On the following morning Manila was awakened by the roar of artillery. It was still dark save for the star light, yet quickly the streets were in turmoil. Some grasped the things they most valued and rushed to most ridiculous places for safety. One man took to the woods with a fighting cock under his arm. A few of the bravest mounted to the roofs of the dwellings and the towers of the churches in order to view the fight that had been anticipated, but which had come sooner than expected. From these vantage points they looked on a scene such as falls to the lot of man to observe only once in a thousand lives. In answer to the challenge of Cavite the American fleet was forming in battle array. In single file, as if in gala parade, they came, like actors entering from the wings of a great stage or circus performers from the dressing room, crawling over the white bay like living things. The dawn had come, suddenly as in the tropics, come with the roar of artillery. For once it had literally realized Kipling's line-- "Dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the bay." At last the fleet, the tool of the new order of capitalism, was ready. The command had gone forth from Admiral Rainey: "You may fire when you are ready." The American flag ship shot a line of fire, and from the smoke that arose a great roar resounded. Boom, boom! Fire and shell and smoke and action swept from consciousness the peace of nature and thought of the world of life. Now and then the white veil of smoke would lift, and the watcher on the towers could see in those intervals splintered masts and laboring vessels, specks that were men struggling in the waves, and wrecks that lined the shore. It did not seem possible that all those specks were men, with hopes and plans and families, and hearts and bodies that suffered; the watchers on the towers could not know that decks of vessels were slippery from blood, and that nerves were racked with pain and hearts were sore from loss. The American vessels, crawling like water mites over the white mirror spread below them, circled together about first one and then another of the Spanish ships; and ever as they moved flashes like fiery legs stretched from their sides. This red venom of death touched the Spanish ships that appeared to wither and consume before it. Here a Spanish ship ran to shore, as though a living, wounded thing, seeking a place to die, and, trembling, sank beneath the waves. There a vessel lay under the pitiless pelting of fire, till there was a heavy explosion, and the ship was torn to shreds that sprinkled the water, while dots that represented men struggled in the waves. Yonder a vessel was on fire, and as it bore to shore specks that were men dived into the water to save themselves, and the red flames licked life from the redder decks.