Page:Theodore Roosevelt Rough Riders.djvu/71

Rh and on their flanks the gray hulls of the warships surged through the blue water. We had every variety of craft to guard us, from the mighty battleship and swift cruiser to the converted yachts and the frail, venomous-looking torpedo boats. The warships watched with ceaseless vigilance by day and night. When a sail of any kind appeared, instantly one of our guardians steamed toward it. Ordinarily, the torpedo boats were towed. Once a strange ship steamed up too close, and instantly the nearest torpedo boat was slipped like a greyhound from the leash, and sped across the water toward it; but the stranger proved harmless, and the swift, delicate, death-fraught craft returned again.

It was very pleasant, sailing southward through the tropic seas toward the unknown. We knew not whither we were bound, nor what we were to do; but we believed that the nearing future held for us many chances of death and hardship, of honor and renown. If we failed, we would share the fate of all who fail; but we were sure that we would win, that we should score the first great triumph in a mighty world-movement. At night we looked at the new stars, and hailed the Southern Cross when at last we raised it above the horizon. In the daytime we drilled, and in the evening we held officers' school; but there was much time when we had little to do, save to scan the wonderful blue sea and watch the