flags was displayed from the signal-halyards of the Miantonomoh; two or three fast sea-going tugs carrying the naval commandant and other harbor officers started seaward at full speed, with long plumes of black smoke trailing to leeward from their lead-colored stacks; and the eight hundred marines on the auxiliary cruiser Panther swarmed on deck and crowded eagerly aft to gaze at the dim, distant outlines of the newly arrived vessels.

About the middle of the forenoon the swift, heavily armed gunboat Scorpion entered the harbor flying the commodore's pennant, and was received with a salute of eleven guns from the monitor Miantonomoh. The remainder of the day passed without any other unusual or noteworthy incident, but sometime in the night the fleet of Admiral Sampson joined the Flying Squadron in the offing, and Thursday morning the people of Key West saw, in their harbor and at sea off Fort Taylor, the largest and most powerful fleet of war-vessels that had ever assembled, perhaps, under the American flag.

All day Thursday the harbor was the center of incessant movement, activity, and excitement. The lighter vessels of the Flying Squadron, which had come in to coal, rejoined the heavier cruisers and battle-ships in the offing, and their places were taken by the big monitors Amphitrite and Terror, the cruisers Detroit and Marblehead, and the gunboats Wilmington, Helena, Castine, and Machias, which steamed in one after another from the fleet of Admiral Sampson. When all these vessels had anchored off Fort Taylor and the government wharf, there were in the harbor more than twenty ships of war, including three torpedo-boats and four monitors; six or eight armed yachts of the mosquito fleet; twelve or fifteen big transports, troop-ships, and colliers awaiting orders; twenty-two Spanish prizes of all sorts, from the big liner Argonauta to the little brigantine Frascito; and, finally, a fleet of newspaper tugs, launches, and despatch-boats almost equal, numerically, to the fleets of Commodore Schley and Admiral Sampson taken together. The marine picture presented by the harbor with all these monitors, cruisers, gunboats, yachts, transports, troop-ships, torpedo-boats, colliers, despatch-boats, and Spanish prizes lying at anchor, with flags and signals flying in the clear sunshine and on the translucent green water of the tropics, was a picture of more than ordinary interest and beauty, and one that Key West, perhaps, may never see again.

About two o'clock in the afternoon I was able, through the courtesy of Mr. Trumbull White in offering me the use of the Chicago "Record's" despatch-boat, to go off to the flagship New York and present my letter of introduction from the President to Admiral Sampson. I was received most cordially and hospitably, and, after conferring with him for half an hour with regard to the plans and work of the Red Cross, so far as they depended upon or related to the navy, I returned to the State of Texas. The fleet sailed again at half-past ten o'clock that night for the coast of Cuba.

After the departure of the blockading fleet and the Flying Squadron on May 19 and 20, the small army of war correspondents at Key West had little to do except watch for the arrival of vessels with news from the Cuban coast. Most of them regarded this work—or rather absence of work—as tedious and irksome in the extreme; but if they had been living on board ship instead of at the hotel they would have found a never-failing source of interest and entertainment in the constantly changing picture presented by the harbor. Six or eight war-ships, ranging in size and fighting power from monitors to torpedo-boats, were still lying at anchor off the custom-house and the Marine Hospital; transports with stores and munitions of war were discharging their cargoes at the piers; big four-masted schooners, laden with coal for the blockading fleet, swung back and forth with the ebbing and flowing tides as they awaited orders from the naval commandant; graceful steam-yachts, flying the flag of the Associated Press, were constantly coming in with news or going out in search of it; swift naphtha-launches carrying naval officers in white uniforms darted hither and thither from one cruiser to another, whistling shrill warnings to the slower boats pulled by sailors from the transports; officers on the monitors were exchanging "wigwag" flag-signals with other officers on the gunboats or the troop-ships; and from every direction came shouts, bugle-calls, the shrieks of steam-whistles, the peculiar jarring rattle of machine-guns at target practice, and the measured beats of twenty or thirty ships' bells, striking, at different distances, but almost synchronously, the half-hours.

Interesting, however, as Key West harbor might seem in the daytime, it was far more beautiful and impressive at night. One clear, still evening late in May, when the rosy flush of the short tropical twilight had faded, and the Sand Key beacon began to glow faintly, like a setting planet, on the darkening horizon in the west, I went up on the hurricane-deck alone and looked about the harbor. The city, the war-ships, and the massive square outlines of Fort Taylor had all vanished in the gathering darkness and gloom, but in their places were rows, clusters, and constellations innumerable of steadily burning lights. A long, slender shaft of bluish radiance streamed out from the corner of Fort Taylor, widening as it extended seaward, until it struck and illuminated with a sort of ghostly phosphorescence the whitish hull of a gunboat stealing noiselessly into the harbor from the direction of the Cuban coast. The strange craft hung out a perpendicular string of red and white lights, which winked solemnly once or twice, changed color two or three times, and then vanished. A second search-light from the monitor Miantonomoh sent another slender electric ray of inquiry in the direction of the intruder, as if still doubtful of its character; but when the straight blue sword of the Fort Taylor search-light rose to the clouds and fell to the water three times, as if striking a whole league of ocean three successive and measured blows, the Miantonomoh understood that all was well, and her own search-light left the gunboat and swept across the starry sky overhead like the tail of a huge blue comet swinging at its perigee around a darkened sun.

In a moment the monitor itself hung out a string of lights which winked, changed color, vanished, reappeared, and again vanished, leaving only a red light at the masthead. In a moment an answering signal-rocket was thrown up by an invisible war-ship in the direction of Fort Taylor, and instantly two powerful search-lights were focused upon a pale, whitish object, far out at sea, which looked in the bluish, ghostly glare like the mainsail of the Flying Dutchman. Before I had time to form a conjecture as to the significance of these mysterious signals and apparitions, I was startled by a sudden flash and the thunder of a heavy gun from the darkness ahead; and away out at sea, in the strip of green water illuminated by the search-lights, a heavy projectile plunged into the ocean, near the sail of the Flying Dutchman, and sent a column of white spray thirty feet into the air. Then I understood what it all meant. The Wilmington, was engaged in night gun practice. For half an hour or more the war-ship threw solid shot and explosive shells into that illuminated strip of green water, and the thunder of her cannon, which could be heard all over the island, suggested to the startled negro and Cuban population that the Spanish fleet had arrived and was bombarding the city. Then the Miantonomoh hung out another string of colored lanterns, the uproar ceased, and the pallid, ghostly canvas of the Flying Dutchman suddenly vanished as the search-lights left it and resumed their slow, sweeping exploration of the