The Crucial Test (1911)
Channing was a reporter from the ground up; a writer who could catch the public and hold it, but after he had been sent down to Santiago by his paper, he failed to send in the startling news quick enough to suit the people at home. For this there was a good reason, as there was nothing to send in, as it proved to be just that period of suspense and waiting when the Spanish fleet was laid up in the harbor of Santiago, but it caused the manager of his paper to wire him his discharge and send another man down in his place. Consequently, when the story opens, Channing finds himself stranded in Cuba without a job and without money. Keating, the new reporter, arrives and at once falls into the ways of a great many newspaper reporters, who have nothing to do but to wait until something turns up, takes to drinking heavily, and becomes careless of what is going on, while each day finds Channing more destitute and more despondent, until he has reached the stage of sleeping on the docks at night, broke, hungry and weak. By chance he hears Keating arranging to engage a tug to visit the American fleet, and, unbeknown to Keating, who is greatly under the influence of liquor, he secures a job on the boat as a deck hand. This was a wonderful piece of luck, for just as the fleet is sighted there is a movement on the deck and the next moment the Battle of Santiago is on. Channing rushes down to the Captain's stateroom to call Keating, but finds him drunk and almost insensible to what is going on around him. Channing rushes on deck and there beholds the pride of the Spanish war fleet shattered, broken and sunk, while huge black columns of smoke are pouring from the vessels. It is a wonderful sight and the reporter's instinct gets the better of him. He writes the story of the victory, succeeds in reaching the telegraph office before anyone else and sends in the whole story, but sends it in the name of the man who would hardly speak to him and who lay dead to all around him in the stupor of drink. Three months later he wanders into New York, a human derelict drifting on the sea of fate, but eventually he comes into his own and this scene closes a very interesting and thrilling story of the famous naval engagement of Santiago Harbor.
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GenresDrama
Short
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