THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. 382 their fire upon her. In the first dash the cruisers hadgained alittleon theAmericanfleet, and at first the fire of the pursuers did little serious damage. Mr. Mason, an Englishman, and the consul of China at Santiago, watched themfrom thelook-outhillnorth of Morro. He lost sight of the cruisers at ten o'clock as they went round the curve of the shore. This was twenty minutesafter theycleared theheadlands, and so far as he could judge none of them had yet beenbadly hit. Signal masts and chimneys wereallstanding,and noneof the ships were on fire. He thought Cervera had made good his escape. This was the impression in Santiago, and on this was based the report sent through Havana, which was ridiculed in England and America as a Spanish fiction.

made by an 8-inch shell a few feet forward of the point where these two giant projectiles had struck. The official report thus describes its deadly work:— " An 8-inch shell struck thegun deck just under the after barbette, passed through the side of the ship, and exploded, ranging aft. The damage done by this shell was very great. All the men in the locality must have beenkilled or badly wounded. The beams were torn and ripped. The fragments of the shellpassedacross the deck and out through the starboardside. This shell also cut the fire main." The other hits were mostly from the smaller6-pounderquick-firers. Theymadethree holes in one of the funnels, and cut up the deckhouses.

Their explosions killed and woundeda good many of the crew, amongthem AdmiralCervera himself, who was slightly injured in the arm as he stood on the bridge outside the conningtower, watching the progressof the fight, and as some thought courting death. But none of the damage done directly by the American shells was sufficient to put the Spanish flagship out of action. She had her water line intact, her engines uninjured, her barbettes with their heavy guns absolutely untouched, and only one of the quick-firers in her secondarybattery was damaged. But indirectly the few heavy shells that had come in had settled her fate. She had been insufficiently stripped of woodand wooden fittings. Below decks especially there seems to have been a sot of dry woodwork. The shells set this on fire,and the ship, with her fire main severed, was burning fiercely in two different places. All attempts to keep the fire down proved useless. The men were rapidly driven from the guns and the engine-room, and the ship drifted towards the shore a helpless wreck, the black smoke pouring up from her lower decks. Some of the crew swam to the land, others were taken off by the Americans, the Gloucester especially doing good service. Her light draught enabled her to go close-in, and while thebattle went roaring away to the westward, Commander Wainwright wasbusysaving the remains of the Spanish flagship's crew from death by fire or water. Among those he took on tohis ship wereAdmiralCervera and his son, a lieutenant in the Spanishnavy. The twohad thrown themselves into the water together as thefire crept forward to their station near the conning-tower and bowbarbette. The adnairrl was taken to the shore, where a party ol the Gloucester's men had been landed, under The Maria Teresa, although the first of the cruisers to succumb to the shower of shells pouredinto the squadron by the American fleet, got as far as about six miles to the westwardof Santiago. During the war the gunnery of the Americannavy wasspoken ofas somethingvery perfect, but in the running fight with the Spaniards outside Santiago, considering the enormous number of shots fired by the blockading squadron, the hits were remarkably few.

The Maria Teresa, though exposed to a converging storm of fire, was only hit twenty-nine times. An 8-inch shell struck the shieldof the second gun in the broadside, counting from the stern. It went throughit andexplodedbetween decks,doing a lot of damage,and inflicting heavy loss on the crews working the guns of the secondary battery. A5-inch shellcame through the side just astern of the funnels and exploded in the coal-bunkers, forcing up the deck above and setting the ship on fire. During the whole fight, the big barbette and turret guns of the American battleships (13-inch and 12-inch guns throwing projectiles of 1,100 and of 850 pounds) made only two hits. Both of these wereon the unfortunate Maria Teresa. They look as if they came from a pair of guns mounted sidebyside in one of the blockading vessels, for they crashed through the Spanish cruiser's side close together, making nearly the same hole. They came in just aft of the stern turret and a little above the water line. They burst in the after torpedo-operating room, blowing a jagged hole through the other side of the ship, and utterly wrecking everything in the compartment in which the explosion took place, killing and woundingall who wereat work there andsetting the ship on fire. Another damaging hit was