"We're going over to one of the transport-ships meanwhile," he added, "and will await the arrival of the squadron out there."

While Lieutenant Spencer was climbing down the narrow staircase, Lieutenant Wood once more examined the horizon and suddenly started. The thunder of a shot boomed across the water. Boom--came the sound of another one!

The lieutenant clapped his marine-gla.s.ses to his eyes. Yes, there were two _Dreadnoughts_ out there, evidently saluting. But why at such a distance?

"Gibson," he called down the staircase.

"Come on, Ben!" came the impatient answer from below.

"I can't, I wish you'd come up again for a minute, I'm sure something's wrong!"

The gun-shots were booming loudly across the water as Lieutenant Spencer reached the gallery, covered with perspiration.

"I suppose they're saluting," exclaimed Spencer somewhat uncertainly.

Ben Wood said nothing, but with a quick jerk turned the telescope to the right and began examining the transport-ships.

"Heavens," he shouted, "they mean business. I can see sh.e.l.ls splashing into the water in front of the _Olympia_--no, there in the middle--away back there, too-- One of the transports listed. What can it mean? Can they be j.a.panese?"

Again the roar of guns rolled across the quiet waters.

"Now the _Olympia_ is beginning to shoot," cried Ben Wood. "Oh, that shot struck the turret. Great, that must have done some good work! But what in Heaven's name are we going to do?"

Lieutenant Spencer answered by pushing the light-house keeper, who was in abject fear, aside, and rushing to the telephone. Trembling with excitement, he stamped his foot and swore loudly when no notice was taken of his ring.

"All asleep over there as usual! Ah, at last!"

"Halloo! what's up?"

"This is the light-house. Notify the commander at Corpus Christi at once that the j.a.panese are in the roads and are attacking the transports."

Over in Corpus Christi people began to collect on the piers, the bells stopped ringing, but the sound of bugles could still be heard coming from the encampments.

Now the light-house telephone rang madly and Spencer seized the receiver. "They are, I tell you. Can't you hear the shots?" he shouted into the instrument. "There are two large j.a.panese ships out in the roads shooting at the _Olympia_ and the transports. Impossible or not, it's a fact!"

Suddenly a thick column of smoke began to ascend from the funnel of the little American gunboat _Marietta_, which was lying among the transports out in the roads. The whistles and bugle-calls could be heard distinctly, and the crew could be seen on deck busy at the guns. The steam-winch rattled and began to haul up the anchor, while the water whirled at the stern as the vessel made a turn. Even before the anchor appeared at the surface the gunboat had put to sea with her course set towards the ships on the horizon, which were enveloped in clouds of black smoke.

"There's nothing for us to do," said Spencer despairingly, "but stand here helplessly and look on. There isn't a single torpedo-boat, not a single submarine here! For Heaven's sake, Ben, tell us what's happening out there!"

"It's awful!" answered Wood; "two of the transport-ships are in flames, two seem to have been sunk, and some of those further back have listed badly. The _Olympia_ is heading straight for the enemy, but she seems to be damaged and is burning aft. There are two more cruisers in the background, but they are hidden by the smoke from the burning steamers; I can't see them any more."

"Where on earth have the j.a.panese ships come from? I thought their whole fleet was stationed in the Pacific. Not one of their ships has ever come around Cape Horn or through the Straits of Magellan; if they had, our cruisers off the Argentine coast would have seen them. And besides it would be utter madness to send just two battleships to the Atlantic. But where else can they have come from?"

"There's no use asking where they come from," cried Wood excitedly, "the chief point is, they're there!"

He gave up his place at the telescope to his comrade, thought for a moment, and then went to the telephone.

His orders into town were short and decisive: "Send all the tugs out to sea immediately. Have them hoist the ambulance-flag and try to rescue the men of the transports."

"And you, Spencer," he continued, "take the cutter and hurry over to the transport-steamers in the roads and have them hoist the Red Cross flag and get to sea as quickly as possible to help in the work of rescue.

That's the only thing left for us to do. I'll take command of the _President Cleveland_ and you take charge of the Swedish steamer _Olsen_. And now let's get to work! Signor Alvares can play the role of idle onlooker better than we can. Our place is out there!"

Both officers rushed down the stairs and jumped into the cutter, which steamed off at full speed and took them to their ships.

Three-quarters of an hour later the tug mentioned in the beginning of the chapter appeared again at the entrance to the lagoon. Several men could be seen in the stern holding a large white sheet upon which a man was painting a large red cross, and when the symbol of human love and a.s.sistance was finished, the sheet was hoisted at the flagstaff. Two other tugs followed the example of the first one.

But could the enemy have taken the three little tugs for torpedo-boats?

It seemed so, for suddenly a sh.e.l.l, which touched the surface of the water twice, whizzed past and hit the first steamer amidships just below the funnel. And while the little vessel was still enveloped by the black smoke caused by the bursting of the sh.e.l.l, her bow and stern rose high out of the water and she sank immediately, torn in two. The thunder of the shot sounded far over the water and found an echo among the houses at Corpus Christi.

"Now they're even shooting at the ambulance flag," roared Ben Wood, who was rushing about on the deck of the _President Cleveland_ and exhorting the crew to hoist the anchor as fast as possible so as to get out to the field of battle. But as the boiler-fires were low, this seemed to take an eternity.

At last, about three o'clock in the afternoon, they succeeded in reaching a spot where a few hundred men were clinging to the floating wreckage. The rest had been attended to by the enemy's shots, the sea and the sharks.

The enemy had wasted only a few shots on the transport-steamers, as a single well-aimed explosive sh.e.l.l was quite sufficient to entirely destroy one of the merchant-vessels, and the battle with the _Olympia_ had lasted only a very short time, as the distance had evidently been too great to enable the American shots to reach the enemy. That was the end of the _Olympia_, Admiral Dewey's flag-ship at Cavite! The two smaller cruisers had been shot to pieces just as rapidly.

The results of this unexpected setback were terribly disheartening, since all idea of a flank attack on the j.a.panese positions in the South had to be abandoned.

But where had the two _Dreadnoughts_ come from? They had not been seen by a living soul until they had appeared in the roads of Corpus Christi.

They had risen from the sea for a few hours, like an incarnation of the ghostly rumors of flying squadrons of j.a.panese cruisers, and they had disappeared from the field of action just as suddenly as they had come.

If it had not been for the cruel reality of the destruction of the transport fleet, no one would soon have believed in the existence of these phantom ships. But the frenzied fear of the inhabitants of the coast-towns cannot well take the form of iron and steel, and nightmares, no matter how vivid, cannot produce ships whose sh.e.l.ls sweep an American squadron off the face of the sea.

It had been known for years that two monster ships of the _Dreadnought_ type were being built for Brazil in the English shipyards. No one knew where Brazil was going to get the money to pay for the battleships or what the Brazilian fleet wanted with such huge ships, but they continued to be built. It was generally supposed that England was building them as a sort of reserve for her own fleet; but once again was public opinion mistaken. Only those who years before had raised a warning protest and been ridiculed for seeing ghosts, proved to be right. They had prophesied long ago that these ships were not intended for England, but for her ally, j.a.pan.

The vessels were finished by the end of June and during the last days of the month the Brazilian flag was openly hoisted on board the _San Paulo_ and _Minas Geraes_, as they were called, the English shipbuilders having indignantly refused to sell them to the United States on the plea of feeling bound to observe strict neutrality. The two armored battleships started on their voyage across the Atlantic with Brazilian crews on board; but when they arrived at a spot in the wide ocean where no spectators were to be feared, they were met by six transport-steamers conveying the j.a.panese crews for the two warships, no others than the thousand j.a.ps who had been landed at Rio de Janeiro as coolies for the Brazilian coffee plantations in the summer of 1908. They had been followed in November by four hundred more.

We were greatly puzzled at the time over this striking exception to the j.a.panese political programme of concentrating streams of immigrants on our Pacific coasts. Without a word of warning a thousand j.a.panese coolies were shipped to Brazil, where they accepted starvation wages greatly to the disgust and indignation of the German and Italian workmen--not to speak of the lazy Brazilians themselves. This isolated advance of the j.a.ps into Brazil struck observers as a dissipation of energy, but the Government in Tokio continued to carry out its plans, undisturbed by our expressions of astonishment. Silently, but no less surely, the diligent hands of the coolies and the industrious spirit of j.a.panese merchants in Brazil created funds with which the two warships were paid at least in part. The public interpreted it as an act of commendable patriotism when, in June, the one thousand four hundred j.a.ps turned their backs on their new home, in order to defend their country's flag. They left Rio in six transport-steamers.

Brazil thereupon sold her two battleships to a Greek inn-keeper at Santos, named Petrokakos, and he turned them over to the merchant Pietro Alvares Cortes di Mendoza at Bahia. This n.o.ble Don was on board one of the transport-steamers with the j.a.panese "volunteers," and on board this Glasgow steamer, the _Kirkwall_, the bill of sale was signed on July 14th, by the terms of which the "armed steamers" _Kure_ and _Sasebo_ pa.s.sed into the possession of j.a.pan. The Brazilian crews and some English engineers went on board the transports and were landed quietly two weeks later at various Brazilian ports.

These one thousand four hundred j.a.panese plantation-laborers, traders, artisans, and engineers--in reality they were trained men belonging to the naval reserve--at once took over the management of the two mighty ships, and set out immediately in the direction of the West Indies. At Kingston (Jamaica) a friendly steamer supplied them with the latest news of the departure of the American transports from Cuba, and the latter met their fate, as we saw, in the roads of Corpus Christi.

A terrible panic seized all our cities on the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast, as the j.a.panese monsters were heard from, now here, now there. For example, several sh.e.l.ls exploded suddenly in the middle of the night in the harbor of Galveston when not a warship had been observed in the neighborhood, and again several American merchant-vessels were sent to the bottom by the mysterious ships, which began constantly to a.s.sume more gigantic proportions in the reports of the sailors. At last a squadron was dispatched from Newport News to seek and destroy the enemy, whereupon the phantom-ships disappeared as suddenly as they had come. Not until Admiral Dayton ferreted out the j.a.panese cruisers at the Falkland Islands did our sailors again set eyes on the two battleships.

_Chapter XVIII_

THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE MOUNTAINS

It had been found expedient to send a few militia regiments to the front in May, and these regiments, together with what still remained of our regular army, made a brave stand against the j.a.panese outposts in the mountains. Insufficiently trained and poorly fed as they were, they nevertheless accomplished some excellent work under the guidance of efficient officers; but the continual engagements with the enemy soon thinned their ranks. These regiments got to know what it means to face a brave, trained enemy of over half a million soldiers with a small force of fifty thousand; they learned what it means to be always in the minority on the field of battle, and thus constant experience on the battle-field soon transformed these men into splendid soldiers.

Especially the rough-riders from the prairies and the mountains, from which the cavalry regiments were largely recruited, and the exceedingly useful Indian and half-breed scouts, to whom all the tricks of earlier days seemed to return instinctively, kept the j.a.panese outposts busy.

Their machine-guns, which were conveyed from place to place on the backs of horses, proved a very handy weapon. But their numbers were few, and although this sort of skirmishing might tire the enemy, it could not effectually break up his strong positions.

Ever on the track of the enemy, surprising their sentries and bivouacs, rushing upon the unsuspecting j.a.ps like a whirlwind and then pursuing them across scorching plains and through the dark, rocky defiles of the Rockies, always avoiding large detachments and attacking their commissariat and ammunition columns from the rear, popping up here, there and everywhere on their indefatigable horses and disappearing with the speed of lightning, this is how those weather-beaten rough-riders in their torn uniforms kept up the war and stood faithful guard! Brave fellows they were, ever ready to push on vigorously, even when the blood from their torn feet dyed the rocks a deep red! No matter how weary they were, the sound of the bugle never failed to endow their limbs with renewed energy, and they could be depended on to the last man to do whatever was required of them.