ing in amaurosis--another ship came
into Honolulu in the same predicament. Like the other craft four
thousand miles away, her deck force had been stricken suddenly and at
night. Still another, a battle-ship, followed into Honolulu, with fully
five hundred more or less blind men groping around her decks; and the
admiral on the station called in all the outriders by wireless. They
came as they could, some hitting sand-bars or shoals on the way, and
every one crippled and helpless to fight. The diagnosis was the
same--amblyopia, atrophy of the nerve, and incipient amaurosis; which in
plain language meant dimness of vision increasing to blindness.

Then came more news from Manila. Ship after ship came in, or was towed
in, with fighting force sightless, and the work being done by the "black
gang" or the idlers, and each with the same report--the gradual dimming
of lights and outlines as the night went on, resulting in partial or
total blindness by sunrise. And now it was remarked that those who
escaped were the lower-deck workers, those whose duties kept them off
the upper deck and away from gunports and deadlights. It was also
suggested that the cause was some deadly attribute of the night air in
these tropical regions, to which the Americans succumbed; for, so far,
the coast division had escaped.

In spite of the efforts of the Government, the Associated Press got the
facts, and the newspapers of the country changed the burden of their
pronouncements. Bombastic utterances gave way to bitter criticism of an
inefficient naval policy that left the ships short of fighters in a
crisis. The merging of the line and the staff, which had excited much
ridicule when inaugurated, now received more intelligent attention.
Former critics of the change not only condoned it, but even demanded the
wholesale granting of commissions to skippers and mates of the merchant
service; and insisted that surgeons, engineers, paymasters, and
chaplains, provided they could still see to box the compass, should be
given command of the torpedo craft and smaller scouts. All of which made
young Surgeon Metcalf, on waiting orders at San Francisco, smile sweetly
and darkly to himself: for his last appointment had been the command of
a hospital ship, in which position, though a seaman, navigator, and
graduate of Annapolis, he had been made the subject of newspaper
ridicule and official controversy, and had even been caricatured as
going into battle in a ship