do-boat.

The _Hudson_ tied up to the _Winslow_ and towed her out of danger,
escaping unscathed. The wounded men were tenderly cared for on the
cruiser, and that night the revenue cutter steamed out of Cardenas Bay,
bearing the dead and wounded to Key West.

William O'Hearn, of Brooklyn, N. Y., one of the _Winslow's_ crew, thus
tells his story of the battle to a newspaper correspondent:

"From the very beginning," he said, "I think every man on the boat
believed that we could not escape being sunk, and that is what would have
happened had it not been for the bravery of the boys on the _Hudson_, who
worked for over an hour under the most terrific fire to get us out of
range."

"Were you ordered to go in there?" he was asked.

"Yes; just before we were fired upon the order was given from the
_Wilmington_."

"Was it a signal order?"

"No; we were near enough to the _Wilmington_ so that they shouted it to us
from the deck, through the megaphone."

"Do you remember the words of the commander who gave them?"

"I don't know who shouted the order; but the words as I remember them
were, 'Mr. Bagley, go in and see what gunboats there are.' We started at
once towards the Cardenas dock, and the firing began soon after.

"The first thing I saw," continued O'Hearn, "was a shot fired from a
window or door in the second story of the storehouse just back of the dock
where the Spanish gunboats were lying. A shell then went hissing over our
heads. Then the firing began from the gunboat at the wharf, and from the
shore. The effect of shell and heavy shot the first time a man is under
fire is something terrible.

"First you hear that awful buzzing or whizzing, and then something seems
to strike you in the face and head. I noticed that at first the boys threw
their hands to their heads every time a shell went over; but they soon
came so fast and so close that it was a roaring, shrieking, crashing hell.

"I am the water-tender, and my place is below, but everybody went on deck
when the battle began. John Varvares, the oiler, John Denif and John Meek,
the firemen, were on watch with me, and had they remained below they would
not have been killed.

"After the firing began I went below again to attend to the boiler, and a
few minutes later a solid shot came crashing through the side of the boat
and into the boiler, where it exploded and destroyed seventy of the tubes.

"At first it stunned me. When the shell burst in the boiler i