as to the cause brings the answer from one
less well-informed: "Only the water pumps broken down." That is all,
only eleven hundred parched horses awaiting the answer to the bugle call
they had learned so well--"Water horses!"--which sounded at the moment
of the fatal break in the pumps. Only a transport carrying ten hundred
and thirty men, and no means of extinguishing a fire!

Twenty minutes; one-half hour, and Captain Read, who has gone down into
"the hole," asks for five Troop A men. "No hurry," so the order said.
Somebody knew better, and the troopers go, hand over hand, down into the
ship's hold. A few bales of hay come up and over the side of the ship,
and sizzle as they strike the water. The troopers nurse a few burned
fingers, and Captain Read reappears on deck, smoked, wet with
perspiration, and makes his usual answer to a question, "What's the
trouble?" with "Nothing at all." But five men of Troop A and Captain
Read knows that a dangerous fire has been extinguished for the third
time in one day with men's bare hands.

"Three-quarters of an hour, and no sound from the engine-room, except
the steady throb of the propeller.

"'Thirty men from Troop A, thirty men from City Troop, and thirty men
from Troop C!' and ninety men in three squads silently are lined around
that entrance to Hades--the hole. 'Another fire,' was the quick alarm,
but it was worse than that. 'Water! water! water!" the cry comes from
the sunken eyes that look pleadingly at men; from harsh breathing; from
parched throats; from hanging heads of eleven hundred horses and mules
that had not been watered