Page:Under Dewey at Manila.djvu/281

Rh "We haven't catched the Spanish admiral yet," sighed the tall down-easter, as word drifted below that Manila harbor did not hold the fleet they were after. I wonder what the commodore will do now?"

No one on the Olympia was kept long in suspense over this point. The squadron was moving southward, in the direction of the long neck of land upon which was located, as previously mentioned, Fort Cavite, or, as it is locally termed, the Cavite Arsenal.

"They have found the Spanish fleet!" The cry ran from one ship to another, and soon it was on the lips of everybody, from the men in the tops to the stokers in the depths of the coal bunkers. The warships of the enemy had been discovered lying in the little bay formed by the curving shore of old Manila and the neck of land supporting Fort Cavite. The distance from Fort Cavite to Manila is almost eight miles in a straight line. Along such an imaginary line, and back of it, was Admiral Montojo's fleet, flanked on the right by Manila's shore batteries, and on the left by the powerful guns of the fort.

The Spanish fleet was a formidable one. If their