The words of the service, beautiful and impressive under such novel circumstances, echoed and whispered along the deck, and at the sentence, “We commit this body to the deep,” the grating was raised gently and, with a peculiar swish, the body, heavily weighted, slid down to the water’s edge and plunged sullenly into the sea.  A moment more and the service was finished, the bugler sounding “pipe down.”  A salute, three times repeated, was fired by sixteen men of the marine guard.

* * * * *

The voyage down the coast was utilized in making good men-o’-war’s men of the “Yankee’s” crew.  Captain Brownson believes thoroughly in the efficacy of drill, and he lost no time in living up to his belief.  When all the circumstances are taken into consideration, the task allotted to the captain of the “Yankee” by the fortunes of war, was both peculiar and difficult.

On his return from Europe, where he had been sent to select vessels for the improvised navy, he was ordered by the Navy Department at Washington to take command of the auxiliary cruiser “Yankee.”  This meant that he was to assume charge of a ship hastily converted from an ordinary merchant steamer, and to fight the battles of his country with a crew composed of youths and men whose whole life and training had hitherto followed totally different lines.

It was a “licking of raw material into shape” with a vengeance.

When the “Chesapeake” sailed forth to fight her disastrous battle with the British ship “Shannon,” her crew was made up of men untrained in the art of war.  The result was the most humiliating naval defeat in the history of the United States.  The same fate threatened Captain Brownson.  There was this difference in the cases, however.  The “Chesapeake” had little time for drilling, while the “Yankee” was fully six weeks in commission before her first shot was fired in action.  Every minute of those six weeks was utilized.

During the trip down the coast from New York general quarters were held each day, and target practice whenever the weather permitted.  In addition to these drills the crew was exercised in man and arm boats, abandon ship, fire drill, infantry drill, and the many exercises provided by the naval regulations.  Before the “Yankee” had been in the Gulf Stream two days, the various guns’ crews were almost letter-perfect at battery work.  As it happened, the value of good drilling was soon to be demonstrated.

As we neared Cuba, the theatre of our hopes and expectations, we were scarcely able to control ourselves.  The bare possibility of seeing real war within a few days made every man the victim of a consuming impatience.  Rumors of every description were rife, and the many weird and impossible tales invented by the ship’s cook and the captain’s steward—­the men-o’-war oracles—­would have put even Baron Munchausen to the blush.

The Rumor Committee, otherwise known as the “Scuttle-butt Navigators,” to which every man on board was elected a life member the moment he promulgated a rumor, was soon actively engaged, and it was definitely settled that the “Yankee” was to become the flagship of the whole fleet, our captain made Lord High Admiral, and the whole Spanish nation swept off the face of the globe, in about thirteen and a half seconds by the chronometer.