BACK TO CIVILIZATION 377 



crossed this selfsame stretch of sea to find and de- 

 stroy the Spanish ships. I lived over again those 

 boding days when the air was electric with impend- 

 ing danger. 



It was long before daylight when the Yuen Sang, 

 at half-speed, arrived at Corregidor. The captain 

 wished to report his number to the signal station, 

 and we had to wait until light had come before the 

 ship could enter. So the engines were stopped and 

 for an hour we drifted on under the ship's mo- 

 mentum. The silencing of the engines on a ship is 

 always ominous, and just now, with the dim bulk 

 of Corregidor looming grimly before us, it seemed 

 as if there was something particularly sinister about 

 our stealthy approach. 



From five o'clock onward we stood on the bridge, 

 our voices unconsciously hushed as we spoke. Here 

 was where the Baltimore had dropped a Greek fire 

 life preserver and for a long time it had bobbed 

 about on the tumbling sea, weird and terrifying to 

 those who didn't know what it was. There was 

 where the soot in the McCulloch's funnel had sud- 

 denly blazed up like the chimney of a blast furnace. 

 And over there on the lower edge of the black bulk 

 of the island was where a little signal light had 

 flared up and then died out, leaving every man on 

 our ships tense with expectant dread, and all about 

 us here had reigned a silence so penetrating that it 

 in itself was harder to bear than the thunder and 

 flash of guns. 



And still we drifted on, nearer and nearer to 



