none of them
exploded. The firing-pins had become so incrusted with barnacles and
other marine growths during their long immersion that the force of the
blow when the ships struck them did not drive them in far enough to
explode the charges. When we reached Guantanamo in the _State of
Texas_, Captain McCalla's boats and launches had thoroughly explored and
dragged the lower bay, and had taken out safely no less than thirteen
contact mines, each containing about one hundred pounds of guncotton.
The upper bay was still in the possession of the Spaniards; but its
control was not a matter of any particular importance. What Admiral
Sampson wanted was a safe and sheltered coaling-and repairing-station
for the vessels of his fleet, and this he obtained when his war-ships
and marines, after four days of almost incessant fighting, drove the
Spanish troops from the whole eastern coast of the lower bay.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LANDING AND ADVANCE OF THE ARMY

Early Sunday morning, at the little zinc-walled telegraph office under
the camp of the marines at Guantanamo, I happened to meet two war
correspondents--one of them, if I remember rightly, Mr. Howard of the
New York "Journal"--who had just come from the front with a detailed
account of the fight at Guasimas. This fight, they said, was not a mere
insignificant skirmish, as Admiral Sampson supposed when I saw him on
Saturday, but a serious battle, in which a part of General Wheeler's
division was engaged, for several hours, with a force of Spanish
regulars estimated at two or three thousand men. More than one hundred
officers and men on our side had been killed or wounded, among them
Captain Capron and Sergeant Hamilton Fish, both of whom were dead. The
wounded, Mr. Howard said, had been brought back to Siboney and put into
one of the abandoned Spanish houses on the beach, where, only the night
before, he had seen them lying, in their blood-stained clothing, on the
dirty floor, without blankets or pillows, and without anything that
seemed to him like adequate attendance or care. At my request the two
correspondents went on board the _State of Texas_ and repeated their
statement to Miss Barton, who, after consultation with the officers of
her staff, decided to take the steamer back at once to Siboney. We could
do nothing more at Guantanamo until General Perez should furnish
transportation and an escort for the food that we intended to send to
the refugees north of the bay