was not waterproof or else was defective. I had
two bottles of water, a hundred cigars in my pocket, 300 cartridges,
four pounds of dried beef and a loaf of bread. I wore a soft hat and had
on a fine pair of English walking boots, an important article for the
tramp ahead of me. I wore my chronometer tied by a stout string. I sent
my wife all my valuables save three diamond studs, $700 in gold and
$5,000 in notes, mostly Spanish bank notes, and I kept $10,000 in bonds.

Nunn cut me a stout ironwood cudgel as a handy weapon.

At last the night came, and still we waited, loath to say good-bye. We
had come out of the jungle and were sitting in the still warm sand
talking in low tones and watching the stars. At last when my watch told
me it was 10 we rose, and, shaking hands warmly, parted, he going east
to Cajio, I west toward Pinar del Rio and the rebel camps.

Of course, my great danger lay in meeting soldiers who would stop me.
Indeed any one who met a stranger and a foreigner heading west would
either stop him or give an alarm, and if once arrested (passports so
near the enemy's camp were useless) it meant death, or what was quite as
bad, incarceration in a filthy prison until my case was reported on to
the Captain-General in Havana. That, of course, meant my return to
Havana and possibly to England.

Everything is very primitive in Cuba. The common people--that is, the
whites and free people--live in mere huts or cabins, and sleep in
hammocks under roofs open on two sides. All go to bed soon after sunset,
so there was no danger in night traveling, save only in meeting the
sentries or running on some detached post of soldiers.

In case of meeting these, I had resolved to plunge into the tropical
jungle which came close down to the beach.

Neither night traveling nor the situation had any terrors for me. I
felt my only danger lay in stumbling upon some outpost or sentry who
might perceive me before I saw him and so cover me with his rifle before
challenging, but I knew from observation since my arrival in Cuba that
the discipline among the Spanish soldiers was very slack, and I had a
pretty firm belief that isolated sentries usually took a nap while
waiting the relief.

After leaving Nunn I started out at a quick pace, alert and confident.
The moon had gone down, but the Caribbean Sea was lovely in the
starlight, and between watching the phosphorescent ripples of the waters
and listening to the night noises of the