"I'm not bragging--only talking facts, sergeant. I have a friend at the Brooklyn Navy-Yard, and he wrote to me about the gunners on the _Vizcaya_, when that Spanish warship was lying off Staten Island this spring. He said they were--well tired, I reckon we'd call it,--and didn't have any drills worth mentioning all the while the ship was there. Now you know that won't do." "Oh, yes, I know a man must keep at his drills if he doesn't want to grow rusty." "Besides that, you must remember that four-fifths of their sailors don't enlist for themselves. They are shanghied out of the seaport towns, made drunk, and taken on the ships like so many cattle, and they are lucky if they get away inside of ten or fifteen years. And in addition the cat-o'-nine tails is always dangling afore their eyes. Now a man treated like that can't make a good sailor, for the simple reason that he knows he has been treated unjustly, and he can't take an interest in his duties." "Gracious, don't you think you are stretching it a bit?" put in Walter. "What of their officers?" "Nearly every one of them comes from the ranks of the nobility, and that takes a good deal of ambition from the men, too, knowing it will be next to impossible for them to rise, even to a petty office. Now in our navy it's totally different. A man enlists of his own free will, he is treated fairly even though subject to rigorous discipline, and if it's in him he can rise to quite a respectable office and earn a good salary--and he's certain to get his money, while the Spanish sailors and soldiers go without a cent for months and months." "T know what you say about wages is true," said the sergeant in command of the army wagon. "I have it from a friend who left Havana when Lee, our consul, came away, that the majority of the Spanish troops stationed about the city hadn't seen a pay-day for nearly a year." "And then there is another thing," continued Caleb Walton. "The Spaniards have little mechanical ability, and before this war broke out they had a great number of engineers and the like who were foreign born--Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans principally. Now those men won't stay on Spain's warships during this little muss,--at least the Englishmen and Germans won't,--and a green hand at a marine engine can do more damage in ten minutes than a ship-yard can repair in a month. Take it, all in all, therefore, I think we have the best of it," concluded the old gunner. CHAPTER VIII THE MEN BEHIND THE GUNS By the time Fortress Monroe was reached it was quite dark, so but little could be seen outside of those sturdy and frowning walls behind which were concealed the heavy guns intended to protect the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. The warships rode at anchor some distance beyond. To the squadron had just been added the protected cruiser _Minneapolis_, and the _New Orleans_ and _St. Paul_ were also expected, and all was a buzz of excitement alongshore.