Show T CERVERAS DOOM I will obey our order but I go to my doomExtract from Cerveras telegram to Blanco In the Santiago harbor moving cautious moving slow Creep HIspanias hounds of ocean all their pulsing hearts aglow Stealing seaward past the headlands toward to-ward the hulk whose heroes teach More by one dumb act of daring than could centuries of speech Till the harbor entrance sighted they rush forward to their fate Barking In their hoarsest thunders as they dart beyond the gate But Columbias steelclad I eagles standing stand-ing watchful on the main Leap to meet the slender wardogs slipping slip-ping from the yard of Spain Awful menacing prophetic Is the quick responsive boom Sweeping shoreward sweeping seaward knelling but the Spaniards doom Underneath the sulphurous curtain do our shotted dragons wheel Licking out their red carnivorous tongues and belching bolts of steel i And our cruisers bounding forward through the sunlight red and dim I All their whistles I screaming terror chase g s hs I the Spanish captains grim Crash the sixInch roar the eightInch boom the tenInch guns today I And the black spleenloaded vengeful twelveinch throats begin to bray Oh the storm that bursts In fury on the doomed and fleeing ships Never can be drawn by limner nor be I told by human lips Staggering on the shotchurned ocean in tornado blasts of steel How the dying monsters quiver struck from conningtower to keel keal I Loud upon the chillforged armor dins the hot metallic hal Penetrates the throbbing vitals sweeps the decks with fiery gale Screaming battering splintering shattering shat-tering bursting with terrific roar Beating into pulp the seamen flooding all the decks with gore Searching through the silent turrets where the cannoneers expire Fanning with its breath Tartarean all the woodwork Into tire fre Till the shellshocked helmsmen turn their sinkinsr courses to the land Where they like bewildered camels thrust their noses In the sand In Its tube each slim torpedo slumbrous giant tranquil lies Till convulsed by hostile pounding It I opes wides Its maniac eyes And it I roars wth voice of thunder as I tears the decks asunder I I And arouses Into frenzy the munitions i lying under And the ships are torn and shattered and j the wounded shriek n pain i g f ar I And from every auaklng masthead sinks the yellow flag of Spain I I Rings no victoryshout triumphant when the colors cease their flying Cheer not shouts a noble captain for poor devils they are dying On the shores of Santiago what was late a nations pride Now hut smoking hulls is hissing at the clImbing of the tide Blasted blasted as completely by the lightnings Freedom drove As if smitten bv Thors hammer or the thunderbolts of Jove And a thousand tars are roasting coffined in the heated steel Or are floating to the seawolves snarling oer their horrid meal Black and gaunt and hungry vultures stalk sedately on the beach Knowing that the waves will bring them what their talons cannot reach Battleroars have died to silence battle smoke has cleared away Natures peaceful hands erasing all the 1 horrors of the fray And the breakers now as eyer beat the coast with sullen boom Chanting thus in massive music the heroic Spaniards doom William T Dumas In Atlanta Journal |