All day long the tumult continued, but we could not learn what it was about, excepting that a force of American soldiers were advancing upon El Caney and San Juan. “If our forces take those hills,” said Mr. Raymond, “Santiago is doomed, for the heavy artillery and siege guns can knock down every building here.”
“Then I hope we get out before the hills are taken,” I answered.
We remained in the building all day, and during that time I managed to scrape up a loaf of bread and the larger part of a knuckle of ham, besides several cocoanuts. On these we lived for the next twenty-four hours, and we had more than many starving Cubans still staying in the doomed city.
As we waited for nightfall I wondered how my father was faring. It was not likely that the prison had been struck more than once. Probably he was still in his dungeon cell. Oh, if only I could get to him and liberate him!
But Mr. Raymond shook his head at the idea. “You would only be captured yourself, Mark. Better try to escape with me to the American camp. If Santiago is taken, your father will be sure to be liberated sooner or later.”
I thought it over, and decided to accept his advice. We left the building at eleven o’clock. The moon was shining, but it had been raining and the clouds were still heavy in the sky.
As silently as possible we stole along one street and then another until the outskirts of Santiago were reached. Once we met a detachment of Spanish soldiery, but avoided them by crouching behind an abandoned barricade until they had passed.
The hardest part of our task was still before us—that of getting beyond the Spanish picket line. On and on we went, but now much slower, for we felt that we were running not only the risk of capture but the risk of being shot down without warning.
At four o’clock in the morning we felt we could go no further for the present and climbed into the limbs of a mahogany tree. We had been sitting here several hours when suddenly a fierce rattle of musketry rang out. It was the attack of General Lawton’s infantry upon El Caney. The attack had but fairly opened, when we saw the pickets around us ordered forward and then to the right. The way was now open for us to escape, and, descending to the ground, we hurried on, through the brush and over the rocks, carefully to avoid any well-defined trail which the Spaniards might be covering.