“ ‘Cease firing!’ commanded Captain Jack Philip of the Texas.
“So far as the Vizcaya and the Infanta Maria Teresa were concerned, the battle—and for that matter the war—was ended.
“Huge volumes of black smoke, edged with red flame, rolled from every port and shot hole of the Vizcaya, as from the Teresa. They were both furnaces of glowing fire. Though they had come from the harbour to certain battle, not a wooden bulkhead, nor a partition in the quarters either of officers or men had been taken out, nor had trunks and chests been sent ashore. Neither had the wooden decks nor any other wooden fixtures been prepared to resist fire. Apparently the crew had not even wet down the decks.
“But the Texas tarried at this gruesome scene only for a moment. They wished only to make sure that [pg 262]the two Spaniards were really out of the fight, and when they saw the Iowa was going to stand by both, away they went to join the race between the Brooklyn and the Oregon on our side, and the Cristobal Colon and Almirante Oquendo on the other.
“In spite of the original superior speed on the part of the Spaniards, and in spite of the delay on the part of the Texas, the Spaniards were not yet wholly out of range, though the Cristobal Colon was reaching away at a speed that gave the Spanish shore forces hope.
“Under battened hatches the Yankee firemen, stripped to their trousers, plied their shovels and raised the steam-gauges higher. The Yankee ships were grass-grown and barnacled, but now they were driven as never before since their trial trips. The Spaniards had called us pigs, but Nemesis had turned us into spear-armed huntsmen in chase of game that neither tusks nor legs could save.
“For while the Colon was showing a speed that was the equal at least of our own Brooklyn, long-headed Commodore Schley saw that she was hugging the coast, although a point of land loomed in the distance to cut her off or drive her out to sea.
“Instead of striving to close in on the Spaniards, Schley headed straight for that point,—took the shortest cut for it, so to speak,—and in that way drew steadily ahead of the Colon, leaving to the Oregon and Texas the task of holding the Spaniards from turning out across the Brooklyn’s stern.
U. S. S. IOWA.