From the afternoon of the eleventh of June until this morning of the fourteenth, the Americans had remained on the defensive,—seven hundred against two thousand or more. Now, however, different tactics were to be used. Colonel Huntington had decided that it was time to turn the tables, and before the night was come the occupants of the graves on the crest of the hill had been avenged. A scouting party, made up of nine officers, two hundred and eighty marines, and forty-one Cubans, was divided into four divisions, the first of which had orders to destroy a water-tank from which the enemy drew supplies. The second was to attack the Spanish camp beyond the first range of hills. The third had for its objective point a signal-station from which information as to the movements of the American fleet had been flashed into Santiago. The fourth division was to act as the reserve. In half an hour from the time of leaving camp the signal-station was in the hands of the Americans, and the heliograph outfit lost to the enemy. The boys of ’98 had suffered no loss, while eight Spaniards lay with faces upturned to the rays of the burning sun. At noon the Spanish camp had been taken, with a loss of two Cubans killed, one American and four Cubans wounded. Twenty-three Spaniards were dead. The water-tank was destroyed, and the enemy, panic-stricken, was fleeing here and there, yet further harassed by a heavy fire from the _Dolphin_, who sent her shells among the fugitives whenever they came in view. When the day drew near its close, and the weary but triumphant marines returned to camp, a hundred of the enemy lay out on the hills dead; more than twice that number must have been wounded, and eighteen were being brought in as prisoners. [Illustration: U. S. S. VESUVIUS.] On this night of June 14th, at the entrance to Santiago Harbour, the dynamite cruiser _Vesuvius_—that experimental engine of destruction—was given a test in actual warfare, and the result is thus graphically pictured by a correspondent of the New York _Herald_: “Three shells, each containing two hundred pounds of guncotton, were fired last night from the dynamite guns of the _Vesuvius_ at the hill at the western entrance to Santiago Harbour, on which there is a fort. “The frightful execution done by those three shots will be historic. “Guns in that fort had not been silenced when the fleet drew off after the attack that followed the discovery of the presence of the Spanish fleet in the harbour. “In the intense darkness of last night the _Vesuvius_ steamed into close range and let go one of her mysterious missiles. “There was no flash, no smoke. There was no noise at first. The pneumatic guns on the little cruiser did their work silently. It was only when they felt the shock that the men on the other war-ships knew the _Vesuvius_ was in action.