And now he has to be wounded.

It's a shame." Our thoughts were with our comrade as we served the gun, and when word came a few moments later that he was doing fairly well, we could hardly repress a cheer.
There was little time, however, for displaying emotion.

We were right in the thick of the fight, and the "Yankee's" battery was being worked to the limit.

It seemed as if the air fairly reeled with the noise and clamor of combat.

Shells buzzed and shrieked about us, and smoke gathered in thick, stifling clouds all about the ship.
While we were laboring, stripped to the waist, and trying our utmost to disable or sink the Spanish gunboat, an incident was occurring on deck which seemed more fitted for the pages of a novel than those of a story of facts.
It was a display of daredevil courage seldom equalled in warfare.
The lad whom we familiarly termed the "Kid" was the central figure and the hero.