Part 2 (1/2)

Key West, after the outbreak of war, had two chief centers of interest and excitement: first, the harbor, between Fort Taylor and the government wharf, where lay all the monitors, cruisers, and gunboats of the North Atlantic Squadron that were not actually engaged in sea service; and, second, the Key West Hotel, which was the headquarters of the war correspondents, as well as of naval officers a.s.signed to sh.o.r.e duty, and visitors on all sorts of business from the North. I found it hard to decide which of these two centers would offer better opportunities and facilities for observation and the acquirement of knowledge. If I stayed on board a vessel in the harbor, I should miss the life and activity of the city, the quick delivery of daily papers from the North, the news bulletins posted every few hours in the hotel, and all the stories of fight, peril, or adventure told on shady piazzas by officers and correspondents just back from the Cuban coast; while, on the other hand, if I established myself at the hotel, I could not see the bringing in of Spanish prizes from the Florida Strait, the arrival and departure of despatch-boats with news and orders, the play of the search-lights, the gun practice of the big war-s.h.i.+ps, the signaling, the saluting, and the movements generally of the fleet.

After having spent a week at the hotel, I decided to go on board the Red Cross steamer _State of Texas_, which was lying off the government wharf, nearly opposite the custom-house, and within one hundred yards of the two big monitors _Puritan_ and _Miantonomoh_. I made the change just in time to see, from the best possible point of vantage, the great event of the week--the arrival of the two powerful fleets commanded respectively by Admiral Sampson and Commodore Schley. Early Wednesday morning the graceful, black, schooner-rigged despatch-boat of the New York ”Sun” came racing into the harbor under full head of steam, followed closely by the ocean-going tug of the a.s.sociated Press and two or three fast yachts in the service of New York papers, all blowing their whistles vigorously to attract attention from the sh.o.r.e.

Something, evidently, had happened, and, looking seaward with a powerful gla.s.s, I had no difficulty in making out on the horizon, at a distance of eight or ten miles, the cruiser _Brooklyn_, the battle-s.h.i.+ps _Texas_ and _Ma.s.sachusetts_, and two or three smaller cruisers and gunboats of the United States navy. The Flying Squadron from Hampton Roads had arrived.

The harbor at once became a scene of rapid movement and intense activity. Steam-launches darted out from the piers carrying war correspondents to their respective despatch-boats, and naval officers to the monitors and the huge four-masted colliers; a long line of party-colored flags was displayed from the signal-halyards of the _Miantonomoh_; two or three fast sea-going tugs carrying the naval commandant and other harbor officers started seaward at full speed, with long plumes of black smoke trailing to leeward from their lead-colored stacks; and the eight hundred marines on the auxiliary cruiser _Panther_ swarmed on deck and crowded eagerly aft to gaze at the dim, distant outlines of the newly arrived vessels.

About the middle of the forenoon the swift, heavily armed gunboat _Scorpion_ entered the harbor flying the commodore's pennant, and was received with a salute of eleven guns from the monitor _Miantonomoh_.

The remainder of the day pa.s.sed without any other unusual or noteworthy incident, but sometime in the night the fleet of Admiral Sampson joined the Flying Squadron in the offing, and Thursday morning the people of Key West saw, in their harbor and at sea off Fort Taylor, the largest and most powerful fleet of war-vessels that had ever a.s.sembled, perhaps, under the American flag.

All day Thursday the harbor was the center of incessant movement, activity, and excitement. The lighter vessels of the Flying Squadron, which had come in to coal, rejoined the heavier cruisers and battle-s.h.i.+ps in the offing, and their places were taken by the big monitors _Amphitrite_ and _Terror_, the cruisers _Detroit_ and _Marblehead_, and the gunboats _Wilmington_, _Helena_, _Castine_, and _Machias_, which steamed in one after another from the fleet of Admiral Sampson. When all these vessels had anch.o.r.ed off Fort Taylor and the government wharf, there were in the harbor more than twenty s.h.i.+ps of war, including three torpedo-boats and four monitors; six or eight armed yachts of the mosquito fleet; twelve or fifteen big transports, troop-s.h.i.+ps, and colliers awaiting orders; twenty-two Spanish prizes of all sorts, from the big liner _Argonauta_ to the little brigantine _Frascito_; and, finally, a fleet of newspaper tugs, launches, and despatch-boats almost equal, numerically, to the fleets of Commodore Schley and Admiral Sampson taken together. The marine picture presented by the harbor with all these monitors, cruisers, gunboats, yachts, transports, troop-s.h.i.+ps, torpedo-boats, colliers, despatch-boats, and Spanish prizes lying at anchor, with flags and signals flying in the clear suns.h.i.+ne and on the translucent green water of the tropics, was a picture of more than ordinary interest and beauty, and one that Key West, perhaps, may never see again.

About two o'clock in the afternoon I was able, through the courtesy of Mr. Trumbull White in offering me the use of the Chicago ”Record's”

despatch-boat, to go off to the flags.h.i.+p _New York_ and present my letter of introduction from the President to Admiral Sampson. I was received most cordially and hospitably, and, after conferring with him for half an hour with regard to the plans and work of the Red Cross, so far as they depended upon or related to the navy, I returned to the _State of Texas_. The fleet sailed again at half-past ten o'clock that night for the coast of Cuba.

After the departure of the blockading fleet and the Flying Squadron on May 19 and 20, the small army of war correspondents at Key West had little to do except watch for the arrival of vessels with news from the Cuban coast. Most of them regarded this work--or rather absence of work--as tedious and irksome in the extreme; but if they had been living on board s.h.i.+p instead of at the hotel they would have found a never-failing source of interest and entertainment in the constantly changing picture presented by the harbor. Six or eight war-s.h.i.+ps, ranging in size and fighting power from monitors to torpedo-boats, were still lying at anchor off the custom-house and the Marine Hospital; transports with stores and munitions of war were discharging their cargoes at the piers; big four-masted schooners, laden with coal for the blockading fleet, swung back and forth with the ebbing and flowing tides as they awaited orders from the naval commandant; graceful steam-yachts, flying the flag of the a.s.sociated Press, were constantly coming in with news or going out in search of it; swift naphtha-launches carrying naval officers in white uniforms darted hither and thither from one cruiser to another, whistling shrill warnings to the slower boats pulled by sailors from the transports; officers on the monitors were exchanging ”wigwag”

flag-signals with other officers on the gunboats or the troop-s.h.i.+ps; and from every direction came shouts, bugle-calls, the shrieks of steam-whistles, the peculiar jarring rattle of machine-guns at target practice, and the measured beats of twenty or thirty s.h.i.+ps' bells, striking, at different distances, but almost synchronously, the half-hours.

Interesting, however, as Key West harbor might seem in the daytime, it was far more beautiful and impressive at night. One clear, still evening late in May, when the rosy flush of the short tropical twilight had faded, and the Sand Key beacon began to glow faintly, like a setting planet, on the darkening horizon in the west, I went up on the hurricane-deck alone and looked about the harbor. The city, the war-s.h.i.+ps, and the ma.s.sive square outlines of Fort Taylor had all vanished in the gathering darkness and gloom, but in their places were rows, cl.u.s.ters, and constellations innumerable of steadily burning lights. A long, slender shaft of bluish radiance streamed out from the corner of Fort Taylor, widening as it extended seaward, until it struck and illuminated with a sort of ghostly phosph.o.r.escence the whitish hull of a gunboat stealing noiselessly into the harbor from the direction of the Cuban coast. The strange craft hung out a perpendicular string of red and white lights, which winked solemnly once or twice, changed color two or three times, and then vanished. A second search-light from the monitor _Miantonomoh_ sent another slender electric ray of inquiry in the direction of the intruder, as if still doubtful of its character; but when the straight blue sword of the Fort Taylor search-light rose to the clouds and fell to the water three times, as if striking a whole league of ocean three successive and measured blows, the _Miantonomoh_ understood that all was well, and her own search-light left the gunboat and swept across the starry sky overhead like the tail of a huge blue comet swinging at its perigee around a darkened sun.

In a moment the monitor itself hung out a string of lights which winked, changed color, vanished, reappeared, and again vanished, leaving only a red light at the masthead. In a moment an answering signal-rocket was thrown up by an invisible war-s.h.i.+p in the direction of Fort Taylor, and instantly two powerful search-lights were focused upon a pale, whitish object, far out at sea, which looked in the bluish, ghostly glare like the mainsail of the _Flying Dutchman_. Before I had time to form a conjecture as to the significance of these mysterious signals and apparitions, I was startled by a sudden flash and the thunder of a heavy gun from the darkness ahead; and away out at sea, in the strip of green water illuminated by the search-lights, a heavy projectile plunged into the ocean, near the sail of the _Flying Dutchman_, and sent a column of white spray thirty feet into the air. Then I understood what it all meant. The _Wilmington_, was engaged in night gun practice. For half an hour or more the war-s.h.i.+p threw solid shot and explosive sh.e.l.ls into that illuminated strip of green water, and the thunder of her cannon, which could be heard all over the island, suggested to the startled negro and Cuban population that the Spanish fleet had arrived and was bombarding the city. Then the _Miantonomoh_ hung out another string of colored lanterns, the uproar ceased, and the pallid, ghostly canvas of the _Flying Dutchman_ suddenly vanished as the search-lights left it and resumed their slow, sweeping exploration of the harbor, the channel, and the open sea.

CHAPTER IV

WAR CORRESPONDENTS AND DESPATCH-BOATS

Few things impressed me more forcibly, in the course of my two weeks'

stay at Key West, than the costly, far-sighted, and far-reaching preparations made by the great newspapers of the country to report the war. There were in the city of Tampa, at the time of my arrival, nearly one hundred war correspondents, who represented papers in all parts of the United States, from New England to the Pacific coast, and who were all expecting to go to Cuba with the army of invasion. Nearly every one of the leading metropolitan journals had in Tampa and Key West a staff of six or eight of its best men under the direction of a war-correspondent-in-chief, while the a.s.sociated Press was represented by a dozen or more reporters in Cuban waters, as well as by correspondents in Havana, Key West, Tampa, Kingston, St. Thomas, Port-au-Prince, and on the flags.h.i.+ps of Admiral Sampson and Commodore Schley. Every invention and device of applied science was brought into requisition to facilitate the work of the reporters and to enable them to get their work quickly to their home offices. The New York ”Herald,”

for example, paid fifty dollars an hour for a special leased wire between New York and Key West, and set up, in the latter place and in Tampa, newly invented, long-distance phototelegraph instruments, by means of which its artist in the field could transmit a finished picture to the home office every twenty minutes.

In their efforts to get full and accurate news of every event at the earliest possible moment, the war correspondents shrank from neither hards.h.i.+p nor danger. A week or two before my arrival in Key West, for example, Mr. Scovel, one of the most daring and enterprising of the war correspondents, landed from a despatch-boat on the coast of Cuba in the night, with the intention of making his way to the camp of General Gomez. As he had not had a previous understanding with the latter, no arrangements had been made to meet him, he could get no horses, and, with only two or three companions, he walked eighty miles through tropical forests and swamps, dodging Spanish sentinels and guerrillas, living wholly upon plantains and roots, and sleeping most of the time out of doors in a hammock slung between two trees. He finally succeeded in obtaining horses, reached the insurgent camp, had an interview with General Gomez, rode back to the coast at a point previously agreed upon, signaled to his despatch-boat, was taken on board, and returned safely to Key West after an absence of two weeks, in the course of which he had not once tasted bread nor slept in a bed.

Upon the record of such an achievement as this most men would have been satisfied, for a time, to rest; but Mr. Scovel, with untiring energy, went from Key West to the coast of Cuba and back three times in the next seven days. On the last of these expeditions he joined a landing force carrying arms and ammunition to the insurgents, partic.i.p.ated in a hot skirmish with the Spanish troops, wrote an account of the adventure that same night while at sea in a small, tossing boat on his way back to Key West, and filed six thousand words in the Key West cable-station at two o'clock in the morning.

I speak of this particular case of journalistic enterprise, not because it is especially noteworthy or exceptional, but because it ill.u.s.trates the endurance and the capacity for sustained toil in unfavorable circ.u.mstances, which are quite as characteristic of the modern war correspondent as are his courage and his alert readiness for any emergency or any opportunity.

Owing to the distance of the seat of war from the American coast and the absence of telegraphic communication between Cuba and the mainland, newspapers that made any serious attempt to get quick and exclusive information from the front had not only to send correspondents into the field, but to furnish them with means of moving rapidly from place to place and of forwarding their despatches promptly to an American telegraph office or a West Indian cable-station. Every prominent New York paper, therefore, had at least one despatch-boat for the use of its correspondents, several of them had two or three, and the a.s.sociated Press employed four. These boats were either powerful sea-going tugs like the _Hercules_ and the _Premier_, or swift steam-yachts of the cla.s.s represented by the _Wanda_, the _Kanapaha_, and the _Bucaneer_.

Exactly how many of them there were in West Indian waters I have been unable to ascertain; but I should say not less than fifteen or twenty, with almost an equal number of naphtha-and steam-launches for harbor and smooth-water work. In these despatch-boats the war correspondents went back and forth between Key West and Cuba; watched the operations of the blockading fleet off Havana, Matanzas, or Cardenas; cruised along a coast-line nearly a thousand miles in extent, and, if necessary, went with Admiral Sampson's squadron to a point of attack as remote as Santiago de Cuba or San Juan de Porto Rico. Whenever anything of importance happened in any part of this wide area, they were expected to be on the spot to observe it, and then to get the earliest news of it to the nearest cable-station--whether that station were Kingston, Cape Haitien, St. Thomas, Port-au-Prince, or Key West. All of the newspaper despatch-boats were small, many of them had very limited coal-carrying capacity, and some were nothing but sea-going tugs, with hardly any comforts or conveniences, and with no suitable accommodations for pa.s.sengers. The correspondents who used these boats were, therefore, compelled to live a rough-and-tumble life, sometimes sleeping in their clothes on benches or on the floor in a small, stuffy cabin, and always suffering the hards.h.i.+ps and privations necessarily involved in a long cruise on a small vessel in a tropical climate and on a turbulent sea.

The Florida Strait between Key West and the north Cuban coast is as uncomfortable a piece of water to cruise on as can be found in the tropics. It is the place where the swiftly running Gulf Stream meets the fresh northeast trade-winds; and in the conflict between these opposing terrestrial forces there is raised a high and at the same time short, choppy, and irregular sea, on which small vessels toss, roll, and pitch about like corks in a boiling caldron. I was told by some of the correspondents who had cruised in these waters that often, for days at a time, it was almost impossible to get any really refres.h.i.+ng rest or sleep. The large and heavy war-s.h.i.+ps of the blockading fleet rode this sea, of course, with comparatively little motion; but it is reported that even Captain Sigsbee was threatened with seasickness while crossing the strait between Havana and Key West in a small boat.

Discomfort, however, was perhaps the least of the war correspondent's troubles. He expected discomfort, and accepted it philosophically; but to it was added constant and hara.s.sing anxiety. As he could not predict or antic.i.p.ate the movements of the war-s.h.i.+ps, and had no clue to the plans and intentions of their commanding officer, he was compelled to stay constantly with the fleet, night and day, in order to be on the scene of action when action should come. This part of his duty was not only difficult, but often extremely hazardous. As soon as night fell, every light on the war-s.h.i.+ps was extinguished, and they cruised or drifted about until daybreak in silence and in darkness. Owing to their color, it was almost impossible to follow them, or even to see them at a distance of a mile, and the correspondent on the despatch-boat was liable either to lose them altogether if he kept too far away, or be fired upon if he came too near.

On my visit to the flags.h.i.+p _New York_ I was accompanied by Mr.

Chamberlain, one of the war correspondents of the Chicago ”Record.” Just before we went over the side of the s.h.i.+p on our return to the ”Record's”