n Francisco fell into the enemy's hands like ripe
plums. It was quite superfluous for the Japanese to take their steamer
for transporting submarines, which had been built for them in England,
to San Francisco.

Nothing remained to us but the glory that not one of our ships had
surrendered to the enemy--all had sunk with their flags flying. After
all, it was one thing to fight against the demoralized fleet of the Czar
and quite another to fight against the Stars and Stripes. Our
blue-jackets had saved the honor of the white race in the eyes of the
yellow race on the waves of the Pacific, even if they had thus far shown
them only how brave American sailors die. But the loss of more than half
our officers and trained men was even a more severe blow than the
sinking of our ships. These could not be replaced at a moment's notice,
but months and months of hard work would be required and new squadrons
must be found. But from where were they to come?

Only a single vessel of the Pacific fleet escaped from the battle and
the pursuing Japanese cruisers: this was the torpedo-destroyer _Barry_,
commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Dayton, who had been in command of the
torpedo flotilla attached to Admiral Perry's squadron. He had attempted
twice, advancing boldly into the teeth of the gale, to launch a torpedo
in the direction of the _Satsuma_, but the sea was too rough and each
time took the torpedo out of its course.

The badly damaged destroyer entered the harbor of Buenaventura on the
coast of Colombia on May eleventh, followed closely by the Japanese
steamer _Iwate_, which had been lying off the coast of Panama. Grinding
his teeth with rage, Dayton had to look on while a Colombian officer in
ragged uniform, plentifully supplied with gilt, who was in the habit of
commanding his tiny antediluvian gunboat from the door of a harbor
saloon, came on board the _Barry_ and ordered the breeches of the guns
and the engine-valves to be removed, at the same time depriving the crew
of their arms. The Japanese waiting outside the harbor had categorically
demanded this action of the government in Bogota. This humiliating
degradation before all the harbor loafers and criminals, before the
crowds of exulting Chinese and Japanese coolies, who were only too
delighted to see the white man compelled to submit to a handful of
marines the entire batch of whom were not worth one American sailor, was
far harder to bear than all the days of battle put t