“Several long cablegrams were exchanged between the Government and myself.  Nothing whatever in the way of instructions was issued that would hamper me or in any way abridge my responsibility for bringing the Oregon home.  We sailed from Rio on May 4.  I decided, when we had been at sea a little while, to leave the Buffalo and the Marietta to shift for themselves.  They were so slow that I feared the Oregon might be late in arriving where she was most needed.  I left these ships off Cape Frio, one hundred miles above Rio, after signaling them, ’Come to Bahia, or run ashore if attacked by overwhelming force.’  I reached Bahia on the 8th, but we were told to ‘Come on.’  We sailed next morning, and this run to Barbadoes was the most thrilling of the entire voyage.  We steamed absolutely without a light.

“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.