"Joseph Fry.
"Written on board the Tornado, Nov. 7, 1873."
At six o'clock on the morning of November 7, Captain Fry and thirty-six of his crew and twelve passengers were brutally butchered in the presence of a ferocious mob, who mangled the senseless remains.
There still survived ninety-three unfortunates. By this time the telegraph had spread the terrible news throughout the world, and awakened a tempest of indignation everywhere save in Havanna and Madrid. Even in Spain, at the time enjoying a government nominally republican, there was some surprise at the horrible tragedy, and Señor Castelar, his humanity spurred up by a peremptory despatch from the English Foreign Office, was moved to beseech of his lieutenant to be a little less hasty in his action. The appeal was unheeded, and all of the hapless victims were condemned to immediate execution. But General Buriel had made an epicure's mistake in prolonging his feast.
There was no American vessel of war in the neighbourhood of Santiago de Cuba, but, what was more to the purpose, as far as the fate of the prisoners was concerned, there was the inevitable British man-of-war within a day's sail. The sloop Niobe lay in the harbour of Kingston, with half of her crew on shore liberty, when the news of the massacre reached her commander, Sir Lambton Loraine. He sailed at once for Santiago. An English captain does not need instructions in such an emergency. He has standing orders and can trust to his nation for support of his acts. "I am an English subject," said Thompson, a sailor of the Virginius, "and they won't dare lay hands on me." He knew his countrymen, but he mistook the Spaniard.
He and fifteen compatriots were among the murdered fifty-three.
Then did the hearts of other British subjects and American citizens fail them as they awaited their doom. The Americans had long abandoned hope. The English were giving way to despair, when a glad sight met their eyes. It was the Niobe entering the harbour, with the cross of St. George flying at her peak. She did not stop to salute the fort, but gracefully rounded to, a few cables' lengths from the Tornado and her prize, with port-holes open and her crew at quarters. Ere her anchor fell, the captain's gig was in the water, and soon its oars were flashing spray as it sped shoreward. In the stern sheets sat the young commander.
His veto of the massacres was delivered not a moment too soon. Buriel demurred, questioning the Englishman's right to interfere. Loraine insisted on the right, claiming that there were British subjects among the prisoners. To the Spaniard's denial of that fact, he answered that he would take upon himself, then, the responsibility of protecting American citizens, in the absence of their own defenders. The delicate points of this officious interference, Señor Buriel might have debated, long and ingeniously, with a different kind of adversary. But the English sailor was no casuist. His arguments were brutally direct. "Stop the murders, or I bombard your town," they said in so many words. Indeed, he was a very rash and impulsive young man. Under a free government he would have been cashiered, without benefit of clergy. Only a few months before, so the rumour went, he had fired hot shot and shell into the town of Omoa, Honduras; and there was no guessing what he might not be tempted to do with Santiago, upon such very strong provocation. Extreme measures were averted, however, by Buriel's consenting to reprieve his prisoners.
Then arose the question of reparation. Minister Sickles at Madrid took high and dignified ground, insisting upon the fullest apology for the insult offered to his country's flag, and indemnity to the families of the murdered men. Castelar assented to a treaty covering every demand of Mr. Sickles, and was about to sign it formally, when he received advices from Washington which made him retract his concession, and made General Sickles telegraph his resignation. It appeared that the Spanish minister at Washington had proved himself a skilful diplomat by negotiating with the American Secretary of State a protocol, the terms of which were as extraordinary as the secret manner in which they were drawn up.
By this arrangement, which settled the question for ever, the United States waived its demands for a salute to the insulted flag, accepting a formal apology instead, waived the question of indemnity, and did not press for the punishment of the guilty officials of Santiago. What the Government did demand and obtain, it would be hard to say. The only visible reparation was the conditional surrender of the captured vessel, for trial before an American court of admiralty. Should it transpire that she had been in lawful possession of her American register, then she was to be given to her owners; if otherwise, she was to be restored to her captors. Strangely enough, there was no provision made in the latter contingency for the rendition and punishment of the survivors. All possible dispute on that point was happily averted by the inscrutable catastrophe which befell the luckless craft. She foundered, opportunely, in a gale off Cape Fear on her voyage to the United States, to the great relief of two governments.