If the fight had been hard, guarding the trenches was almost equally so. The sun beat down fiercely, and the newly turned up earth made many of the Rough Riders sick. Added to this, provisions were, as usual, slow in arriving. Those in the trenches were kept there six hours, and then relieved by the others who were farther to the rear. "Running from the cover of brush to the trenches was no easy matter," says one Rough Rider who was there. "We had dug the trenches in a hurry, and had no passages from the rear leading to them. All we could do was to wait for a signal, and then rush, and when we did that, the Spaniards would open a hot fire and keep it up for perhaps fifteen minutes. The sun was enough to turn a man's brain, and more than one poor fellow caught a fever there that proved fatal to him." Through the entire day the firing continued, but no advances were made upon either side. The Americans were waiting for reinforcements, and the Spaniards were doing likewise. On our side a dynamite gun and two Colt's guns were used, but with little success. But the Gatling guns proved very effective, and caused a great loss to the enemy. The city of Santiago lies on the northeast coast of a large bay of the same name. This bay is shaped somewhat like a bottle, with a long neck joining it to the Caribbean Sea. In the harbor, at the time of the battles just described, the Spaniards had a fleet of war-ships under the command of Admiral Cervera, an old and able naval commander. In the fleet were four large cruisers and two torpedo-boats. Three of the cruisers were of seven thousand tons burden each, and all could make from eighteen to nineteen knots an hour. Each carried a crew of about five hundred men, and all were well supplied with guns and ammunition. To keep this fleet "bottled up," our own navy had a fleet of its own just outside of the harbor, where it had been stationed ever since Admiral Cervera had been discovered within. The American fleet consisted of the cruiser _Brooklyn_, which was Commodore Schley's flag-ship, the battleships _Texas_, _Iowa_, _Indiana_, and _Oregon_ (the latter having sailed all the way from the Pacific coast around Cape Horn to get into the fight), and the converted yachts _Gloucester_ and _Vixen_. There were also close at hand, but not near enough to get into the fight, the cruiser _New York_, Admiral Sampson's flag-ship, and several other vessels of lesser importance. For a long time it had been thought that Cervera would try to escape from the harbor, in which he could not be reached because of the strong forts that protected the entrance. To bottle him up more effectively, the Americans tried to block up the harbor entrance by sinking an old iron steamboat, the _Merrimac_, in the channel. This heroic work was undertaken by Lieutenant Hobson with a crew of seven daring men, but the plan failed, for the _Merrimac_, instead of sinking where intended, swung to one side of the main channel.