"Yes, mother, it would cause some awkward relationships; but as there is no tie of blood between us, perhaps that need not matter. But I shall say nothing till I come home, and not then without the captain's permission."
"That is right. But do you think Grace suspects?"
"Hardly, mother; I am only her 'uncle,' you know," Harold answered, with a laugh in which there was little or no mirth.
"Although I am certainly very fond of Grace," said his mother, "I cannot help regretting that your affections have not gone out to some one else rather than to her--because of her feeble health and the connection through your sister and her father."
"Yes, they are objections," he returned, with a sigh; "but mother dear, you will not consider them insuperable if I can persuade the captain not to do so?"
"Oh, no! not if you win, or have won, her heart. I should not think of raising the least objection, and surely the captain, who is a devoted father, would not, should he see that her affections are engaged."
"That is my hope," said Harold; "and, as I have said, I do not intend to offer myself without his knowledge and consent, though I had hard work to refrain to-day when Grace and I were left alone together for a few minutes, and she expressed, with tears in her sweet blue eyes, such anxiety at the thought of my being in danger of wounds or death in the coming struggle in Cuba. Mother dear, Herbert and I will not, of course, be in as great danger as will the fighting men of our army and navy, but there is a possibility that we may not return unharmed, and in case I should not I would not have Grace know of my love and intention to--ask her to become my wife."
"I think you are right, my son," his mother said, with emotion. "But, ah, I hope and shall pray constantly that my dear boys may come back to me unharmed."
"And it will be a great help and comfort to them to know that their dear mother's prayers are following them," rejoined Harold, tenderly pressing the hand she had laid in his.
The next moment Herbert joined them, and he too had a farewell talk with his mother, for the brothers were to leave for Tampa the next morning to join the troops about to sail for Cuba.
By the last of May there were sixteen thousand men at Tampa under the command of General Shafter, but it was not until the 14th of June that they set sail for Cuba. On a clear, scorchingly hot morning, June 22d, they landed at Daiquiri, twelve miles east of the entrance to Santiago Bay. From all accounts things seem to have been wofully mismanaged, so that our poor soldiers had no facilities for landing. Those who loaded the ship, it would appear, must have been great bunglers--either exceedingly ignorant in regard to such work or most reprehensibly careless. In consequence, scarcely anything could be found when wanted. Medical stores were scattered among twenty vessels; so that when fever broke out in the trenches before Santiago it was almost impossible to get the needed remedies; probably--though there were never enough on the field--some medicines were left on the ships and carried back to the United States. All this made the work of the physicians doubly trying. Besides, they were too few in number, the wounded many more than it had been expected they would be, and brought in faster than they could be attended to; the surgeons worked all night by the light of spluttering lamps, and there was not enough of even surgical instruments. But the poor wounded men were wonderfully brave and patient. Harold and Herbert Travilla felt that they had not engaged in a cause which did not need them. After the fighting began their labors were exhausting; all the more so because of the drain upon their sympathies.