suvius_ had tested herself. She was found perfect as a destroyer.
She proved that no fortification can withstand her terrible missiles.

"Just what damage she did I could not tell from the sea. Whatever was
within hundreds of feet of the point of impact must have gone to
destruction."

_June 16._ On the fifteenth of June the marines at Guantanamo Bay were
given an opportunity to rest, for the lesson the Spaniards received on the
fourteenth had been a severe one, and the fleet off Santiago remained
inactive. It was but the lull before the storm of iron which was rained
upon the Spanish on the sixteenth.

The prelude to this third bombardment of Santiago was a second trial of
the _Vesuvius_ at midnight on the fifteenth, when she sent three more
250-pound charges of guncotton into the fortifications. This done, the
fleet remained like spectres, each vessel at its respective station, until
half-past three o'clock on the morning of the sixteenth, when the
bluejackets were aroused and served with coffee.

Immediately the first gray light of dawn appeared, the ships steamed in
toward the fortifications of Santiago until within three thousand yards,
and there, lying broadside on, three cables'-lengths apart, they waited
for the day to break.

It was 5.25 when the _New York_ opened with a broadside from her main
battery, and the bombardment was begun.

All along the crescent-shaped line the big guns roared and the smaller
ones crackled and snapped, each piece throughout the entire squadron being
worked with such energy that it was like one mighty, continuous wave of
crashing thunder, and from out this convulsion came projectiles of
enormous weight, until it seemed as if all that line of shore must be rent
and riven.

Not a gun was directed at El Morro, for there it was believed the brave
Hobson and his gallant comrades were held prisoners.

When the signal was given for the fleet to retire, not a man had been
wounded, nor a vessel struck by the fire from the shore.

The governor of Santiago sent the following message to Madrid relative to
the bombardment:

"The Americans fired one thousand shots. Several Spanish shells hit the
enemy's vessels. Our losses are three killed and twenty wounded, including
two officers. The Spanish squadron was not damaged."

While the Americans were making their presence felt at Santiago, those who
held Guantanamo Bay were not idle. The _Texas_, _Marblehead_, and the
_Suwanee_ bombarded