"The steamers from Havana ought really to be in sight by this time," answered Ben Wood; "they left on the twenty-sixth." "Well, yes, on the twenty-sixth. But some of those transport-ships palmed off on us are the limit and can't even make ten knots an hour. Their rickety engines set the pace for the fleet, and unless the _Olympia_ wishes to abandon the shaky old hulks to their fate, she must keep step with them." Lieutenant Gibson Spencer swept the horizon once more with his marine-glass and stopped searchingly at one spot. "If that's not the _Flying Dutchman_, they're ships," he remarked, "probably our ships." The light-house keeper, a slender Mexican, came on the gallery, saying: "Ships are coming over there, sir," as he pointed in the direction which Spencer had indicated. Lieutenant Ben Wood stepped to the stationary telescope in the light-room below the place for the lamps, and started to adjust the screws, but the heat of the metal, which had become red-hot beneath the burning rays of the sun, made him start: "Hot hole," he swore under his breath. Lieutenant Spencer conversed a moment with the keeper and then looked again through his glass at Corpus Christi, where the tug was just making fast to the pier. The third barge knocked violently against the piles, so that a whole shower of splinters fell into the water. "Gibson," cried Lieutenant Wood suddenly from his place in the light-room, his voice sounding muffled on account of the small space, "those are not our ships." Spencer looked through the telescope and arrived at the same conclusion. "No," he said; "we have no ships like that, but they're coming nearer and we'll soon be able to make out what they are!" "Those ships certainly don't belong to our fleet," he repeated after another long look at the vessels slowly growing larger on the horizon. They had two enormous funnels and only one mast and even the arched roofs of their turrets could now be clearly distinguished. "If I didn't know that our English friends owned the only ships of that caliber, and that our own are unhappily still in process of equipment at Newport News, I should say that those were two _Dreadnoughts_." "I guess you've had a sunstroke," rang out the answer. "Sunstroke or no sunstroke, those are two _Dreadnoughts_." "But where can they come from?" The three men examined the horizon in silence, till Lieutenant Wood suddenly broke it by exclaiming: "There, do you see, to the left, just appearing on the horizon, that's our transport fleet--eight--ten ships; the one in front is probably the _Olympia_." "Twelve ships," counted the keeper, "and if I may be allowed to say so, the two in front are battleships." "There they are then," said Ben Wood, "and now we'll get something to eat in a jiffy, for we'll have our work cut out for us in an hour!" "Where shall we eat?" asked Spencer, "I'll gladly dispense with the grub at Signor Morrosini's to-day."