Page:Under Dewey at Manila.djvu/68

46 what they had said about going to war. If this awful news was true, and the Spaniards were guilty, would war follow?

There was a second of silence, as the sailors read the lines, a silence broken by Tom Grandon. "Tell you what, this is awful, simply awful, Nat! And they say the Spaniards did it? If that's so, there will be war in a jiffy, and don't you forget it—and Cuba will be free."

"Yes, Cuba will be free, and Spain will get knocked into six million pieces," blazed away Captain Ponsberry, who was wont to talk very extravagantly when warmed up. "The cowards! to blow 'em up when they were sleeping."

"Does it say that?" questioned Hobson. "No fair-minded nation would do such a dastardly bit o' work, cap'n."

"I don't say the nation did it,—as a nation,—but their officers did it, and that's the same thing—the sneaks! I see some think it was an explosion from the inside, but I know that couldn't happen in our navy; the rules aboard a warship are too strict."

"That's right," piped up a thin, nasal voice,—that belonged to Luke Striker, a sailor who had been