"Don't cheer; the poor devils are dying!"
At that instant Teddy Dunlap understood what might be the horror of war, and forgetting the joy and exultation which had been his an instant previous, the lad covered his eyes with his hand,—sick at heart that he should have taken even a passive part in that game which could be ended only by suffering and death.
Later, after the men were sufficiently calm to be able to discuss intelligently the doings of that day when the full Spanish fleet was destroyed by Yankee vessels who throughout all the action and chase sustained no injury whatsoever, it was learned that more than six hundred human beings had been sent out of the world in less than four hours, and nearly eighteen hundred men were taken prisoners by the American vessels.
Teddy Dunlap was like one in a daze from the instant he realised what all this thrilling excitement meant, until Bill Jones, who had been ordered to some duty below, came to his side in the greatest excitement.
"What do you think of that, lad?" he cried, shaking the boy vigorously as he pointed seaward, and Teddy, looking in the direction indicated by his outstretched finger, but without seeing anything, asked, hesitatingly:
"Is it the Cristobal Colon?"
"Of course it isn't, my lad! That vessel is a wreck off Tarquino Point, so we heard half an hour ago. Don't you see the ship here almost alongside?"
"Oh, yes, I see her," Teddy replied, with a sigh of relief. "There's been so much that is terrible goin' on around us that it's like as if I was dazed."
"An' that's what you must be, lad, not to see that here's the Brooklyn nearer alongside than she's like to come again for a year or more."
"The Brooklyn!" Teddy cried, now aroused from the stupefaction of horror which had come upon him with the knowledge of all the suffering caused that day. "The Brooklyn!"