ho were smooth-faced, were given bushy
whiskers and a cloak. In the mean time, I paid an agent in waiting
$10,000 in French and Spanish notes, then we hurried out of the rear
into a cab and were driven to the station, arriving just in time to
catch the 10:30 train.

The cab ride and train ride that night were happy rides. I had been a
captive and now was free. The sights and sounds all around me took on a
deeper purpose and a more significant meaning than they had ever borne
before.

I had for a few brief days been a captive, shut out from nature's sights
and sounds, and that brief deprivation awoke in me a feeling of
appreciation for the feast that is everywhere around us spread with a
lavish hand. My mind was in a tumult of delight, and I almost forgot I
was a fugitive; fortunately the Spaniard is not a suspicious animal, and
no notice was taken of us; and so we bumped slowly on southward through
the tropic night.

Seven o'clock on the morning of the 11th found us at Guisa, a small
station on the railroad about ninety miles from Havana and west from
Cajio some twenty miles. Our friend here procured us horses, and,
bidding him good-bye, Nunn and I started on our ride to Cajio. We were
both greatly elated over the success of our adventure. Our friends had
procured for us police passports and gun permits under the names of
Parish and Ellis.

I had a chronometer, several valuable diamonds, a revolver and gun. Nunn
carried a canvas bag containing, among other things, 250 capital cigars,
tobacco, matches and 300 cartridges. Then we had good maps of the island
and current charts of the Gulf of Mantabano, with its hundreds of rocky
inlets, spreading everywhere along the south coast. But, armed as we
were, it would never do to be picked up by any Spanish boat or patrol
anywhere near the rebel border. It probably meant death if we were
captured.

I think on the whole it would have been the wiser plan to have gone to
Senor Andrez's plantation at San Jose. The fear in that case was that if
an order arrived from Madrid to deliver me up I might not be safe even
in the Isle of Pines. At Cajio I resolved to lose myself so far as the
Spanish authorities were concerned, and only travel by night. If we
remained on land this would be necessary, as soldiers were everywhere
and our police passports would not hold good if we were found traveling
in the direction of the rebel lines.

I proposed going by sea, and then all our voyaging