As we circled again over the spot where the _Pennsylvania_ went down we were able to make out a few men clinging to fragments of wreckage and calling for help. “Do you see them? Do you hear them?” cried Astor, his face like chalk. “We must save one of them. She’ll carry three if we throw over some of our oil.” This explains why we did not see the end of the battle of the Caribbean and the complete destruction of the American fleet. We threw overboard a hundred pounds of oil and started back to Kingston with a crippled engine and a half-drowned lieutenant of the _Pennsylvania_ stretched on the cabin floor. How we saved him is a miracle. One of our wings buckled when we struck the water and I got a nasty clip from the propeller as I dragged the man aboard; but, somehow, we did the thing and got home hours later with one of the few survivors of Admiral Fletcher’s ill-fated expedition. I have no idea how I wrote my story that night; my head was throbbing with pain and I was so weak I could scarcely hold my pencil, but somehow, I cabled two columns to the London _Times_, and it went around the world as the first description of a naval battle seen from an aeroplane. I did not know until afterwards how much the Germans suffered. They really lost about half their battleships, but the Americans lost everything. CHAPTER XIV PHILADELPHIA’S FIRST CITY TROOPS DIE IN DEFENCE OF THE LIBERTY BELL I come now to the point in my narrative where I ceased to be merely a reporter of stirring events, and began to play a small part that Fate had reserved for me in this great international drama. Thank God, I was able to be of service to stricken America, my own country that I have loved so much, although, as correspondent of the London _Times_, it has been my lot to spend years in foreign lands. Obeying instructions from my paper, I hastened back to the United States, where important events were pending. Von Hindenburg, after his Trenton victory, had strangely delayed his advance against Philadelphia--we were to learn the reason for this shortly--but, as we passed through Savannah, we had news that the invading army was moving southward against General Wood’s reconstructed line of defence that spread from Bristol on the Delaware to Jenkintown to a point three miles below Norristown on the Schuylkill.