nguish men and women in the villages. It is, or was,
frightfully hot, and you had to keep moving all the time to get out of
the sun. I mess with the officers, but the other correspondents, the
Associated Press and Ralph Paine of The World and Press of
Philadelphia, with the middies. Paine got on because Scovel of The
World has done so much secret service work for the admiral, running in
at night and taking soundings, and by day making photographs of the
coast, also carrying messages to the insurgents.

It is a wonderful ship, like a village, and as big as the Paris. We
drift around in the sun or the moonlight, and when we see a light,
chase after it. There is a band on board that plays twice a day. It
is like a luxurious yacht, with none of the ennui of a yacht. The
other night, when we were heading off a steamer and firing six-pounders
across her bows, the band was playing the "star" song from the
Meistersinger. Wagner and War struck me as the most fin de siecle idea
of war that I had ever heard of. The nights have been perfectly
beautiful, full of moonlight, when we sit on deck and smoke. It is
like looking down from the roof of a high building. Yesterday they
brought a Spanish officer on board, he had been picked up in a schooner
with his orderly. I was in Captain Chadwick's cabin when he was
brought in, and Scovel interpreted for the captain, who was more
courteous than any Spanish Don that breathes. The officer said he had
been on his way to see his wife and newly born baby at Matanzas, and
had no knowledge that war had been declared. I must say it did me good
to see him. I remembered the way the Spanish officers used to insult
me in a language which I, fortunately for me, could not understand, and
how I hated the sight of them, and I enjoyed seeing his red and yellow
cockade on the table before me, while I sat in a big armchair and
smoked and was in hearing of the marines drilling on the upper deck.
He was invited to go to breakfast with the officers, and I sat next to
him, and as it happened to be my turn to treat, I had the satisfaction
of pouring drinks down his throat. I told stories about Spanish
officers all the time to the rest of the mess, pretending I was telling
them something else by making drawings on the tablecloth, so that the
unhappy officer on his other side, who was talking Spanish to him, had
a hard time not to laugh. I told Zogbaum he ought to draw a picture of
him at the mess t