Every trooper that day looked down from his saddle upon Cuban and Spanish soldier as from a throne. Even though not a soldier, it was impossible not to know their feeling, glorying, arrogant, the fine, brutal arrogance of the Anglo-Saxon, and we rode on there at a gallop through the crowded streets of the fallen city, heads high, sabres clattering, a thousand iron hoofs beating out a long roll--triumphant, arrogant conquerors. At the Plaza we halted and dismounted. The Cathedral was here, the Cuban and Spanish clubs and the Governor's Palace, a rather unimposing affair all on one floor, with the architectural magnificence of a railway station of the French provinces. The General and the generals went in and crowded the hall of audience, very clinquant with its black and white floor, glass chandeliers, long mirrors and single gilded center table. Here for an hour deputations were received. The Chief of Police, Leonardo Ras y Rodriguez, the ex-Governor, and last of all and most imposing, Monsignor Francisco Saenz de Urturi, the Archbishop, in his robes, purple cap and gold chain, followed by his suite. Him, General Shafter, came forward to meet, and the two shook hands under the tawdry chandelier. It was a strange enough sight. By many and devious and bloody ways had the priest and the soldier come to meet each other on that day. But it was drawing toward noon. I went out into the Plaza again. The troops were already forming a line of cavalry that stretched along the street immediately before the Governor's Palace, and two companies of the Ninth Infantry and the band occupied the center where the little park is. I went across the Plaza and stood on the terrace in front of the main doors of the Cathedral. Directly opposite was the Governor's Palace, the naked flagstaff on the roof over the door standing out lean and stark against the background of green hills. The sidewalks and streets outside the lines of soldiers were crowded with an even mixture of civilians and disarmed Spanish soldiers. The Spanish Club on the left was suddenly closed, but the balconies of the San Carlos--the Cuban Club--were filled with black-bearded, voluble gentlemen in white ducks and straw hats. Every window in the "hotel" was occupied, each one of the little balconies of the Cafe Venus had its gathering, while the terrace of the Cathedral was packed close. There were perhaps five thousand in the Plaza de Armas of Santiago on that seventeenth day of July. At five minutes of the noon hour everything fell quiet. Captain McKittrick and Lieutenant Miley had appeared on the roof of the Palace by the flagstaff. Unfortunately there was not a breath of wind. The minutes passed, two, three, four. The silence was profound, nobody spoke. In all those five thousand people there was scarcely a movement.