The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-11-08

all they could do was to try to buck the storm, hove to, and pray that their engines would hold together. By this time the patriots were chatterin like a flock of parokeets, feebly waving arems and trying to find their rifles and machetes.
 Morales said: We are up against 1t for fair, my beloved Martinez Coe, I will bet you the best box of cigars in Rio de Contas when we have captured it, you and me, that this vessel is the little cruiser Emelio Sanchez, which is good for eighteen knots. She was built for river service, wherefore she has three f1ghting-tops on each mast for shootin over the banks. She has a good battery, too, some four-inch guns. She will make us look like 30 cents, think"
 By noon the wind was falling and the sea was not quite So heavy. But we were taking in water so fast that the pumps had all they could do to keep the fire room from being flooded out
 Thinks I, i've can't run away, and 1t looks as if we'd have to fight" I sent Morales to try and get his gun crew for'ard, if they wasn't too sick or washed overheard. It looked bad to me but the lad who was ready to wade through two thousand troops to get his arm around his sweetheart wasn't go- ing to be downhearted over a proposi- tion like this,
 I found three men who could walk, and hauled them on hands and knees to the stern, where my old twelve pounder was shining between the seas that most buried her.
 Morales grabbed three or four other tarriers by the back of the neck and cuffed them for'ard to man the other gun. We got ready not a minute too soon, We were hanging on, half un- der water, just rammin' a shell into the brech of my gun, when I heard a dull "boong," and in minute some thing cried in the air overhead and splashed off to starboard.
 Her officers knew our old tug all right, and they had opened the ball.. Before I could make ready to fire, crash! and the old tug shivered as if she had hit a reef, and crawled to the rail to see past the deckhouse, and there was Morales waving his hand to me, and hangin' on to. the breech of his twelve-pounder. He had cut loose ahead of me. It was gun practice fit for crazy house, you can guess, with both vessels pretty near rolling their tunnels under, but it struck us as mighty serious and absorbing business.
 The cruisers shells were wailing and whizzing around us, but the only damage so far was her knockin' a cou- pie of feet off the top of our funnel, which didn't do our draught any good. Meanwhile Morales landed a shell so close astern of the cruiser that I thought he must ha' taken the stern- post out of her I yelled to him to keep it up and he waved his hand and got busy again.
 An, but he was the picture of a brave and handsome lad as he stood there over the gun. the water washin' around his knees, his black hair flying into the wind. I was 6on my way to him when his finish happened "Bang!" went our bow gun, and l turned to fol- low the shot Holy mothmer! My heart leaped and yelled like a lunatic.
 A cloud of steam burst out of the cruisers ports and gushed over her deck amidships. Then she began to fall off in a trough of the sea, helpless, with a shell in her boiler room. a blind man could sec that, Morales had plug ged her below the water line as she rolled, miracle of shot, and hust- led for ard as fast as I could crawl to tell him what thought of him and his gunnery,
 I was passin' the engine room door wide open. I chinned myself up to the cabin roof and saw that the last shell from the cripled cruiser Salgada had made hash of our wheelhouse, tore it all to bits, with a sharpnel charge. The mate, who had been at the wheel, was doubled dead over a skylight, and pret- ty near half of him was gone. We be- gan to fall off into the sea. and be- fore any purchase could be rigged to the tiller chains we were rollin' our keel out of water.
 I tried to get f1r'ard to warn Nor ales but I was too late. I saw him astraddle of his smoking twelve-p pound CT, shakin' his fist at the cruiser he had disabled I could hear him cheer, and I caught the words:
 "Vive Sa1gada Siempre!"
 I shouted and waved my arms, but he was too proud and excited to heed me. Then behind him I saw a great brute of a sea bearing down on the wa ter logged tug, roarin like an expresss train. She couldn't rise to meet it, and it caught her cruel. It tumbled on her for'ard, and I thought she was going to roll clean over, bottom up.
 Just before it caught me I got one last look at my pal, Perez Morales, as the sea picked him up and tore the twelve p1under loose from its lashings, and they went over together, just blot ted out. Then was washed aft against the towing bitts and fetched up in the scruppers with a busted leg. Some of the men on deck said after ward that they saw him once astern of us, and that he waved his hand and smiled at them. But I don't know. There was no gettin' boat out for We hadn't a boat left.
 But I can always see him just that way, bright and joyous. in the moment of his victory, snatohed from us into whatever hereafter is for those that give their lives for others.
 He had saved us all, and 8 god deal more than that. The Salgada cruiser was reeling and drifting farther and farther astern and the seas were ham mering her to pieces. We made repairs