The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 10, 1898, Page 22

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JULY 10, 1898. destruction of ot first trickled dripped off the end of the telegraph wire it seemed al- together too good to b Cerve We had thought that our ne birthday celebration was to shadowed by 1 sorrow f the hundr > men who had so lately, wvailin as it seemed, laid down their 1 for us all, and made mor by the cloud of u ty hanging c 11 day the faces gaz- paper bulletin sheets 1 er our So it w ing up at the n e in size week days, unusual for something which 1 to hear. and there and 1 toy cannon tured with their sharp der our and have that— me: mand Fourth of the present, truction of the whole of s BEE About 1300 prisoners, Tuding Admiral Cervera. Amer loss one Killed 3 two wounded.” S ST R R T < impossible to wait -ator to the top of the hc 1. We were wild to rush up the marble sta’ in a mad race for the cur and giveoutward and vehement the emotions which, f 1g, made every- thing t to the one thought of summoning others to rejoice with us. There were only three of us going the two brothers special ss it the ve is on occasion gur ute D there the woman who had the honor of firing the t sent ou to apprise tk at victor. which turr over our b Up we i eighteenth landing, af would rise ne heaven we must do s0 by me our own endeavors. The first lieutenant was bu with the boxes and bundles which h dened him on our zenith, and the cz ed as gunner's mate, to the gunner's station back firmly against the shaft, while T obediently des self with cotton. The dome hid the streets view, but see the brc even ntown thorough away, on the less fre streets, the sporadic flash of plosi A calm seemed to have s it was the unnatu cedes a storm. The loaded shell slid smoothly into led on the city, but al calm which pre- along and | SR SRR AR RN (Call-Herald Special Correspondence.) On Board the Seguranca, Off Cape Maysi, June 19. HE largest number of United States troops that ever went down to the sea in ships to in- vade a foreign cou.try were those that formed the Fifth Army Corps when it sailed for Santiago. The thought of sixteen thousand men on thirty-one troop ships and their escort of fourteen warships suggests the Spanish Armada. It brings up a picture of a great flo- tilla, grim, - sinister amd menacing, fighting its way through the waves on its errand of vengeance and conquest. But, as a matter of fact, the expedi- tion bore a most distinct air of the com- monplace. It moved through a suc- cession of sparkling, sunlit days, over a sea as smooth as a lake, undisturbed by Spanish cruisers or by shells from Spanish forts. As far as the eye could see it had the ocean entirely to itself. Scattered over a distance of seven miles the black passenger steamers and the mouse colored warships steamed in three uneven columns. They suggest- ed a cluster of excursion steamers, yachts and tugs as one sees them com- ing back from Sandy Hook after an international yacht race. What the landing may be like we cannot fore- see, but the voyage was uneventful, and the departure from Tampa Bay, when it came after many weary post- ponements and delays, was neither pic- turesque nor moving. The band did not play “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” nor did crowds of weeping women cling to the bulkheads and wave their damp handkerchiefs; the men who were 80- ing to die for their country did not swarm in the rigging and cheer - the last sight of land. They had done that on the morning of June 8, and had been ingloriously towed back to the dock; they had done it again on the morning of June 10, and had immedi- ately dropped anchor a few hundred yards off shore. So they were suspi- clous and wary, and when the head- quarters ship, the Seguranca, from which this is written, left the dock three colored women and a pathetic group of perspiring stevedores and three soldiers represented the popular interest in her departure. The troop ships were the best pas- senger steamers the Government could buy. They were fitted up with pine cots and a small proportion of stalls for the horses, and the first-class cabins were turned over to the officers. On some of them the men swarmed over every part of the ship, on others the officers held the bridge to them- ves, on the majority the quarterdeck was also reserved for them. There were other differences; the food on some of the ships was very bad; on most of them it was the regular army rations served to the men cold, with hot cof- fee. On a few of the ships the food served ‘to the officers was provided, with patriotic feeling, free by the own.. ers of the line to which the transports belonged; on our ship it was charged for at a moderate rate per day, but it was exceedingly bad. It was for every one a most tedious experience. For those who were not able to withstand the slight motion of the sea it was a week of sickness, with- out the comforts or seclusion that a sick man generally obtains. The heat below decks varied from 102 degrees to 110. Most of the men slept on the decks at the imminent risk of rolling over- board; those who were quartered below tossed and groaned during the night and made up for lost time by sleeping all day. Probably half of the men forming the expedition had never been at sea be- fore. They probably will desire never to go again, but will say from the depth of their experience that the dangers of the deep are vastly exaggerated. They will not wish to go again, because their first experience was more full of dis- comfort than any other trip will be that they are likely to take; on the other hand, they may sail the seas many times before they find it as smopth, or the rain as infrequent, the sun as beau- tiful, or the heavens as magnificent. We traveled at the rate of seven miles an hour, with long pauses for thought and consultation. Sometimes we moved at the rate of four miles an hour, and frequently we did not move at all. The warships treated us with the most punctilious courtesy and conceal. ed contempt. And we certainly de- served it. We could not keep in line and we lost ourselves and each other, and the gunboat and torpedo boats were kept busy rounding us up, and glving us sharp, precise orders in pass- ing, through a megaphone, to which either nobody made any reply, or every jone did. The gunboats were like swift, | keen-eyed, intelligent collies rounding up a herd of bungling sheep. They | looked €0 workmanlike and clean, and the men were so smart in their white duck, that the soldiers cheered them all along the line as they dashed up and down it, waving their wigwags franti- cally. s The life on borrd the headquarters ‘Whenever troops arrive or depart frm the city, and whenever there is victory to proclaim for the Am- erican forces by land or sea, the cannon on the dome of The Call’s home thunders out the tidings and keeps it up at minute intervals. So popular has this timely notice become that now at the first report of the three-pounder people rush from ail directiors to read the news of the victory on the bulletin board or to see the troops go marching by. place and the brass trap door closed sharply after it. A stick attached to an innocent looking bit of string was put into my hand. “Stand clear of éverything,” had been my instructions. “Pull quick and hard. rise on your toes as she goes off, and look out for the kick.” I shut my eyes in cowardly fashion for one instant, then opened them with a snap. My feminine nerves might be weak, but the braver part of me want- ed to see and feel all “One, two, three!” There was a puff of white smoke, a sword of red flame flashing out into the shadow, and a sound as if the that could bei crowded into that climacteric moment. heavens had fallen. That was the can- non. And then the crimson glare of red fire—The Call's message of victory— made our eyrie seem the center of a seething volcano, and before the second shot rang out the streets as far as eye could see were alive with dark figures, all coming as fast as hurrying feet or suddenly overloaded cars could bring them, to learn the details of the good tidings which my hand had sent them. And while the cannon boomed on and the red fire flared, and the crowds be- low shouted themselves hoarse, I looked up into the quiet skies and thanked God that after all our brave boys had not died in vain. ship was uneventful for those who were not in command. For these their tables and desks were spread in the “social “hall,” and all day long they worked busily and mysteriously on maps and lists and orders, and six typewriters banged on their machines until late at night. The ship was greatly over- crowded; it held all of General Shaf- ter’s staff, all of General Breckinridge’s staff, the Cugan generals, the officers and 500 men of the First Regiment, al] the foreign attaches. and an army of stenographers, secretaries, clerks, serv- ants, couriers, valets and colored wait- s, erAll of these were jumbled together. There were three cane chairs with seats With the Oransports Bound for Santiago. By Richard Harding Davis. and two cane chairs without seats. If you were so unlucky as not to capture one of these you clung sidewise to the bench around the ship’s rail or sat.on the deck. At no one moment were you alone. Your most intimate conversa- tion was overheard by every one, Whether he wished to or not; the at- taches could not compare notes on our deficiencies without being betrayed, nor could the staff discuss its plan of cam- paign without giving it to the whole ship. Seven different languages were in course of constant circulation, and the grievances of the servants and the badinage of the colored cooks mingled with the latest remarks on the war. At night you picked your way over prostrate forms of soidiers and of over- worked stewards, who toiled eighteen hours a day in a temperature of 102 de- grees. Four of the correspondents, who were congratulating themselves on having obtainc 1 outside cabins, found out too late that they were situated over the boiler, which would have been most desirable on an Arctic expedition, but which, as our cruise was in sum- mer seas, drove us to sleep on the deck, where Frederic Remington kicked me on the head all night, and two soldiers used my legs for pillows, and Stephen Bonsal of McClure's Magazine and Caspar Whitney of the Century Maga- zine walked on my chest. The water on board the ship was so bad that it could not be used to shave with, it smelled like a frog pond or a stable yard and it tasted that way. Before we started from Tampa Bay the first time it was examined by the doc- tors, who declared that in spite of the bad smell and taste it was not un- healthy, but Colonel J. J. Astor offered to pay for fresh water, for which Mr. Plant charges 2 cents a gallon, if they would empty all of the bad smelling water overboard. General Shafter said it was good enough for him and Colonel Astor’s very considerate offer was not accepted. So we all drank apollinaris water and tea. The soldiers, however, had to drink the water furnished them, except those who were able to pay 5 cents a glass to the ship’s porter, who had a private Supply of ‘good water which he made into lemonade. The ship’s crew &nd engineers used this water. The bad smelling water came fro: New York, and was but on board br; the Ward Line to which the Seguranca Belongs. ¥ Before handing the ship over Governm'ent the compan)? removteod t1:11? of her wine stock and table linen, took out two of her dining tables and gen- erally stripped her, and then sent her South undermanned. Her steward hired and borrowed and bought linen and servants and table waters at Tag. pa, but there was so little linen that it was seldom changed, and had it not been that the servants of the officers were willing to help wait at table there would have been four stewards to look after the wants of fifty or sixty pas- sengers. The food supplied by this line as I have previously stated, was vii. lainous. The enlisted men forward were much better served by the Government with good beans, corned beef and cof- fee. Apparently no contract or agree- ment as to quality or quai.tity of food for the officers had been made by the Government with the Ward Line. The squadron at night with the lights showing from every part of the horizon |- made one think he was entering a har- bor, or leaving one. But by day we seemed adrift on a sea as untraveled as it was when Columbus first crossed it. On the third day out we saw Ro- mano Key. It was the first sight of land, and after that from time to time we made out a line of blue mountains on the starboard side. But up.to the present we have not been near enough to the shore for the men to clearly dis- tinguish the land they have waited so long to see. The squadron, though, has apparently been sighted from the shore, for the lighthouses along the coast are dark at night, which would seem to show that the lesson of the armada has not been lost on the Spaniard, Some one has said that “God takes care of drunken men, sailors and the United States.” This expedition ap- parently relied on the probability that that axiom would prove true. “The luck of the RBritish army,” of which Mr. Kipling boasts, is the luck of Job in comparison to the good fortune that has pursued this expedition so far. There has really been nothing to prevent a Spanish torpedo-boat from running out and sinking four or five ships while they were drifting along, spread out over the sea at such distance that the vessels in the rear were lost to sight for fourteen hours at a time and no one knew whether they had sunk or had been blown up or had grown dis- gusted and gone back home. As one of the generals on board said, “This is God Almighty’s war, and we are only His agents.” The foreign attaches regarded the fair weather that accompanied us, the brutal good health of the men, the small loss. of horses and mules ani the entire freedom from interference on the part of the enemy with the same grudging envy that one watches a suc- cessful beginner winning continuous- ly at roulette. At night the fleet was as conspicuous as Brooklyn or New York, with the lights of the bridge in- cluded, but the Spanish took no ad- vantage of that fact; no torpedo de- stroyers slipped out from Cardenas or Neuvitas, or waited for us in the old Bahama Channel, where for twelve miles the ships were crowded into a channel only seven miles across. Of course, our own escort would have finished them if they had, but not be- fore they could have thrown torpedoes right and left into the helpless hulks of the transports and given us a loss to remember even greater than that of the Maine. But, as it was, nothing happened. We rolled along at our own pace, with the lights the navy had told us to extin- guish blazing ~deflantly to the stars, with bands banging out ragtime mu- sic, and with the foremost vessels sep- arated sometimes for half a day at a time from the laggards in the rear. It has been a most happy-go-lucky expedition, run with real American op- timism and readiness to take big chances; with the spirit of a people who recklessly trust that it will come out all right in the end, and that the barely possible may not happen, that the joker may not turn up to spoil the hand, who risk grade crossings and all that they imply, who race trans-At- lantic steamers through a fog for the sake of a record, and who, on this oc- casion, certainly “euchered God's al- mighty storm and bluffed the eternal sea.” No one has complained and no one grumbled. The soldiers tdrned over to sleep on the bare decks with final in- Junctions not to be awakened for any- thing under a Spanish battle-ship, and whenever the ships drew up alongside the men bombarded each other with Jjokes on the cheerful fact that they were hungry and thirsty and sore for sleep. To-morrow they will be at last on the soil of Cuba, and what may be- fall them there one does not care to consider. But so far, at least, our army’s greatest invasion of a foreign land has been completely successful, but chiefly so, one cannot help think- ing, because the Lord looks after huJ oW GREAT WATERFALLS TO GUARD AGAINST FIRE. Latest Contrivance to Protect Valuable Property From Near-by Burning Buildings. HE latest contrivance to be used for protecting buildings against fire is known as the “water cur- | tain,” and never was name more appropriate. Although the 1dea‘ is not entirely new, it is just‘i coming into favor and is being fitted to some of the finest buildings in this country. Just who invented the water curtain | is not of record in this country, and perhaps not in any other. As far as known one of them was first put into the Paris, Opera-house about fifteen years ago, but, as it happens, has never been used. The arrangement of the water cur- tain is simplicity itself. It is nothing more than an iron pipe with hundreds of small holes bored in one side of it. This is connected with the public water main, or pumps, and in time of danger | the water is turned on and descends in a sheet that the fiercest flames can- |{ not penetrate. The water curtain in the Paris Op- | era-house is intended to cut off the stage from the rest of the building and is only one of a dozen other safe- guards in the famous place of amuse- | ment. In reality there are two water | curtains, as well as the asbestos cur- tain. They are placed high above the | stage close to the front wall and the | water is supposed to fall on the foot- | lights. | One of these curtains operates in the | manne~thathasalready been described, but the’' other is intended to be automatic and to accomplish its work | in case anything should prevent a man getting to the valves to turn on the water. The pipes with holes in them are exactly alike in both instances, but in the automatic one the holes are plugged with soft lead. In this pipe the water is always turned on. Should a fire start on the stage and gain the least headway it will melt the lead plugs and allow the water to rush out in a sheet capable of extinguishing a large conflagration. It was this ap- plication to the stage that gave the contrivance its name of water ‘“cur- | tain.” In this country the movement at present is to put water curtains on the outside of buildings to protect them from fires in adjacent buildings. The water curtain will also protect people who are caught in a burning building and fly to the windows to wait for the hook and ladder men to help them out. In the outside water curtain there is some little difference in construction frem the interior water cartain and is of necessity more costly. The one at present being attached to the great Public Library building in Chicago is a good type. In this instance a seven-inch steel water main is laid around the top of the structure, upon the broad stone ta- ble formed by the top of the copwmg, this pipe having connection with force pumps situated in the basemenrt, and, through = perforations prop. ranged, insures the introduc substantial sheet of water from cornice to pavement, around the whole or any i @ already in use in the big theaters of a water curtain would be used on the Palace Hotel should it be threat- ened by fire from the Grand Hotel opposite. NEW 'WATER-CURTAIN, DESIGNED TO PROTECT BUILDINGS FROM NEAR-BY FIRES, The new water curtains, in action resembling a waterfall, are being rapidly introduced through the valuable buildings of Chicago. They are imperiled portion of the building. 5 The arrangement of the 'stum'nf'pqug is such as to enable -operating in pre- scribed sections; additional relays .of smaller pipe are also placed in position above the windows and doors, in ol'dcjl‘ to complete the curtaining of those points in the most serviceable man- ner, should the curtain in the main be broken by wind impingement against the building. 3 ]gA’l water curtain in operation is as pretty a sight as can be seen anywhere. On some of the big buildings in Chi- cago the water shoots out several feet from the coping and then falls to the ground like a glistening \_\'agerfalll It completely covers the building like a veil of mist, but permits the architec~ ture to be seen. —_—e————— 's a new drink. It's the poussa cnrr{:rs ma);onmgue. Never heard of it, eh? Well, it's simple enough, and the great wonder is that nobody ever thought before. Uflit you try it once youll try it a,ga.(n. But you don’'t want to try it too oiten— that is, not at one sitting. Seductive? It has all the fabled qualities of the lotos. But after a good dinner it is delicious. It isn’t really a pousse cafe—that is, it hasn’t all the vari-colored 1ngred_Iems of which the more familiar tipple is built. You simply flll a petit verre half full of benedictine, and then slov;"ly pour ":rg::: 3 E ¢ of cold, rich cream. l,:‘:t‘irhr\mh?;i'::n(;'t)lu: pousse cafe a la Mon- tague. p es bubbling up through Ih’{;h((')rfgr‘;’ldl:; fln‘(;‘eliclous‘ wicked sugges- tion might surge through the veins an innocent maiden. You sip it and you for< get all your troubles. £ —— Paris. The sketch above shows how