before he disappeared with it into the trench. A trooper named Shanafelt repeated the feat, later, with a pail of coffee. Another trooper, George King, spent a leisure hour in the rear making soup out of some rice and other stuff he found in a Spanish house; he brought some of it to General Wood, Jack Greenway, and myself, and nothing could have tasted more delicious.
At this time our army in the trenches numbered about 11,000 men, and the Spaniards in Santiago about 9,000,[1] their reinforcements having just arrived. Nobody on the firing-line, whatever was the case in the rear, felt the slightest uneasiness as to the Spaniards being able to break out; but there were plenty who doubted the advisability of trying to rush the heavy earthworks and wire defences in our front.
All day long the firing continued—musketry and cannon. Our artillery gave up the attempt to fight on the firing-line, and was withdrawn well to the rear out of range of the Spanish rifles; so far as we could see, it accomplished very little. The dyna-
- ↑ This is probably an understatement. Lieutenant Müller, in chap. xxxviii. of his book, says that there were "eight or nine thousand;" this is exclusive of the men from the fleet, and apparently also of many of the volunteers (see chap. xiv.), all of whom were present on July 2d. I am inclined to think that on the evening of that day there were more Spanish troops inside Santiago than there were American troops outside.
