To the northward lay a stretch of unbroken, mountainous shoreline; while we were headed for a narrow channel guarded by rock islands against which the surf broke in clouds of spray.

“Corregidor,” said the skipper, pointing to a high, green hill behind the rocks. Corregidor⁠—it was the first time I had ever heard the name which since has become synonymous, in so many minds, with Gibraltar. On the other side of the entrance to Manila Bay stood Meriveles, a beautiful mountain, sloping gently back from the sea and up into soft, white clouds. But Manila⁠—where was Manila? Cavite⁠—where was Cavite? And where did the Spanish ships lie, when Dewey sailed in past Corregidor not knowing what he would find? Questions, these, which everybody asked in those days. Manila was twenty miles ahead at the far end of the Bay, while Cavite, across on the south shore, in the nearer distance, lay flat and almost invisible under low-spreading trees.