On the _Brooklyn_, when the _Colon_ was making her final race for life, Commodore Schley sent orderlies down to the stoke-holes and engine room with this message: "Now, boys, it all depends on you. Everything is sunk except the _Colon_, and she is trying to get away. We don't want her to, and everything depends on you." The _Colon_ did not get away.
The _Vizcaya_ was still making a gallant running fight, and in some degree protecting the magnificent _Cristobal Colon_. While these fled, disaster fell upon the two torpedo-boat destroyers, _Pluton_ and _Furor_. Instead of dashing at the nearest American ship--which would have been their wisest course--both followed the example of the cruisers, and turned along the shore to the westward. Either of them would have been more than a match for the little _Gloucester_, but her commander, Richard Wainwright, sped forward in a cloud of smoke from her own guns, receiving unnoticed shots from the batteries and the nearer Spanish cruisers, though one six-inch shell would have destroyed her. The batteries of the _Pluton_ and _Furor_ were of twice the power of the _Gloucester's_, and they had, besides, the engine of destruction which they could send out from their torpedo tubes. But in a few minutes Wainwright was engaged with them both at short range and under the fire of the Socapa battery. The other American battleships had been firing at them, but desisted when they perceived that the _Gloucester_ alone was capable of managing them. In a very few minutes they both began to smoke ominously, and their fire became much less rapid. Then the _Furor_ moved as if her steering gear had been cut. Wainwright and his men redoubled their efforts at the guns. Suddenly, on the _Furor_, amidships, there shot up a great cloud of smoke and flame, with a deafening roar and shock that could be felt across the water, even amid the thunders of the guns. A shell from one of the battleships had struck her fairly, and broken her in two, exploding either the magazine or the boilers, or both, and she sank like a stone.
Wainwright pursued the other torpedo boat, the _Pluton_, more vigorously. She was already badly crippled, and tried hard to escape; but at last, fairly shot to pieces, she hauled down her flag, and ran for the line of breaking surf, where her men leaped overboard to escape the fierce flames that were sweeping relentlessly below from bow to stern.