While we were laboring, stripped to the waist, and trying our utmost to disable or sink the Spanish gunboat, an incident was occurring on deck which seemed more fitted for the pages of a novel than those of a story of facts.

It was a display of daredevil courage seldom equalled in warfare.

The lad whom we familiarly termed the “Kid” was the central figure and the hero.  The diary of No. 5 of the after port gun, from which this narrative is taken, says of him:  “‘Kid’ Thompson is the ship’s human mascot and all-round favorite with officers and men.  His bump of respect is a depression, but his fund of ready wit and his unvarying good nature are irresistible.  He is eighteen years of age, and is a ‘powder monkey’ on Number Sixteen, a six-pounder on the spar deck.  This gun and Number Fifteen were the last to obey the order to cease firing during the bombardment of Santiago.”

During the fight with the Spanish gunboat it chanced that the port battery was not engaged for a brief period, so the “Kid,” with the rest of Number Sixteen crew, were at rest.  To better see the shooting the “Kid” climbed upon the after wheel-house roof.  The shells from the gunboat and the forts were dropping all around, fore and aft, port and starboard; they whistled through the rigging, and exploded in every direction, sending their fragments in a veritable hail of metal on all sides.

The fact that the “Yankee” had so far escaped injury aroused in the “Kid’s” breast a feeling of the utmost contempt for the Spanish gunners.  Coolly standing upon his feet, he assumed the pose of a baseball player, and holding a capstan bar in his hands, called out tauntingly: 

“Here, you dagoes, give me a low ball, will you?  Put ’em over the plate!”

As a shell would fly past with a shriek, he would strike at it, shouting at the same time: 

“Put ’em over the plate, I say.  Do you expect me to walk up to the fo’c’s’le to get a rap at ’em?  Hi, there! wake up!”

Then as a shot fell short, he laughed:  “Look at that drop, will you?  Do you think I’m going to dive for it?”

A moment later a shell flew past so close that the windage almost staggered him, but the daring lad only cried banteringly:  “That’s more like it.  One more a little closer and I’ll show you a home run worth seeing.”

And so it went until he was espied from the bridge and peremptorily ordered down.

In the meantime, while this little episode was in progress, we on the gun deck were laboring without cessation.  A dozen shots had been fired from Number Eight alone, when suddenly another fort secured the range, and began a deadly fusillade.

The situation was becoming extremely serious!

CHAPTER XV.

Coaling in the tropics.

The well-directed fire of the forts at the entrance to Cienfuegos was rapidly making the “Yankee’s” position untenable, and it soon became apparent that we would have to give way before overwhelming odds.  Fifteen minutes after the battle began between the Spanish gunboat and the “Yankee,” the former beat a hasty retreat, steaming back into the harbor.