Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/512



AD the Psalmist lived to see that sight, he would not have written "terrible as an army with banners," but drawn his simile from the spectacle of those ashen-hued battleships as they tugged at their anchor chains, smoked with suppressed fury, and moaned hoarsely with the rise and fall of the waves.

Now and again one of those sinister-looking torpedo boats would whip in and out amid the sullen squadron, peeping with open-eyed astonishment at the floating volcanoes which were sleeping upon the blue waters of Key West Bay. Perhaps you think for the moment that this little messenger of war has at last brought the word that is to loosen the leash that holds these marine monsters. Perhaps the spell is to be broken, and from out their ominous turrets will now be belched shot and shell, flame and desolation. You tremble, and are not a little relieved when the sharp-nosed, sinuous craft glides out and in, and is gone from view like a fish that dives, leaving the battleships to ride with sullen, unsatisfied moans, close to their anchor buoys.

So they rode for days and weeks, until the gray-green of their war paint grew mottled and streaked with the brine of the sea; so they were held in check while the vultures hovered over the blackened wreck in Havana harbor, while a great people gave a sublime example of self-restraint; while the provocation to war, the last argument of men as well as kings, and perhaps the only argument which a savage race will heed, was carefully, conscientiously weighed: until our course became clear: until intervention in Cuba was accepted as a duty, an inexorable duty, by the whole nation.

It was a little before midnight on April 22d. The great fleet of twenty-one sail was as dark as the grave: not a single light was shown; now and again the guardships that were patroling in the offing would flash in the intelligence that all was well. The men slept upon the cleared decks, under the tropical heaven resplendent with myriads of stars which never shine over our northern home. At midnight we steamed away from the flagship in a little tug; the message had come from Washington, final and decisive,