Arriving at General Shafter's headquarters the communication from the Spanish commander was delivered with some ceremony. It was quite long. General Toral asked that the time of the truce be further extended, as he wanted to communicate with the Madrid government concerning the surrender of the city. He also asked that cable operators be sent to operate the line between Santiago and Kingston. He promised on his word of honor as a soldier that the operators would, not be asked to transmit any matter except that bearing on the surrender, and that he would return them safe to El Caney when a final reply was received from Madrid. This request for operators was made necessary by the fact that the men who had been operating the Santiago cable were British subjects, and they had all left the city under the protection of the British consul when the Americans gave notice that the city would be bombarded unless it surrendered.
The commissioner said that General Toral wanted to consult with the authorities in Madrid, for the reason that he had been unable to communicate with Captain-General Blanco in Havana.
It was finally arranged that the truce, which expired at four o'clock on the 6th, should be extended until the same hour on Saturday, July 9th.
The commissioner was escorted back through another part of the camp which was filled with bristling guns. The British consul having given his consent to the operators returning to the city, messengers were sent to El Caney to learn if the men would go. They expressed their willingness, and were escorted to the Avails of the city, where they were met by a Spanish escort and taken to the office of the cable company.
DESTRUCTION OF CERVERA'S FLEET.
On the morning of July 3, Admiral Cervera, commander of the Spanish fleet in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, made a bold dash for liberty by a desperate attempt to break through the American line, in the hope of reaching the open sea.
In the face of overwhelming odds, with nothing before him but inevitable destruction or surrender if he remained any longer in the trap in which the American fleet held him, he made a dash from the harbor at the time the Americans least expected him to do so, and fighting every inch of his way, even when his ship was ablaze and sinking, he tried to escape the doom which was written on the muzzle of every American gun trained upon his vessels.
The Spaniards made a daring venture, and with a less vigilant foe they might have succeeded. It was known in the fleet that General Shatter was closing in on the city and that Admiral Cervera's position was desperate, but it was supposed that he would remain in the harbor and train his guns on the American land forces as long as possible, and that he would blow up his ships rather than allow them to fall into the hands of the enemy. It is certain that Admiral Sampson did not expect Cervera to make a break for liberty, although the American commander has known for several days that the sinking of the Merrimac did not completely block the channel entrance to Santiago harbor.
At 9:35 on Sunday morning the flagship New York, with Admiral Sampson on board, was many miles to the eastward, bearing the admiral to a conference with General Shafter. The fleet as a whole was much farther off shore than usual. Any one looking seaward from Morro Castle and seeing the distant specks on the water would not have realized that the port was effectively blockaded. Evidently the Spaniards had been waiting for the American fleet to become thus scattered. They thought our fleet was napping, and that this was the time to make a quick exit and start homeward.
Very soon after the New York had started to Siboney the shore batteries opened fire on the American fleet. As the vessels were practically out of range and not in the usual line formation this firing from the shore caused some surprise. In the first place, these batteries had been shelled the day before, and it was supposed that they had been silenced, and in the second place it seemed foolish of the Spaniards to undertake haphazard firing.