"It is all right, Sergeant," he said. "We heard of you from General Wheeler, who, by-the-way, is much pleased with the results of your expedition. So I came to find you, with a reprimand for not having reported at once to Colonel Wood, but when I saw you devouring hardtack, I was quite willing to accept starvation as your excuse. Now, however, the Colonel would be pleased to see you." After an hour spent at headquarters, where he was honored with an invitation to eat a second supper, during which his apparently unappeasable appetite for hardtack and bacon caused much amusement. Ridge was allowed to return to his comrades. A throng of these gathered about the camp-fire of Rollo Van Kyp's mess, and, unmindful of the showers that fell at short intervals, listened for hours with breathless interest and undisguised envy to the story of his recent adventures. They were happily reassured by his description of the strength of Santiago's fortifications, and his assertion that the Spaniards would put up a good fight before surrendering them; for they had been inclined to think and speak contemptuously of the enemy who they feared would yield without a struggle. So the greater part of the night was passed. They ought to have been asleep, storing up strength against the morrow; but who could sleep amid the uproar and excitement of that first night at Siboney? Not the Rough Riders, at any rate. Half a dozen transports had come into the little bay; and from them scores of boat-loads of troops and supplies were being landed through the roaring surf on the open beach. A thousand naked figures, screaming, ducking, and splashing one another like so many schoolboys on a frolic, assisted and impeded the landing of their comrades, who, crowded into pontoons and small boats, were pitched, howling with delight, from the crest of each in-rolling breaker. A half-moon and the powerful search-lights of two war-ships flooded the whole extraordinary scene with brightness. On shore the dripping arrivals crowded about the red camp-fires drying their soaking uniforms, cooking, eating, singing, laughing, and filled with irrepressible happiness at having escaped from their "prison hulks" and reached Cuba at last. Thus, at dead of night, was an army landed on a hostile shore, and by two o'clock in the morning five thousand American troops were crowded in and about the village of Siboney.