208 The Rough Riders 



rifts, lighting the mountain crests here and there, 

 while the plain below lay shrouded in the lingering 

 night. The angry, level rays edged the dark clouds 

 with crimson, and turned the downpour into sheets 

 of golden rain ; in the valleys the glimmering mists 

 were tinted every wild hue; and the remotest heav- 

 ens were lit with flaming glory. 



One day General Lawton, General Wood and I, 

 with Ferguson and poor Tiffany, went down the 

 bay to visit Morro Castle. The shores were beau- 

 tiful, especially where there were groves of palms 

 and of the scarlet-flower tree, and the castle itself, 

 on a jutting headland, overlooking the sea and 

 guarding the deep, narrow entrance to the bay, 

 showed just what it was, the splendid relic of a 

 vanished power and a vanished age. We wan- 

 dered all through it, among the castellated battle- 

 ments, and in the dungeons, where we found hide- 

 pus rusty implements of torture; and looked at the 

 guns, some modern and some very old. It had been 

 little hurt by the bombardment of the ships. After- 

 ward I had a swim, not trusting much to the shark 

 stories. We passed by the sunken hulks of the Mer- 

 rimac and the Reina Mercedes, lying just outside 

 the main channel. Our own people had tried to 

 sink the first and the Spaniards had tried to sink the 

 second, so as to block the entrance. Neither at- 

 tempt was successful. 



