THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR AND RED CROSS NURSES ON “THE BAYERN.” [Page 114.]
MESSINA. ITALIAN MILITARY ENCAMPMENT. [Page 54.]
MESSINA. ITALIAN OFFICERS AND MEN. [Page 54.]
Captain Belknap having commandeered three small craft against the need of landing on an open beach, for which the ship’s boats were unsuitable. As she sailed out of the harbor of Civitavecchia, past the old lighthouse with the two defending towers, the “Bayern” flew the American ensign at the fore, the German merchant flag aft, and between foremast and funnel on the triatic stay the flag of the whole Christian world, a cross vermilion on a ground white.
IV
THE CRUISE OF THE “BAYERN”
“It looks as if God had put His foot upon it!” said Hugh, the Yeoman. J., watching the pallid sunset from the deck of the “Bayern,” as she swung at anchor in the sickle-shaped harbor of Messina, turned from the sombre Sicilian mountains, rising tier above tier to the wet gray sky, and looked at what men called the “indispensable city” before God had set His foot upon it. The pile of smoking ruins, in some places tall as the wrecked buildings had originally been, in others crushed flat to the earth, looked indeed as if some mighty being had stamped his way with giant strides over the city; you could trace his footsteps in the shattered remnants of the great Sicilian seaport.