ishing to
actually disclose anything, I talked in a very impressive, grave way,
instructing him to leave Havana secretly after telling his mistress that
I had ordered him to go to Matanzas, a city forty miles east by rail. He
was to bring all the New York papers, meet me at Cajio and not let a
soul know his destination, but be there awaiting my arrival from the
Isle of Pines the following Sunday week. If in the mean time anything
unusual, no matter what, happened, then he was instantly to depart for
Cajio, there hire a boat and crew and come after me, not to mind expense
and not to lose a moment's time. Nunn was one of those wise men who know
how to obey orders without self-questionings as to the whys and
wherefores.

I had secured gun licenses from the authorities, and, giving them to
Nunn, ordered him to bring a breech-loader and a brace of revolvers with
him.

During my stay in the Isle of Pines I would be out of reach of the
outside world. If on meeting Nunn I found from the papers he brought
that there was any sign of danger I would not return to Havana, but
would secure a boat, provision it, set sail alone for some port in
Central America and send my servant back after my wife.

At 10 o'clock our party set out in an open-decked cargo boat from Cajio
for San Jose, seventy miles across the water and on the west coast of
the island. San Jose was one of the half-dozen plantations belonging to
our host, the chief product being coffee, and on this one there were 130
slaves.

We had a motley cargo. Twenty black fellows, dogs, turtles, fighting
cocks, two trained pigs, a good-sized snake that answered to the name of
Jacko and had the run of the ship. Ship, men, women and young darkies,
trained pigs and everything except we three guests were the absolute
property of our host.

We were passing through the gate of the Gulf of Matamano. The bottom was
so white and the water so clear that we could see distinctly all the
wondrous marine life beneath. Ashore in the thick forests all seemed to
be dead, but here in the water and beneath the surface all was teeming
with life. Flocks of sea fowl were in the air or whitened the rocks
which everywhere rose above the waters, and innumerable little islets
rested like lovely pictures in the blue setting of the sea.

At one of the loveliest, called Cayos de Tana, with a wide fringe of
white beach, we landed; that is, our boat ran toward it until the keel
stuck in the sand, when a