Channing returned to the bow and placed the situation before the captain. That gentleman did not hesitate. He disappeared down the companion-way, and, when an instant later he returned, hurled a bottle over the ship's side.
The next morning when Channing came on deck the land was just in sight, a rampart of dark green mountains rising in heavy masses against the bright, glaring blue of the sky. He strained his eyes for the first sight of the ships, and his ears for the faintest echoes of distant firing, but there was no sound save the swift rush of the waters at the bow. The sea lay smooth and flat before him, the sun flashed upon it; the calm and hush of early morning hung over the whole coast of Cuba.
An hour later the captain came forward and stood at his elbow.
“How's Keating?” Channing asked. “I tried to wake him, but I couldn't.”
The captain kept his binoculars to his eyes, and shut his lips grimly. “Mr. Keating's very bad,” he said. “He had another bottle hidden somewhere, and all last night—” he broke off with a relieved sigh. “It's lucky for him,” he added, lowering the glasses, “that there'll be no fight to-day.”
Channing gave a gasp of disappointment. “What do you mean?” he protested.
“You can look for yourself,” said the captain, handing him the glasses. “They're at their same old stations. There'll be no bombardment to-day. That's the Iowa, nearest us, the Oregon's to starboard of her, and the next is the Indiana. That little fellow close under the land is the Gloucester.”
He glanced up at the mast to see that the press-boat's signal was conspicuous, they were drawing within range.
With the naked eye, Channing could see the monster, mouse-colored war-ships, basking in the sun, solemn and motionless in a great crescent, with its one horn resting off the harbor-mouth. They made great blots on the sparkling, glancing surface of the water. Above each superstructure, their fighting-tops, giant davits, funnels, and gibbet-like yards twisted into the air, fantastic and incomprehensible, but the bulk below seemed to rest solidly on the bottom of the ocean, like an island of lead. The muzzles of their guns peered from the turrets as from ramparts of rock.
Channing gave a sigh of admiration.