Harper's Round Table, November 26, 1895

Copyright, 1895, by Harper & Brothers. All Rights Reserved.

An hour's sport with a Spanish cruiser—that's what it will be, Benito Bastian said to himself.
But the care he was giving to his boat looked like more serious business than an hour's sport. She is a swift sharpie that he called Villa Clara , after his native town, and she was drawn up on the beach and turned over, and Benito was scraping her clean. If she ever did fast sailing, he wanted her to do it that night.
Let this wind hold, and give me a dark night, he went on, and it will take a faster cruiser than El Rey to catch me.
Benito is a handsome dark-eyed Cuban boy, who lives on the little Cuban island called Ginger Key, forty miles north of the Cuban coast. The boys of Ginger Key, like their older brothers, are full of excitement just now; for occasionally a band of Cuban patriots makes its way over from Florida and goes into hiding in the thick woods, and watches its chance to land on the coast of Cuba. These hands need guides; and it is the Ginger Key boys who know the waters well, and the coast too. Benito handles his sharpie to perfection on the darkest nights and in all kinds of weather; and as to helping his countrymen, the Cuban insurgents, he feels about it just as the Boston boys felt about Bunker Hill.
I ought to be doing something for the cause, he said to himself several months ago. It's a pity I'm only sixteen; they may think I am too young. But I know these waters as well as any man on the key.
He looked down regretfully at his bare feet and legs, for his trousers were rolled well up. He took off his old straw hat and smiled at it; but he could not see how his brown eyes flashed, nor how handsome his brown hair looked, waving in the wind. He is tall and strong for his age, and brown as a berry—not only from the sun, but by nature.
Yes, they'll say I'm only a boy, that's sure, he continued; so I must have my wits about me if I want to get a chance.