d their backs on their new home, in order to defend their country's
flag. They left Rio in six transport-steamers.

Brazil thereupon sold her two battleships to a Greek inn-keeper at
Santos, named Petrokakos, and he turned them over to the merchant Pietro
Alvares Cortes di Mendoza at Bahia. This noble Don was on board one of
the transport-steamers with the Japanese "volunteers," and on board this
Glasgow steamer, the _Kirkwall_, the bill of sale was signed on July
14th, by the terms of which the "armed steamers" _Kure_ and _Sasebo_
passed into the possession of Japan. The Brazilian crews and some
English engineers went on board the transports and were landed quietly
two weeks later at various Brazilian ports.

These one thousand four hundred Japanese plantation-laborers, traders,
artisans, and engineers--in reality they were trained men belonging to
the naval reserve--at once took over the management of the two mighty
ships, and set out immediately in the direction of the West Indies. At
Kingston (Jamaica) a friendly steamer supplied them with the latest news
of the departure of the American transports from Cuba, and the latter
met their fate, as we saw, in the roads of Corpus Christi.

A terrible panic seized all our cities on the Gulf of Mexico and the
Atlantic coast, as the Japanese monsters were heard from, now here, now
there. For example, several shells exploded suddenly in the middle of
the night in the harbor of Galveston when not a warship had been
observed in the neighborhood, and again several American
merchant-vessels were sent to the bottom by the mysterious ships, which
began constantly to assume more gigantic proportions in the reports of
the sailors. At last a squadron was dispatched from Newport News to
seek and destroy the enemy, whereupon the phantom-ships disappeared as
suddenly as they had come. Not until Admiral Dayton ferreted out the
Japanese cruisers at the Falkland Islands did our sailors again set eyes
on the two battleships.

_Chapter XVIII_

THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE MOUNTAINS

It had been found expedient to send a few militia regiments to the front
in May, and these regiments, together with what still remained of our
regular army, made a brave stand against the Japanese outposts in the
mountains. Insufficiently trained and poorly fed as they were, they
nevertheless accomplished some excellent work under the guidance of
efficient officers; but the continual engagements with the en