There were no telegraphs, or wireless, nothing, in fact, but nimble legs and more nimble horses to facilitate the frantic search. The bird had flown afar.
Long before the cage door was opened the prisoner was beyond the reach of the long arm of the law. Madam had for weeks been skillfully planning escape, how skillfully, the result proved. She had engaged the services of the captain of a fruit schooner to take a lady passenger on his next trip to Havana. To insure results, she had privately conveyed provisions and necessary articles for the passenger’s comfort to the vessel, bribed the captain to secrecy, and it was planned he would give her timely notice when the tides and winds were favorable to raise sail, and put rapidly and silently to sea from Lake Pontchartrain.
He fulfilled his promises so to do.
When the two (supposed) women rushed into the hack awaiting them round the corner from the jail, the driver whipped up his horses and trotted rather faster than usual down the old shell road he had conveyed these ladies more times than he could remember, right from that old corner to the schooner landing.
Years after these events had ceased to be talked of, or even remembered, and the ladies who bore the colonel’s name had vanished from Louisiana, from the deck of an incoming steamer in the harbor of Havana my husband was frantically hailed by a stout old gentleman standing in a lighter. The gray-haired man, who did not dare venture into an American vessel, recognized my husband, whom he had slightly known in the days of his prosperity. He was now an exile, a runner for a Cuban hotel. How eagerly and gladly he took possession of us and our belongings; how he piloted us through the narrow streets; how he domiciled us in the best rooms, and how assiduous he was in attention to our comfort, I cannot tell.
A few years thereafter the poor old man, who had one daughter with him to solace his declining years, passed sadly away, and I was summoned from my plantation home to the stricken girl. She tearfully told me the story of his flight, which had never been revealed before, and, together, we turned the leaves of the worn and faded diary he had kept during that exciting voyage to the Spanish Dominion, where there was no extradition treaty to compel his deliverance to his country. In the early days, when there were no telegraphs, no cables, he managed to support his wife and daughters in New York by acting as commercial correspondent for several newspapers, both in New York and New Orleans, and Charleston also, I think; but that business died out, and he gradually became too infirm for any active or sustained occupation.
His death was a blessed release.
XXXVI
CUBAN DAYS IN WAR TIMES
Not a Confederate who was stranded in Havana in the ’60’s but can recall with grateful feelings the only hotel there kept by an American woman and kept on American lines. Every Confederate drifted under that roof-tree. If he possessed the wherewithal he paid a round sum for the privilege. If he was out of pocket, and I could name a score who were not only penniless but baggageless, he was quite welcome, well cared for and in several instances clothed! Some, notwithstanding her “positive orders,” exposed themselves to night air, when mosquitoes were most in evidence, and came in with headache and yellow fever. They were cared for and nursed back to health. No one knew better than Mrs. Brewer how to manage such cases. I could call the roll of the guests who came—and went, some to Canada, some to Mexico: Gen. and Mrs. Toombs of Georgia, Gen. Magruder, Gen. Fry and his beautiful wife, who was a Micou of Alabama; Commodore Moffitt and Ex-Gov. Moore of Louisiana; Major Bloomfield and his wife—some of us still remember Bloomfield. He had for years a blank-book and stationery shop in New Orleans. I have one of his books now, a leather-bound ledger. He was in service on somebody’s staff. There were some not of the army, but on business bent, blockade running and so on.