"But they lay broiling there in the heat just as though they were
becalmed. They seemed to be asleep on their anchor-chains. It
reminded me of a big bull-dog lying in the sun with his head on his
paws and his eyes shut. You think he's asleep, and you try to tiptoe
past him, but when you're in reach of his chain--he's at your throat,
what? It seemed so funny to think of our being really at war. I mean
the United States, and with such an old-established firm as Spain. It
seems so presumptuous in a young republic, as though we were
strutting around, singing, 'I'm getting a big boy now.' I felt like
saying, 'Oh, come off, and stop playing you're a world power, and get
back into your red sash and knickerbockers, or you'll get spanked!'
It seems as though we must be such a lot of amateurs. But when I went
over the side of the New York I felt like kneeling down on her deck
and begging every jackey to kick me. I felt about as useless as a fly
on a locomotive-engine. Amateurs! Why, they might have been in the
business since the days of the ark; all of them might have been
descended from bloody pirates; they twisted those eight-inch guns
around for us just as though they were bicycles, and the whole ship
moved and breathed and thought, too, like a human being, and all the
captains of the other war-ships about her were watching for her to
give the word.
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