“And if I was only with my father!” I cried. My father was all the world to me, and to be separated from him at such a time was more than painful. “Do you think he will help us?” I went on, after a moment of silence.
The overseer agreed to do what he could for us, although that would not be much. He was an insurgent at heart, but his master and all around him were in sympathy with the Spanish Government.
“He says for us to remain here and he will bring us breakfast,” said Alano, as the man turned and departed, with the bloodhound at his side. “And after that he will set us on a road leading to Tiarriba and gave us a countersign which will help us into a rebel camp if there is any around.”
We secreted ourselves again in the cane shed, and it was not long before the overseer returned, bringing with him a kettle of steaming black coffee, without which no Cuban breakfast seems complete, and some fresh bread and half a dozen hard-boiled eggs. He had also a bag of crackers and a chunk of dried beef weighing several pounds.
“Put those in your bags,” he said to Alano, indicating the beef and crackers. “You may find it to your interest to keep out of sight for a day or two, to avoid the Spanish spies.”
The breakfast was soon dispatched, the provisions stored in our valises, and then the overseer took us up through the sugar-cane fields to where a brook emptied into a long pond, covered with green weeds, among which frogs as broad as one’s hand croaked dismally. We hurried around the pond, and our guide pointed out a narrow, winding path leading upward through a stony woods. Then he whispered a few words to Alano, shook us both by the hand, and disappeared.
“He says the countersign is ‘Sagua’—after the river and city of that name,” explained my chum as we tramped along. “You must wave your hand so if you see a man in the distance,” and Alano twirled his arm over his head.
Stony though it was in the woods, the vegetation was thick and rank. On every side were the trunks of decaying trees, overgrown with moss—the homes of beetles, lizards, and snakes innumerable. The snakes, most of them small fellows not over a foot long, at first alarmed me, but this only made Alano laugh.
“They could not harm you if they tried,” he said. “And they are very useful—they eat up so many of the mosquitoes and gnats and lizards.”