function, the officers took their respective
places in the boats, and, amid a silence born of deepest grief, rowed a
short distance from the rent and riven mass so lately their post of duty.

A gentleman from Chicago, a guest at the Grand Hotel, was seated in front
of the building when the explosion occurred.

"It was followed by another and a much louder one," he said. "We thought
the whole city had been blown to pieces. Some said the insurgents were
entering Havana. Others cried out that Morro Castle was blown up.

"On the Prado is a large cab-stand. One minute after the explosion was
heard the cabmen cracked their whips and went rattling over the
cobblestones like crazy men. The fire department turned out, and bodies of
cavalry and infantry rushed through the streets. There was no sleep in
Havana that night."

Soon after the disaster Admiral Manterola and General Solano put off to
the wreck, and offered their services to Captain Sigsbee.

There were many wonderful escapes from death. One of the ward-room cooks
was thrown outboard into the water.

A Japanese sailor was blown into the air, and, falling in the sea, was
picked up alive.

One seaman was sleeping in a yawl hanging at the davits. The boat was
crushed like an egg-shell; but the sailor fell overboard and was picked up
unhurt.

Three men were doing punishment watch on the port quarter-deck, and thus
probably escaped death.

One sailor swam about until help came, although both his legs were broken.
Another had the bones of his ankle crushed, and yet managed to keep
afloat.

Two hours or more passed before the unsubmerged, wooden portion of the
wreck had been consumed by the flames, and at 11.30 P. M. the smoke-stacks
of the ill-fated ship fell.

On board the steamer _City of Washington_, two boats were literally
riddled by fragments of the _Maine_ which fell after the explosion, and
among them was an iron truss which, crashing through the pantry,
demolished the tableware.

When morning came the wreck was the central figure of an otherwise bright
picture, sad as it was terrible. The huge mass of flame-charred debris
forward looked as if it had been thrown up from a subterranean storehouse
of fused cement, steel, wood, and iron.

Further aft, one military mast protruded at a slight angle from the
perpendicular, while the poop afforded a resting-place for the workmen or
divers.

Of the predominant white which distinguishes our war-vessels in