Campaigning in Cuba / by George Kennan.

  • George Kennan
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Campaigning in Cuba / by George Kennan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    behind us two large boats loaded with assorted stores for the destitute crews. The first vessel we visited was a small black brigantine from Barcelona, named Frasdto, which had been captured eight miles off Havana by the United States cruiser Montgomery. The swarthy, scantily clad Spanish sailors crowded to the bulwarks with beaming faces as we approached, and the hurried, almost frenzied eagerness with which they threw us a line, hung a ladder over the side, and helped us on board, showed that although we were inciden- tally Americans, and therefore enemies, we were primarily Red Cross people, and consequently friends to be greeted and welcomed with every possible manifestation of respect, grati- tude, and affection. The interior of the little brigantine presented an appear- ance of slovenly but picturesque dirt, confusion, and dis- order, as if the crew, overwhelmed by the misfortune that had come upon them, had abandoned the routine of daily duty and given themselves up to apathy and despair. The main-deck, between the low after-cabin and the high forecastle, had not been washed down, apparently, in a week; piles of dirty dishes and cooking-utensils of strange, unfamiliar shapes lay here and there around the little galley forward; coils of running rigging were kicking about under- foot instead of hanging on the belaying-pins; a pig-pen, which had apparently gone adrift in a gale, blocked up the gangway to the forecastle on the port side between the high bulwark and a big boat which had been lashed in V-shaped supports amidships; and a large part of the space between the cabin and the forecastle on the starboard side was a chaos of chain-cable, lumber, spare spars, pots, pans, earthen water-jars, and chicken-coops. The captain of the little vessel was a round-faced, boyish- looking man, of an English rather than a Spanish type, with clear gray honest eyes and a winning expression of friendli- 2
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