"Indeed, the entire trip from Sandy Point to Jupiter Inlet was a lightless voyage. In pitchlike darkness we drove along at our highest speed--seeing lights many times, but always avoiding the ships that bore them. We were out of court. We had no right of way without a light. Even if we met a vessel on our port, we gave way. "Night and day the men stood at the guns. Not for a single moment was vigilance relaxed. The strain on the men was terrible. For four days at a time hammocks were never strung. Watch and watch about, the men lay beside the guns, sound asleep, while the men on duty stood silently above them. All the lookouts were doubled and changed with unusual frequency. "Barbadoes was reached just before daylight, May 18, and after rushing two hundred and fifty tons of coal aboard, we sailed the same evening. Still the orders read, 'Come on.' From our consul I learned that Cervera's fleet was at Martinique, just to the north of us. This fleet had been extolled for speed and fighting qualities. I am not a rash man. I was not looking for that fleet. The situation seemed critical. Sailing just before dark, I headed northwest, apparently into the heart of the Caribbean Sea. This information, I have no doubt, was promptly communicated to Admiral Cervera. But as soon as the darkness of a moonless night had thoroughly set in, I changed the course to due south; and ran below Barbadoes and thence far to the eastward before I took the Oregon to the northward. We thus passed far to sea east of Martinique, and eventually turned into the north Atlantic beyond St. Thomas. I carefully avoided the Windward Channel and the shallow waters of the Bahamas. "I didn't know where the Department wanted to use me. I was in the dark as to the location of the two fleets. I knew one had been at Hampton Roads and another at Key West, and the charts told me that Jupiter Inlet was in telegraphic reach of all points on the coast. From that place I had coal enough to make the run to either of the two fleets." With scarcely a day's delay, the Oregon joined the North Atlantic Squadron, in Cuban waters, and was one of the vessels under Commodore Schley when that officer trapped the Spanish fleet in the harbor of Santiago. When we think of the officers and men on the decks of a warship, we must not forget the force of men below the decks. The engineers, firemen and stokers do as good work, and are entitled to as much praise, as the fighting force above. In battle they are kept under the hatches, and, as a rule, never know of the progress or the result of a fight until it closes. They work in a temperature of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty degrees, by half-hour stretches. The roaring furnaces make the fire-rooms almost beyond a man's power to endure, and we should give a great deal of our praise to the brave fellows who make the power that moves the ship. [Illustration: The Men Who Make the Power.]