," murmured "Stump," softly.

"We didn't know him after all," said "Hay." "Poor devil! I hope he isn't
badly injured."

"He has been in the hardest kind of luck since we left New York," spoke
up Tommy. "Seasick half the time, always in trouble, and bucking against
homesickness and everything else. And now he has to be wounded. It's a
shame."

Our thoughts were with our comrade as we served the gun, and when word
came a few moments later that he was doing fairly well, we could hardly
repress a cheer.

There was little time, however, for displaying emotion. We were right in
the thick of the fight, and the "Yankee's" battery was being worked to
the limit. It seemed as if the air fairly reeled with the noise and
clamor of combat. Shells buzzed and shrieked about us, and smoke
gathered in thick, stifling clouds all about the ship.

While we were laboring, stripped to the waist, and trying our utmost to
disable or sink the Spanish gunboat, an incident was occurring on deck
which seemed more fitted for the pages of a novel than those of a story
of facts.

It was a display of daredevil courage seldom equalled in warfare.

The lad whom we familiarly termed the "Kid" was the central figure and
the hero. The diary of No. 5 of the after port gun, from which this
narrative is taken, says of him: "'Kid' Thompson is the ship's human
mascot and all-round favorite with officers and men. His bump of respect
is a depression, but his fund of ready wit and his unvarying good nature
are irresistible. He is eighteen years of age, and is a 'powder monkey'
on Number Sixteen, a six-pounder on the spar deck. This gun and Number
Fifteen were the last to obey the order to cease firing during the
bombardment of Santiago."

During the fight with the Spanish gunboat it chanced that the port
battery was not engaged for a brief period, so the "Kid," with the rest
of Number Sixteen crew, were at rest. To better see the shooting the
"Kid" climbed upon the after wheel-house roof. The shells from the
gunboat and the forts were dropping all around, fore and aft, port and
starboard; they whistled through the rigging, and exploded in every
direction, sending their fragments in a veritable hail of metal on all
sides.

The fact that the "Yankee" had so far escaped injury aroused in the
"Kid's" breast a feeling of the utmost contempt for the Spanish gunners.
Coolly standing upon his feet, he assumed the pose of a baseball player,
and holding a capstan