“Mark!” ejaculated my Cuban chum, when, on releasing himself from his sisters' embraces, he espied me. “So you have reached here before me. I am very glad to see it.”
“You are wounded?” I queried, as we shook hands. Had it not been for the girls and Jorge we would have fairly hugged each other. “How did that happen?”
“It’s quite a story. Are my father and mother safe?”
“Yes, although your father, too, is wounded.”
“Those soldiers at the coffee plantation, then, did not manage to catch you?”
“No.”
“They caught me and Jorge, and we were their prisoners for five or six hours. We would not have gotten away, only Jorge bribed one of the servants at the plantation, another negro. He cut the cords with which we were bound, and we got out of the cellar into which we were put at night.”
“And that wound?”
“I got that when they came after us, ten minutes later. They couldn’t see us and fired blindly, and I got a bullet across the forearm. But it’s a mere scratch,” Alano added, as he saw Inez and Paula look serious.