The Fleet Sails by Corregidor.
And thus, with a full appreciation of the thousand and one dangers, known and unknown, that beset his path, Dewey kept straight by Corregidor.
It was eleven o’clock, and the men of the fleet, which was now almost past the island, were congratulating themselves that they were undiscovered when a solitary rocket soared over the lofty lighthouse; there was an answering light from the shore, and every moment the Americans expected the boom of the Spanish guns, long primed with a deadly welcome for the “Yankee pigs.”
The narrowest part of the inlet had been passed, and still no sign that the entering fleet had been discovered. Impressive, indeed, was that long line of gloomy hulls, steering for battle, and courting destruction. The Olympia, the Baltimore, the Raleigh, the Petrel, the Concord, and the Boston, with the two transports the Nanshan and the Zapiro, convoyed by the McCulloch, on the flag-ship’s port quarter—all kept on in the same straight course, while the men on board were partaking of light refreshment. For all felt that a great day’s work was before them.
But where are the enemy? was the thought uppermost in every mind. For to the Americans themselves it seemed that they were surely making enough noise to be heard by the sentries on the shore. Doubtless they were asleep, dreaming a Spanish dream of mañana.
It was shortly past eleven o’clock, when from the smokestack of the convoy McCulloch flew a shower of sparks. A fireman had thrown open the furnace-doors and shoveled in a few pounds of soft coal.
This was evidently seen by some one on shore, for it was just fourteen minutes past eleven when a bugle sounded an alarm, and from the west came a blinding glare, a shrill whistle overhead, and the heavy boom of a cannon.