ips in the harbour.

"The Americans are on duty night and day on the lookout for boats which
endeavour to run the blockade with food supplies. The hospital is
supported by the Americans. The Spaniards are boasting that their big
battle-ship _Pelayo_ is coming, and will demolish the Americans in ten
minutes."

On the afternoon of May 13th the flying squadron, Commodore W. S. Schley
commanding, set sail from Old Point Comfort, heading southeast. The
following vessels comprised the fleet. The cruiser _Brooklyn_, the
flag-ship, the battle-ships _Massachusetts_ and _Texas_, and the
torpedo-boat destroyer _Scorpion_. The _Sterling_, with 4,000 tons of
coal, was the collier of the squadron. At eight o'clock in the evening the
_Minneapolis_ followed, and Captain Sigsbee of the _St. Paul_ received
orders to get under way at midnight.

_May 14._ Eleven steamers, chartered by the government as troop-ships,
sailed from New York for Key West. At San Francisco, the cruiser
_Charleston_, with supplies and reinforcements for Admiral Dewey's fleet
at Manila, had been made ready for sea.

At Havana General Blanco had shown great energy in preparing for the
expected siege by American forces. The city and forts were reported as
being provisioned sufficiently for three or four months, and Havana was
surrounded by entrenchments for a distance of thirty miles. The troops in
the garrison numbered seventy thousand, and a like number were in the
interior fighting the insurgents.

The condition of the reconcentrados in Havana had grown steadily worse.
The mortality increased among this wretched class, who had taken to
begging morsels of food.

Nobody in Havana except a few higher officers knew that the Spanish fleet
was annihilated at Manila, and the story was believed that the Americans
were beaten there.

At Madrid in the Chamber of Deputies Senor Bores asked the government to
inform the house of the condition of the Philippines. After the
pacification of the islands, he said, outbreaks had occurred at Pansy and
Cebu and even in Manila. Was this a new rebellion, he asked, or a
continuation of the old one? If it was a continuation of the old
rebellion, then General Prima de Rivera's pacification of the islands had
been a perfect fraud. General Correa, Minister of War, replied that the
old insurrection was absolutely over. The present one, he said, arose from
the incitements of the Americans.

Senor Bores retorted that he had received a