d the men cooked
their coffee and pork, some frying the hard-tack with the pork. The
officers, of course, fared just as the men did. Hardly had we finished
eating when the rain came, a regular tropic downpour. We sat about,
sheltering ourselves as best we could, for the hour or two it lasted;
then the fires were relighted and we closed around them, the men
taking off their wet things to dry them, so far as possible, by the
blaze.

Wood had gone off to see General Young, as General Wheeler had
instructed General Young to hit the Spaniards, who were about four
miles away, as soon after daybreak as possible. Meanwhile I strolled
over to Captain Capron's troop. He and I, with his two lieutenants,
Day and Thomas, stood around the fire, together with two or three
non-commissioned officers and privates; among the latter were Sergeant
Hamilton Fish and Trooper Elliot Cowdin, both of New York. Cowdin,
together with two other troopers, Harry Thorpe and Munro Ferguson, had
been on my Oyster Bay Polo Team some years before. Hamilton Fish had
already shown himself one of the best non-commissioned officers we
had. A huge fellow, of enormous strength and endurance and dauntless
courage, he took naturally to a soldier's life. He never complained
and never shirked any duty of any kind, while his power over his men
was great. So good a sergeant had he made that Captain Capron, keen to
get the best men under him, took him when he left Tampa--for Fish's
troop remained behind. As we stood around the flickering blaze that
night I caught myself admiring the splendid bodily vigor of Capron and
Fish--the captain and the sergeant. Their frames seemed of steel, to
withstand all fatigue; they were flushed with health; in their eyes
shone high resolve and fiery desire. Two finer types of the fighting
man, two better representatives of the American soldier, there were
not in the whole army. Capron was going over his plans for the fight
when we should meet the Spaniards on the morrow, Fish occasionally
asking a question. They were both filled with eager longing to show
their mettle, and both were rightly confident that if they lived they
would win honorable renown and would rise high in their chosen
profession. Within twelve hours they both were dead.

I had lain down when toward midnight Wood returned. He had gone over
the whole plan with General Young. We were to start by sunrise toward
Santiago, General Young taking four troops of the Tenth and