About thirty-five miles from Santiago harbor, as one sails eastward, the wall-like mesa on the left sinks from a height of two or three hundred feet to a height of only twenty or thirty; the mountains of the Sierra del Cobre come to an end or recede from the coast, leaving only a few insignificant hills; and through a blue, tremulous heat-haze one looks far inland over the broad, shallow valley of the Guantanamo River.
We entered the beautiful Bay of Guantanamo about half-past five o'clock on Saturday afternoon, and found it full of war-ships and transports. The white hospital steamer Solace lay at anchor over toward the western side of the harbor, and between her and the eastern shore were the Dolphin, the Eagle, the Resolute, the Marblehead, and three or four large black colliers from Key West. As we rounded the long, low point on the western side of the entrance and steamed slowly into the spacious bay, a small steam-launch came puffing out to meet us, and, as soon as she was within hailing distance, an officer in the white uniform of the navy rose in the stern-sheets, put his hands to his mouth, and shouted: "Captain McCalla presents his compliments to the captain of the State of Texas, and requests that you follow me and anchor between the Marblehead and the Haitian cable-steamer."
"All right," replied Captain Young, from the bridge.
"That sounds well," I said to one of the Red Cross men who was standing near me. "It shows that things are not allowed to go helter-skelter here."
We followed the little launch into the harbor and dropped anchor in the place indicated, which was about one hundred yards from shore on the eastern side of the channel, and just opposite the intrenched camp of Colonel Huntington's marines. I was impatient to land and see the place where the American flag had first been raised on Cuban soil; but darkness came on soon, and it did not seem worth while to leave the ship that night.
After breakfast on the following morning, I took a small boat and went off to the Marblehead to call upon Captain McCalla, who was in command of the station. I had made his acquaintance in Washington, when he was one of the members of a board appointed to consider means of sending relief to the Greely arctic expedition; but I had not seen him in many years, and it is not surprising, perhaps, that I almost failed to recognize him in his Cuban costume. The morning was hot and oppressive, and I found him clad in what was, in the strictest sense of the words, an undress uniform, consisting of undershirt, canvas trousers, and an old pair of slippers. Like the sensible man I knew him to be, he made no apology for his dress, but welcomed me heartily and introduced me to Captain Philip of the battle-ship Texas, who had just come into the harbor after a fresh supply of coal. As I entered, Captain McCalla was telling Captain Philip, with great glee, the story of his experience off the Cuban coast between Morro Castle and Aguadores, when his vessel, the Marblehead, was suddenly attacked one night by the whole blockading fleet.
"They saw a railroad-train," he said, "running along the water's edge toward Siboney, and in the darkness mistook it for a Spanish torpedo-boat. The train, of course, soon disappeared; but I happened to be cruising close inshore, just there, as it passed, and they all turned their search-lights on me and opened fire."
"All except the Iowa," corrected Captain Philip, with a smile.
"Yes, all except the Iowa," assented Captain McCalla, laughing heartily, as if it were the funniest of jokes. "Even the Texas didn't show me any mercy; but Bob Evans knew the difference between a railroad-train and a torpedo-boat, and didn't shoot. I told him, the last time I saw him, that he was clearly entitled to take a crack at me. Every other ship in the fleet had had the privilege, and it was his turn. I'm the only man in the navy," he said, with renewed laughter, "who has ever sustained the fire of a whole fleet of battle-ships and cruisers and got away alive."
After Captain Philip had made his call and taken his leave, I explained to Captain McCalla the object of our coming to Guantanamo Bay, and asked whether there were any Cuban refugees in the vicinity who needed food and could be reached. He replied unhesitatingly that there were. He was in almost daily communication, he said, with General Perez, an insurgent leader who was then besieging Guantanamo city, and through that officer he thought he could send food to a large number of people who had taken refuge in the woods north of the bay and were in a destitute and starving condition. He had already sent to them all the food he himself could spare, but it was not half enough to meet their wants. With characteristic promptness and energy he called his stenographer and dictated a letter to General Perez, in which he said that Miss Clara Barton, president of the American National Red Cross, had just reached Guantanamo Bay in the steamer State of Texas, with fourteen hundred tons of food intended for Cuban reconcentrados, and asked whether he (Perez) could furnish pack-animals and an escort for, say, five thousand rations, if they could be landed on the western side of the lower bay. This letter he sent to General Perez by a special courier from the detachment of Cubans then serving with the marines, and said that he should probably receive a reply in the course of two or three days. As nothing more could be done at that time, I returned to the State of Texas, reported progress to Miss Barton, and then went on shore to send a telegram to Washington by the Haitian cable, which had just been recovered and repaired, and to take a look at the camp of the marines.