ever desirous of pushing to the front and of taking the
boldest course. The view Howze always took of every emergency (a view
which found prompt expression in his actions when the opportunity
offered) made me feel like an elderly conservative.

The week of non-fighting was not all a period of truce; part of the
time was passed under a kind of nondescript arrangement, when we were
told not to attack ourselves, but to be ready at any moment to repulse
an attack and to make preparations for meeting it. During these times
I busied myself in putting our trenches into first-rate shape and in
building bomb-proofs and traverses. One night I got a detail of sixty
men from the First, Ninth, and Tenth, whose officers always helped us
in every way, and with these, and with sixty of my own men, I dug a
long, zigzag trench in advance of the salient of my line out to a
knoll well in front, from which we could command the Spanish trenches
and block-houses immediately ahead of us. On this knoll we made a kind
of bastion consisting of a deep, semi-circular trench with sand-bags
arranged along the edge so as to constitute a wall with loop-holes. Of
course, when I came to dig this trench, I kept both Greenway and
Goodrich supervising the work all night, and equally of course I got
Parker and Stevens to help me. By employing as many men as we did we
were able to get the work so far advanced as to provide against
interruption before the moon rose, which was about midnight. Our
pickets were thrown far out in the jungle, to keep back the Spanish
pickets and prevent any interference with the diggers. The men seemed
to think the work rather good fun than otherwise, the possibility of a
brush with the Spaniards lending a zest that prevented its growing
monotonous.

Parker had taken two of his Gatlings, removed the wheels, and mounted
them in the trenches; also mounting the two automatic Colts where he
deemed they could do best service. With the completion of the
trenches, bomb-proofs, and traverses, and the mounting of these guns,
the fortifications of the hill assumed quite a respectable character,
and the Gatling men christened it Fort Roosevelt, by which name it
afterward went.*

* Note: See Parker's "With the Gatlings at Santiago."

During the truce various military attaches and foreign officers came
out to visit us. Two or three of the newspaper men, including Richard
Harding Davis, Caspar Whitney, and John Fox, had already been out to