The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-08-12
--------s--e-s---
QUICK work AT SANTIAGO.
Picturesque Account of How an An
Client Empire Was Wiped on the
Map in Twenty Minutes.

Map in Twenty Minutes.
From "A Derelict," by Richard
Harding Davis in the August (Fiction
Number) Scribner's.
It was thirty minutes past nine.
ITS church service" he said. IT can
see them carrying out the chaplain's
reading desk on the Indiana" The
press boat pushed her way nearer into
the circle of battleships until their
leaden-hued hulls lowered high above
her. On the deck of each, the ships
company stood ranged in motionless
ranks. The clam of a Sabbath morn
ing hung about them, the sun fell upon
them like a benediction, and so still
was the air that those in the press
boat could hear, from the stripped and
naked decks, the voices of the men an
swering the roll call in rising mono
tone. "one, two, three, four; one. two,
three, four" The white clad sailors
might have been q chorus of surpliced
choir boys.
But UP above them the battle flags
slumbering at the mastheads stirred
restlessly, and whimpered in their
sleep.
Out through the crack in the wall of
mountains, where the sea runs in to
meet the waters of Santiago harbor
and from behind the shield of MORO
Castle, great gray ship, like a great
gray rat, stuck out her nose and peered
about her, and then struck boldly for
the sea. High before her she bore the
gold and blood-red flag Of Spain, and,
like fugitive leaping from behind his
prison walls, she raced forward for her
freedom, to give battle, to meet her
death.
A shell from the Iowa shrieked its
warning in a shrill crescendo, a fiutter
of flags painted their message against
the sky. THE enemys ships are COM
ing out" they signaled, and the ranks
of whitehead figures which the mo-
ment before stood motionless on the
decks broke into thousands of separate
beings, who flung themselves painting
down the hatchways, or sprang cheer
ing to the fighting tops.
Heavily but swiftly, as islands slip
into the water when a volcano shakes
the oceanbed the great battleships
buried their bows in the sea, their sides
ripped apart with fame and smoke, the
thunder of their guns roared and beat
against the mountains, and from the
shore the Spanish forts roared back at
them, until the air between was split
and riven. The Spanish warships were
already scudding clouds of smoke,
pierced with flashes of red flame, and
as they fed fighting, their batteries
ratified with unceasing, feverish fury.
But the guns of the American ships,
straining in pursuit, answered steadily,
carefully, with relentless accuracy,
with cruel persistence. At regular in
tervals they doomed above the hurri-
cane of sound like great bells tolling
for the dead.
1t seemed to Charming that he had
lived through many years. That the
strain of the spectacle would leave its
mark upon his nerves forever. He had
been buffeted and beaten by a storm
of all the great emotions; pride of race
and country. pity for the dead, agony
for the dying, who chung TO blistering
armor- plates, or sank to suffocation in
the sea; the lust of the hunter, when
the hunted thing Is a fellowman; the
joys of danger and of excitement,
when the shells dashed the waves about
him, and the triumph of victory. final,
overwhelming and complete.
Four of the enemy's squadron had
struck their colors, two were on the
beach, broken and burning. two had
sunk to the bottom of the sea, two
were in abject fight. Three battle
ships were hammering them with thir-
teen-inch guns. The battle was won.
Its all over" Claiming said. His
tone questioned his own words.
The captain of the tugboat was star
ing at the face of his silver watch. as
though IT were a thing bewitched. He
was pale and painting. He looked at
Claiming piteously, as though he
doubted his own senses, and turned the
face of the watch toward him.
Twenty minutes" Claiming said.
Good God. Twenty minutes"
He had been to hell and back again
in twenty minutes. He had seen an
empire. which had begun with Christie
pher Columbus and which had spread
over two continents, wiped off the map
in twenty minutes.