that he would not go ashore until he must. He has from the first been
persistent in staying at Manila. There has been nothing that could
induce him to abandon in person the prize won May 1st. His order
from the President was to destroy the Spanish fleet. It was given
on the first day of the legal existence of the war, counting the day
gained, in crossing the Pacific Ocean from the United States to the
Philippines, when the 180th degree of longitude west from Greenwich
is reached and reckoned. It was thus the President held back when the
war was on; and the next day after Dewey got the order at Hongkong
he was on the way. The Spaniards at Manila could not have been more
astonished at Dewey's way of doing, if they had all been struck by
lightning under a clear sky. They had no occasion to be "surprised,"
having the cable in daily communication with Madrid, and, more than
that, a Manila paper of the last day of April contained an item of
real news--the biggest news item ever published in that town! It
was from a point on the western coast of the island of Luzon, and
the substance of it that four vessels that seemed to be men-of-war,
had been sighted going south, and supposed to be the American fleet.

What did the Spaniards suppose the American fleet they knew well
had left Hongkong was going south for? If Admiral Dewey had been a
commonplace man he would have paused and held a council of war nigh the
huge rock Corregidor at the mouth of Manila Bay. There is a channel
on either side of that island, and both were reputed to be guarded
by torpedoes. The Spaniards had an enormous stock of munitions of
war--modern German guns enough to have riddled the fleet of American
cruisers--and why did they not have torpedoes? They had the Mauser
rifle, which has wonderful range, and ten millions of smokeless powder
cartridges. Marksmen could sweep the decks of a ship with Mausers at
the distance of a mile, and with the smokeless cartridges it would have