with thrilling trumpet tones pierced the din, and a multitude of voices joined with the bands giving words and tone to the magnetic storm.  How many miles the Newport was pursued I cannot conjecture.  There were tall ladies standing on the high decks of tugs that were half buried in the foam of the bay, but as long as they could hold a “Star Spangled Banner” in one hand, and a few handkerchiefs in another, their skirts streaming in grace and defiance before the rising gale, they sang hosannas, and there were attitudes both of triumph and despair as the fair followers, dashed with spray, gave up the chase, passionately kissing their hands god-speed and good-by.  This was going to the Indies through the Golden Gate!

A breakage of dishes, that sounded as though the ship were going to pieces, belied the prophesy that beyond the bar there was to be no moaning; and the Pacific would not be pacified.  However, the reputation of the ocean was good enough to go to sleep on, but the berths squirmed in sympathy with the twisting and plunging ship.  It was not a “sound of revelry by night,” to which the wakeful listened through the dismal hours, and in the morning there was a high sea—­grand rollers crowned with frothy lace, long black slopes rising and smiting like waves of liquid iron.

The Pacific was an average North Atlantic, and it was explained by the tale that the peaceful part of this ocean is away down South where the earth is most rotund, and the trade winds blow on so serenely that they lull the navigators into dreams of peace that induce a state of making haste slowly and a willingness to forget and be forgotten, whether—­

Of those who husbanded the golden grain
Or those who flung it to the winds like rain,

The gulls are not our snowy birds of the Atlantic.  We are lonesome out here, and the Albatross sweeps beside us, hooded like a cobra, an evil creature trying to hoodoo us, with owlish eyes set in a frame like ghastly spectacle glasses.

General Merritt’s blue eyes shone like diamonds through the stormy experiences while the young staff officers curled up as the scientists did on the floor, and smiled a sort of sickly smile!  The highest compliment that can be paid them is that the group of officers and gentlemen surrounding the commander of the expedition to the Philippines, express his own character.

It was funny to find that the private soldiers were better served with food than the General and his staff.  There was reform, so as to even up the matter of rations, but the General was not anxious and solicitous for better food.  His idea of the correct supper after a hard day’s service is a goodly sized sliced onion with salt, meat broiled on two sticks, hard tack, a tin cup of coffee, for luxuries a baked potato, a pipe of tobacco, a nip of whisky, a roll in a blanket and a sleep until the next day’s duties are announced by the bugle.