170 My Brother Theodore Roosevelt

came into his voice such as might be heard in the voice of a woman when speaking of her lover.

That same day, June 14, Bob Ferguson wrote to me:

"Theodore is absolutely radiating. He just lent me `Vanity Fair' in return for a box of peppermints, and it has been queer just at this moment to read about old Curzon street and the Brussels' Ball; but Becky made us laugh more than ever after reading nothing but Tactics or a local newspaper for several weeks.... This country is becoming the laughing-stock of the world at present, and the German experts really do not believe the United States can fight. It will bring on big world complications unless they show their power soon."

The above opinion is interesting in the light of what the German experts again felt about the United States before we entered the Great War in r g 17 !

On June 15 a letter dated in the Gulf of Mexico runs as follows:

"We are steaming southward through a sapphire sea, windrippled under an almost cloudless sky. There are some fortyeight craft in all, in three columns,-the black hulls of the transports setting off the gray hull of the man-of-war. Last evening, we stood up on the bridge and watched the red sun sink and lights blaze up on the ships for miles ahead, while the band played piece after piece from the Star Spangled Banner (at which we all rose and stood uncovered) to The Girl I Left Behind Me. It is a great historical expedition and I thrill to feel that I am part of it. If we fail, of course, we share the fate of all who do fail, and if we are allowed to succeed, for we certainly shall succeed if allowed, we have scored the first great triumph of what will be a world movement. All the young fellows have dimly felt what this means, though the only articulate soul and imagination among them belong, rather curiously, to Ex-sheriff Capt. Buckey O'Neil of Arizona."

The above Buckey O'Neil, leaning over the rail at sunset, would often quote Browning, my brother used to tell me, or

Cowboy and Clubman   171

Whitman, or even Shelley. He was a real "Bret Harte " character, and one of my brother's greatest griefs in the days to come was that that gallant officer was amongst the first to fall. He had just exposed himself to Spanish fire somewhat unnecessarily, and my brother said to him: "Get down, Buckey; I cannot spare you." The other laughingly replied, "There isn't a bullet made that can kill me, Colonel," and literally, as he spoke, a stray shot struck him and he fell dead across my brother's knees. But to return:

June 20, i898-Troop Ship near Santiago.

All day we have steamed close to the Cuban coast; high barren-looking mountains rise abruptly from the shore, and at this distance look much like those of Montana. We are well within the tropics and at night, the Southern Cross is low above the horizon. It seems too strange to see it in the same sky with the friendly Dipper.

And then later:

June 25, 1898-Las Guasimas

Yesterday we struck the Spaniards and had a brisk fight for two and a half hours before we drove them out of their position. We lost twelve men, killed or mortally wounded, and sixty, severely or slightly wounded. Brodie was wounded,poor Capron and Ham Fish were killed; one man was killed as he stood beside a tree with me, another bullet went through a tree behind which I stood and filled my eyes with bark. The last charge I led on the left using a rifle I took from a wounded man. Every man behaved well; there was no flinching. The fire was very hot at one or two points where the men around me went down like nine-pins. We have been ashore three days and were moved at once to the front without our baggage. I have been sleeping on the ground in a mackintosh, and so drenched with sweat that I have not been dry a minute day and night. The marches have been very severe. One of my