Three-quarters of an hour later the tug mentioned in the beginning of the chapter appeared again at the entrance to the lagoon. Several men could be seen in the stern holding a large white sheet upon which a man was painting a large red cross, and when the symbol of human love and assistance was finished, the sheet was hoisted at the flagstaff. Two other tugs followed the example of the first one.
But could the enemy have taken the three little tugs for torpedo-boats? It seemed so, for suddenly a shell, which touched the surface of the water twice, whizzed past and hit the first steamer amidships just below the funnel. And while the little vessel was still enveloped by the black smoke caused by the bursting of the shell, her bow and stern rose high out of the water and she sank immediately, torn in two. The thunder of the shot sounded far over the water and found an echo among the houses at Corpus Christi.
"Now they're even shooting at the ambulance flag," roared Ben Wood, who was rushing about on the deck of the President Cleveland and exhorting the crew to hoist the anchor as fast as possible so as to get out to the field of battle. But as the boiler-fires were low, this seemed to take an eternity.
At last, about three o'clock in the afternoon, they succeeded in reaching a spot where a few hundred men were clinging to the floating wreckage. The rest had been attended to by the enemy's shots, the sea and the sharks.
The enemy had wasted only a few shots on the transport-steamers, as a single well-aimed explosive shell was quite sufficient to entirely destroy one of the merchant-vessels, and the battle with the Olympia had lasted only a very short time, as the distance had evidently been too great to enable the American shots to reach the enemy. That was the end of the Olympia, Admiral Dewey's flag-ship at Cavite! The two smaller cruisers had been shot to pieces just as rapidly.
The results of this unexpected setback were terribly disheartening, since all idea of a flank attack on the Japanese positions in the South had to be abandoned.
But where had the two Dreadnoughts come from? They had not been seen by a living soul until they had appeared in the roads of Corpus Christi. They had risen from the sea for a few hours, like an incarnation of the ghostly rumors of flying squadrons of Japanese cruisers, and they had disappeared from the field of action just as suddenly as they had come. If it had not been for the cruel reality of the destruction of the transport fleet, no one would soon have believed in the existence of these phantom ships. But the frenzied fear of the inhabitants of the coast-towns cannot well take the form of iron and steel, and nightmares, no matter how vivid, cannot produce ships whose shells sweep an American squadron off the face of the sea.
It had been known for years that two monster ships of the Dreadnought type were being built for Brazil in the English shipyards. No one knew where Brazil was going to get the money to pay for the battleships or what the Brazilian fleet wanted with such huge ships, but they continued to be built. It was generally supposed that England was building them as a sort of reserve for her own fleet; but once again was public opinion mistaken. Only those who years before had raised a warning protest and been ridiculed for seeing ghosts, proved to be right. They had prophesied long ago that these ships were not intended for England, but for her ally, Japan.
The vessels were finished by the end of June and during the last days of the month the Brazilian flag was openly hoisted on board the San Paulo and Minas Geraes, as they were called, the English shipbuilders having indignantly refused to sell them to the United States on the plea of feeling bound to observe strict neutrality. The two armored battleships started on their voyage across the Atlantic with Brazilian crews on board; but when they arrived at a spot in the wide ocean where no spectators were to be feared, they were met by six transport-steamers conveying the Japanese crews for the two warships, no others than the thousand Japs who had been landed at Rio de Janeiro as coolies for the Brazilian coffee plantations in the summer of 1908. They had been followed in November by four hundred more.