Tacon looked at him almost with admiration. “You begin well,” he admitted, “and you shall have your pardon. But until you have fulfilled your promise and helped us to break up these bands of smugglers and—ah——”
“Oh, speak out: Thieves! That is right.”
“Well, thieves,—we must keep you under guard.”
“I am satisfied; only, let us get to work as soon as possible, and have the business over.”
“We will start to-morrow.”
Marti was placed in a large room in a hotel under watch of the constabulary, but free to order any comfort or luxury he could pay for. On the very next morning he set out with a posse of soldiers and visited all the resorts of his former associates in the vicinity. The fellows had evidently suspected something, for they had made off. Their haunts being thus disclosed, however, much of their plunder was afterward recovered, and Marti’s surrender having left them without a leader, they retreated to distant provinces, and safety and peace were restored to the island.
If Marti had any misgivings as to the certainty of his pardon after this exploit, he did not show them. He returned to General Tacon’s office as cool and self-possessed as if he were running a boat-load of spirits under the noses of the customs officers.
“You have been true to your part of the agreement,” said the general, “and I will be to mine. Here is your pardon, signed and sealed, and this is my order on the treasury for the reward for your arrest. Sly dog!”
“I accept the pardon with gratitude, your Excellency, but I do not need the money. My country is poor. Let her keep it. I am rich. Never mind how I became so. Yet, if I may claim a reward, give me a monopoly of the fisheries on this coast. Havana will not suffer if your generosity takes this form.”
And it did not. He got the fisheries, but he spent his profits freely, and one of the first of his benefactions was the construction of a market that had no superior in beauty and fitness elsewhere in the world.