The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1914-09-17

ANAb AAOhA OOotAnS OA laOOs III IL
would invariably rain every night.
and you would be surprised to see
how person could sleep in the rain;
but fatigue will cause US to enjoy
sleep under the most trying circum-
stances.
After week or two of this duty
we were out of fresh provisions. and
we had to subsist on Egans" fam
GUS embalmed beef, and hard tack,
as we were soon out of flour for
bread. When | look back on those
days | often wonder how we man
aged to exist on the rations we had
at that time. To give you an idea
of the scarcity of the luxuries of life,
| will give you little instance.
Many of the men smoked cigarettes.
and soon run out of the supply they
had laid in store, but there was one
or two men who had laid IN large a
mounts to speculate on, and l have
seen cigarettes sold for 81 each. A
man could not afford to smoke many
of them in month at that rate. the
only thing we seemed to have a sur
plus of was money and no way to
spend it, unless you enjoyed game
of draw, or that facinating little
game called craps"
Just at dusk, on the evening of
June lst, one of the Spanish torpedo
boats tried to escape, and we were
the closest in shore, for we were on
the extreme right of the line of
blockade: we spied her making her
getaway. The general alarm was
sounded, and we opened fire on her,
but there was an auxiliary crusier in
the fleet manned by naval reserves.
she was the Prairie" who crossed
our bow and got into the line of fire
and so made it possible for the tor
pedo boat to escape. and though we
backed away from the Prairie"
even with the aid of our searchlight
we were not able to locate Mr.. Span
lard again. Admiral Sampson was
with the fleet then and was in su-
preme command. He signaled us
and wanted to know what we were
firing at, we told him, and he seemed
skeptical but the following day one
of the crew spied some bright object
floating not far from us. We low
cred boat and went to investigate.
and found it to lie a white head"
torpedo of German make, such as
the Spanish used. When we made
known to Sampson our find, he was
then profuse with his compliments
and thanked us for our vigilance
The Spaniard had escaped though
we succeeded in putting one shell
through her after engine room and
thereby disabling one of her engines.
The proof of the escape l shall
later point out and prove conclus-
lively, but | have never seen this in
history for the simple reason that
some one had blundered, namely
the Skipper of the Prairie. After
tins escape Sampson redoubled his
vigilence at night and had either the
Texas or the Indiana" play their
searchlight on the mouth of the har-
Dor from darkness till dawn, and be-
sides this as a -precaution several
steam launches would be put in a
semlcircle within the line of ships
and closer to shore. AS l was the
engineer of our steam launch, l did
duty every night, tossed about on
the briny deep. and believe me it
was some job. In charge of our
launch was an Ensign by the name
of Nelson. and he certainly was an
ambitious person, on the night of
June 9th, he proposed to me that
he and l should swim ashore. and
try and locate any hidden batteries.
AS / am strong swimmer, his plan.
with it's possible chance of excite
ment appealed to me, so it was ar
ranged that the launch should lay
as close in shore as possible, that is,
that it was not to get close enough
to run the chance of being dashed
to pieces on the rocks by the surf.
Leaving as much of our clothing
aboard the launch as seemed feasible
we took two colt revolvers each and
dove overheard. By the noise of the
breakers ashore we knew that there
was rocks there. so we were as eau
tious as possible in making our land
ing, but even at that we were so
handicapped by darkness that we
both received many bruises on our
knees and feet. After doing con-
siderable reconnoitering we were
finally rewarded by finding a sand
battery, which was masked by brush
but the Spaniards were not asleep
either as we soon found ont for