love, were careful that the signs of their grief at the loss of their
beloved young mistress should be confined to a few respectful
expressions of sympathy; but when Mama Faquita, Senorita Isolda's old
nurse, having extracted from Carlos a tolerably full and detailed
account of the circumstances that had culminated in her beloved young
mistress's death, went the round of the negro huts that night, she
kindled in the breasts of her fellows a flame of fury and vengeful
longing that was destined to consume Senor Alvaros.

It is not to be wondered at that, after what Don Hermoso had suffered,
personally and through his family, from Spanish misrule, his interest in
the management of his vast estates should occupy only a secondary
position in his mind; and that he should relegate that management almost
entirely to the capable hands and conscientious mind of Senor Calderon,
giving the first and most important place to the advancement, by every
means in his power, of the aims of the revolutionaries. With this
object, therefore, he shut himself up in his own private room for the
three weeks following his return home, and plunged strenuously into a
voluminous correspondence with Marti, Jesus Rabi, Antonio Maceo, Maximo
Gomez, and other more or less prominent insurgent leaders, making
exhaustive enquiry into the condition and prospects of the party, and
offering advice and assistance in its several projects: while Jack and
Carlos made long excursions in various directions for the purpose of
personally ascertaining the feeling of the inhabitants and adding fuel
to the smouldering flame of insurrection by every means in their power;
for it may be said at once that the shocking tyranny, the cruel
injustice, and the callous indifference on the part of the island
authorities which had rendered possible such a disaster as that which
had befallen his friends had kindled in Jack Singleton's breast such
fiery indignation, and such a loathing abhorrence, that--quixotic as the
resolve may seem to some--he had at once determined to throw in his lot
with that of the Montijos, and assist by every means in his power to
free Cuba from Spanish misrule.

In this fashion nearly two months went by, during which, by Don
Hermoso's instructions, the armament of the _Thetis_ had been
dismounted, remounted upon field carriages constructed by the carpenter
and engineers of the vessel, landed, with their ammunition, at various
points on the coast, and del