After leaving the Isle of Pines the eastern shore of Cuba was rounded and a straight run made for Key West.  At noon on the 27th of June, just twenty-nine days after the “Yankee” sailed from New York, we again entered a home port.  The time was brief as time goes, but our varied experiences in foreign waters made the sight of the stars and stripes flaunting over American soil particularly pleasing.

As we neared our anchorage the most entrancing rumors were rife.  We were to get shore liberty without doubt, and the ship was to be coaled by outside labor.  We took no stock in the latter rumor till an officer voiced it—­then we believed.  Our clean blues were furbished up, lanyards scrubbed, and money counted.  We understood that there was little to see at Key West; that it was a dull and uninteresting place.  Still it was land, and we had not set foot ashore for almost three months.

If we had not been so anxious to get ashore we might have been able to appreciate the marine picture.

The harbor, if it could be called a harbor, was full of war vessels, prizes, and colliers.  Three grim monitors tugged at their anchor chains, apparently impatient at the restraint, while a few graceful, clean-cut, converted yachts swung with the tide.

The gunboat “Wilmington,” and the cruisers “Newark” and “Montgomery,” floated with a bored air.  In ship’s language they said, Why are we loafing here?  Why not be up and doing?

The “Lancaster,” a fine old frigate, the flagship of the commodore, had a fatherly air and seemed to say:  “Be good and you will all have a chance.”

Once more we got our shore-going clothes ready, only to be disappointed, and again the promises made to us proved elusive.  The day following our arrival, we were told that no shore liberty would be given at Key West, and while the reasons were all sufficient, a man who has set his mind on an outing ashore after a hundred days at sea, finds it somewhat hard to reconcile himself to the inevitable.

One of the hardest, if not the hardest, thing we had to bear was the lack of letters and news from home.  When one has been deprived of all tidings from his own people for so long the longing for word of them becomes almost unbearable.

In the midst of our toughest work we felt that a letter from home would act like a strong tonic and brace us for the effort, and it would have done so.  But no such balm came, though we eagerly scanned every incoming vessel for the signal “We have mail for you.”  Now at last, though there might be tons on tons of coal to be put in at Key West, though the ship might have to be scrubbed and painted from truck to water line, we felt certain we would get letters from home.  Letters that we ached for.  And so when we sighted the fleet and old fort, and realized that we had reached Key West and mail at last, our joy was too great for utterance.

The whaleboat went ashore and brought back two bags of precious missives, with the sad news that eight bags had been sent on a despatch boat to the “Yankee” at Santiago.