“Senor Polo stepped back into the hall and started to read the ultimatum carefully.  But he stopped and turned his head toward the door.”

“‘This is indeed Jeffersonian simplicity,’ he said.”

“‘Eddie’ Savoy felt very badly over the incident, because he had learned to like Minister Polo personally.”

“’He was so pleasant that I felt like asking him to stay a little longer,’ said ‘Eddie,’ ’but I didn’t, for that wouldn’t have been diplomatic.  When you have been in this department twenty-five or thirty years you learn never to say what you want to say and never to speak unless you think twice.’”

“Wherefore it will be seen that ‘Eddie’ Savoy has mastered the first principles of diplomacy.”—­N.Y.  World.

A COPY OF THE RESOLUTION BY CONGRESS was also cabled to Minister Woodford, at Madrid, to be officially transmitted to the Spanish Government, fixing the 23d as the limit for its reply, but the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs had already learned of the action of Congress, and did not permit Minister Woodford to ask for his passports, but sent them to him on the evening of the 21st, and this was the formal beginning of the war.

[Illustration:  JOSE MACEO.]

A FATAL STEP WAS THIS FOR SPAIN, who evidently, as her newspapers declared, did not think the “American pigs” would fight.  She was unaware of the temper of the people, who seemed to those who knew the facts, actually thirsting for Spanish blood—­a feeling due more or less to thirty years of peace, in which the nation had become restless, and to the fact also that America had some new boats, fine specimens of workmanship, which had been at target practice for a long time and now yearned for the reality, like the boy who has a gun and wants to try it on the real game.  The proof of the superiority of American gunnery was demonstrated in every naval battle.  The accurate aim of Dewey’s gunners at Manilla, and Sampson and Schley’s at Santiago, was nothing less than wonderful.  No less wonderful, however, was the accuracy of the Americans than the inaccuracy of the Spaniards, who seemed almost unable to hit anything.

WHILE ACCREDITING THE AMERICAN NAVY with its full share of praise for its wonderful accomplishments, let us remember that there is scarcely a boat in the navy flying the American flag but what has a number of COLORED SAILORS on it, who, along with others, help to make up its greatness and superiority.

CHAPTER II.

THE BEGINNING OF HOSTILITIES.

A COLORED HERO IN THE NAVY.

History records the Negro as the first man to fall in three wars of America—­Crispus Attacks in the Boston massacre, March 5, 1770; an unknown Negro in Baltimore when the Federal troops were mobbed in that city en route to the front, and Elijah B. Tunnell, of Accomac county, Virginia, who fell simultaneously with or a second before Ensign Bagley, of the torpedo boat Winslow, in the harbor of Cardenas May 11, 1898, in the Spanish-American war.