Page:The United States Army and Navy - including Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Hawaii (IA unitedstatesarm00chic).pdf/15



a skeleton finger of steel points skyward over a tangled mass of rusting wreckage.

The Wreck of the Maine.—sbate the foul waters of Havana Harbor,

Carrion birds wheel and circle about it, settling ever and anon upon its wire supports, watching for some nameless fragment to drift to the surface of the murky tide, Human Jackals on the wharves of the city laugh as they catch sightof it and gloat over the ruin it marks. On the Prado, the military band plays a lively air and crowds saunter to and fro, officers and civilians mingling jn the cool of the evening, but silently the shadow of the shaft in the harbor falls across the doomed cily. The laugh of the jackal dies away ina snarl of fear. ‘lo the eastward, the legions of Gomez and Garcia are drawing nearer—to the northward, the horizon is jilack with the smoke of a mighty war fiect. And still the gaunt fragment points spectrally toward high heaven as if in dumb appeal ; still its shadow continues to fall across the dreary waste of waters, across the silent wharves and the deserted Prado, until, answering the flag of Cuban Freedom on Morro Castle, from the peak of that solitary fighting mast the star-spangled banner shalt

flash forth the signal ‘TITHE MAINE IS AVEN