Chapter 18

"Well, yes, on the twenty-sixth. But some of those transport-ships palmed off on us are the limit and can't even make ten knots an hour. Their rickety engines set the pace for the fleet, and unless the _Olympia_ wishes to abandon the shaky old hulks to their fate, she must keep step with them."

Lieutenant Gibson Spencer swept the horizon once more with his marine-glass and stopped searchingly at one spot. "If that's not the _Flying Dutchman_, they're ships," he remarked, "probably our ships."

The light-house keeper, a slender Mexican, came on the gallery, saying: "Ships are coming over there, sir," as he pointed in the direction which Spencer had indicated. Lieutenant Ben Wood stepped to the stationary telescope in the light-room below the place for the lamps, and started to adjust the screws, but the heat of the metal, which had become red-hot beneath the burning rays of the sun, made him start: "Hot hole," he swore under his breath.

Lieutenant Spencer conversed a moment with the keeper and then looked again through his glass at Corpus Christi, where the tug was just making fast to the pier. The third barge knocked violently against the piles, so that a whole shower of splinters fell into the water.

"Gibson," cried Lieutenant Wood suddenly from his place in the light-room, his voice sounding muffled on account of the small space, "those are not our ships."

Spencer looked through the telescope and arrived at the same conclusion. "No," he said; "we have no ships like that, but they're coming nearer and we'll soon be able to make out what they are!"

"Those ships certainly don't belong to our fleet," he repeated after another long look at the vessels slowly growing larger on the horizon. They had two enormous funnels and only one mast and even the arched roofs of their turrets could now be clearly distinguished.

"If I didn't know that our English friends owned the only ships of that caliber, and that our own are unhappily still in process of equipment at Newport News, I should say that those were two _Dreadnoughts_."

"I guess you've had a sunstroke," rang out the answer.

"Sunstroke or no sunstroke, those are two _Dreadnoughts_."

"But where can they come from?"

The three men examined the horizon in silence, till Lieutenant Wood suddenly broke it by exclaiming: "There, do you see, to the left, just appearing on the horizon, that's our transport fleet--eight--ten ships; the one in front is probably the _Olympia_."

"Twelve ships," counted the keeper, "and if I may be allowed to say so, the two in front are battleships."

"There they are then," said Ben Wood, "and now we'll get something to eat in a jiffy, for we'll have our work cut out for us in an hour!"

"Where shall we eat?" asked Spencer, "I'll gladly dispense with the grub at Signor Morrosini's to-day."

"I'll tell you what," said the other, "we'll go across to one of the transport-steamers; or, better still, we'll go to the captain of the _Marietta_--we'll be sure to get something decent to eat there."

"Right you are!" said Spencer, peering down over the edge of the railing. "Our cutter is down there," he added.

At the foot of the light-house lay a small, white cutter with its brass appointments glittering in the sunlight. Her crew, consisting of three men, had crept into the little cabin, while the black stoker was resting on a bench near the boiler.

"Ho, Dodge!" shouted Spencer, "get up steam. We're going over to the transport-ships in ten minutes."

The firemen threw several shovels of coal into the furnace, whereupon a cloud of smoke poured out of the funnel straight up along the light-house. Lieutenant Wood telephoned over to Corpus Christi that the transports with the troops on board had been sighted and that they would probably arrive in the roads in about two hours.

"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-glasses 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 shells 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 Japanese?"

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 Japanese 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 Japanese 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 Japanese 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 rôle 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 assistance 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 shell, 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 shell, 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 shell 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 Japanese 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 Japanese 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 shells 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, Japan.

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 Japanese crews for the two warships, no others than the thousand Japs 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 Japanese political programme of concentrating streams of immigrants on our Pacific coasts. Without a word of warning a thousand Japanese 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 Japs 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 Japanese 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 Japs 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 noble Don was on board one of the transport-steamers with the Japanese "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_ passed into the possession of Japan. 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 Japanese 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 Japanese monsters were heard from, now here, now there. For example, several shells 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 assume 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 Japanese 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 Japanese 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 Japanese 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 Japs 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.

It was on these endless marches, these reckless rides through rocky wastes and silent forests--to the accompaniment of the tramp of horses, the creaking of saddles and the rush and roar of rolling stones on lonely mountain-trails--that those strange, weird rhythms and melodies arose, which lived on long afterwards in the minds and hearts of the people.

By the end of July affairs had reached the stage where it was possible for the Northern army, commanded by General MacArthur and consisting of one hundred and ten thousand men, to start for the Blue Mountains in the eastern part of Oregon, and the Pacific army of almost equal strength to set out for Granger on the Union Pacific Railway. The troops from Cuba and Florida, together with the three brigades stationed at New Mexico, were to have advanced against the extreme right wing of the Japanese army, but the grievous disaster at Corpus Christi had completely frustrated this plan.

The German and Irish volunteer regiments were formed into special brigades in the Northern and Pacific armies, whereas the other militia and volunteer regiments were attached to the various divisions promiscuously. General MacArthur's corps was composed of three divisions, commanded by Fowler, Longworth and Wood, respectively, each consisting of thirty thousand men. To these must be added one German and one Irish brigade of three regiments each, about sixteen thousand men altogether, so that the Northern army numbered about one hundred and ten thousand men and one hundred and forty guns.

Wood's division left the encampment near Omaha the last week of July. They went by rail to Monida, where the Oregon Short Line crosses the boundary of Montana and Idaho. The same picture of utter confusion was presented at all the stops and all the stations on the way. Soldiers of all arms, exasperated staff-officers, excited station officials, guns waiting for their horses and horses waiting for their guns, cavalry-men whose horses had been sent on the wrong train, freight-cars full of ammunition intended for no one knew whom, wagons loaded with camp equipment where food was wanted and with canned goods where forage was needed, long military trains blocking the line between stations, and engines being switched about aimlessly: perfect chaos reigned, and the shortness of the station platforms only added to the confusion and the waste of precious time. If it had not been for the Americans' strongly developed sense of humor, which served as an antidote for all the anger and worry, this execrably handled army apparatus must have broken down altogether. But as it was, everybody made the best of the situation and thanked the Lord that each revolution of the wheels brought the troops nearer to the enemy. The worst of it was that the trains had to stop at the stations time and time again in order to allow the empty trains returning from the front to pass.

The 28th Regiment of Wisconsin Volunteers, under command of Colonel Katterfeld, had at last, after what seemed to both officers and soldiers an endless journey, reached the foothills of the Rocky Mountains on the twenty-second of July via the Northern Pacific Railway. A warm meal had been prepared for the regiment at a little station; then the roll was called once more and the three long trains transporting the regiment started off again.

Colonel Katterfeld had soon won the affection of his men. He was a thin little man with grizzly hair and beard; a soldier of fortune, who had an eventful life behind him, having seen war on three continents. But he never spoke of his experiences. His commands were short and decisive, and each man felt instinctively that he was facing an able officer. He had given up his practice as a physician in Milwaukee, and when, at the outbreak of the war, he had offered his services to the Governor of Wisconsin, the latter was at once convinced that here was a man upon whom he could rely, and it had not taken Colonel Katterfeld long to establish the correctness of the Governor's judgment. He succeeded in being the first to raise the full complement of men for his regiment in Wisconsin, and was therefore the first to leave for the front. The rush for officers' commissions was tremendous and the staff of officers was therefore excellent. One day an officer, named Walter Lange, presented himself at the recruiting office of the regiment. When the colonel heard the name, he glanced up from his writing, and looking inquiringly at the newcomer, asked in an off-hand fashion: "Will you take command of the Seventh Company as captain?"

"Sir?"

"Yes, I know, you were at Elandslaagte and afterwards at Cronstadt, were you not?"

"Yes, sir."

"We need some officers like you who can keep their men together when under fire. Do you accept or not?"

"Certainly, but----"

"We'll have no buts."

And so the two became war-comrades for the second time, Captain Lange taking command of the Seventh Company.

In thousands of ways the colonel gave proof of his practical experience; above all else he possessed the knack of putting the right people in the right place, and his just praise and blame aroused the ambition of officers and men to such an extent, that the 28th Militia Regiment soon became conspicuous for its excellence. But no one, not even his comrade from Elandslaagte, succeeded in getting nearer to the colonel's heart. Colonel Katterfeld was a reticent man, whom no one dared bother with questions.

In order to make the best possible use of what little room there was in the cars, the colonel had ordered two-hour watches to be kept. Half the men slept on the seats and on blankets on the floor, while the other half had to stand until the order, Relieve watch! rang out at the end of two hours.