Then Jack undertook to see to the release of the unhurt prisoners, with all the business incidental thereto; and, as a first step, he proceeded with a band of fifty armed negroes to the captured camp, and forthwith went to work to bring in all the weapons and ammunition, the uninjured field gun, the tents, and the wagons, all of which would be exceedingly valuable acquisitions to any revolutionary force which they might chance to join. Then the horses, mules, and cattle were driven in, the mules being harnessed to the gun and the wagons. All these captures having been stored as carefully as circumstances permitted, the prisoners who were to be released were paraded, and each was served with one day’s rations; then they gladly moved off, en route for Pinar del Rio, under a strong escort of armed negroes, led by Jack, who was on this occasion mounted upon a good horse. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when the little army started; and they marched until eight o’clock, when they camped for the night in the open, Jack and his band returning some three miles along the road by which they had gone, and passing the night in a wood through which the road ran. They arrived back at the estate shortly after nine o’clock the next morning, and Jack then learned, to his profound sorrow, that the unfortunate Señora Montijo had passed away during the night, another victim of Spanish tyranny and oppression. They buried the poor lady on the evening of that day, in a particularly lovely and peaceful spot, some distance up the valley, which had been a favourite resort of her daughter. The ceremony was singularly moving and impressive, every negro on the place following the body to the grave, and Don Hermoso himself, in the absence of a priest, reading the funeral service over his departed wife. But although the loss of the lady was deeply felt by all, there can be little doubt that, all things considered, her death was a fortunate circumstance, not only for herself, but also for all those who most dearly loved her; for it was only too clear that her reason had been permanently lost. Twenty-four hours later what had been the finest and best-kept tobacco-growing estate on the island was abandoned to the Spanish doctor and his patients—with a staff of volunteer assistants from the unwounded Spanish prisoners to look after them. The Montijos, father and son, with Jack, and as many of the negro defenders as still survived, had taken to the mountains, carrying off with them the field gun, Maxims, rifles, ammunition, and stores of all descriptions, either originally belonging to them, or taken from the enemy; and a very formidable force they soon proved themselves to be.
About a month later news came to the band that Antonio Maceo, having evaded the Spanish army in the province of Pinar del Rio, and got on the other side of Weyler’s trocha, had been killed in a skirmish not far from Havana, which city he had proposed to threaten, with the object of causing the withdrawal of the Spanish troops from the western end of the island. This news, which proved to be true, was a very heavy blow to the revolutionaries, who regarded Antonio as far and away their most capable and energetic leader; and soon afterward they sustained a further very serious loss, in the person of Rius Rivera, who had arrived in Pinar del Rio to take the place of Maceo, but who, in the month of March, 1897, was wounded in a skirmish near San Cristobal, being afterwards captured and deported. Nor was this all; for about the same time Layas, another very prominent and effective revolutionary leader, was killed in a fight in the province of Havana. Yet, serious as those misfortunes were deemed to be, they did not discourage the revolutionaries; on the contrary, they but spurred the latter to more strenuous efforts, and the brief, and often fragmentary, items of intelligence which filtered through to them from time to time concerning the incessant harrying of the Spaniards by Don Hermoso and his active band of guerrillas were cheering as cordial to them, stimulating them to emulative feats of daring and enterprise which rapidly reduced Weyler to the very verge of despair.
Meanwhile the course of events in Cuba was being very keenly watched in the United States, and was steadily increasing the already dangerous tension which had been gradually growing between that country and Spain; and this was further increased by the occurrence of the Rius incident. Rius, it may be mentioned, was a Cuban, who, like many other natives of the same island, had resided in the United States, and had deemed it good policy to secure naturalisation papers as an American, after which he had returned to Cuba. The Spanish authorities—who may or may not have had good reason—suspected Rius of being a dangerous person, and arrested him; whereupon the United States Consul, ever watchful of the rights of American citizens, promptly demanded that the man should be immediately brought to trial, and released if no offence could be proved against him. The machinery of diplomacy is sometimes apt to move a trifle slowly, and ere it had moved far enough to bring about the satisfaction of the Consul’s demands it was stated that Rius had died suddenly in prison. This put General Fitzhugh Lee upon his mettle: he very strongly suspected that there was more in this man’s death than met the eye, and he insisted upon having the body medically examined, with the result that Rius was found to have been killed by a blow on the back of the head; while, scratched by a nail on the back of a chair in his cell, was found a statement to the effect that he was certain the prison authorities were fully determined to murder him. These ugly facts the United States Consul promptly reported to Washington, with the result that the American President immediately ordered him to demand a full investigation of all the circumstances, promising to back him up in his demand with all necessary support. As a result of this, the Spanish authorities, after interposing every possible obstacle in the way, appointed a commission of enquiry; but, as no clear proof was adduced that Rius had actually been deliberately murdered, the incident was permitted to close. There is little doubt, however, that this was the last drop in the cup, and that from that moment the United States practically determined to intervene upon the first legitimate opportunity, unless, indeed, Spain could be persuaded to grant to Cuba something in the nature of a very liberal measure of self-government. To secure this the United States Government approached Madrid with certain proposals; and this action, combined with a change in the Spanish Ministry, resulted in the recall of General Weyler, and the appointment of General Blanco as Capitan-General in his stead.
General Blanco arrived in Cuba in the month of November, 1897, charged with the task of pacifying the Cubans by a policy of conciliation, instead of the policy of coercion so vigorously and mercilessly pursued by his predecessor. But conciliation as a policy was adopted by Spain altogether too late to save Cuba to her. Had it been tried two years earlier, and pursued in good faith, it is more than likely that the Cubans, as a whole, would have gladly welcomed it, and that the revolution would have subsided and died out for want of support and encouragement: but now the island bore everywhere the marks of Weyler’s destroying hand; its once flourishing industries were gone; its inhabitants were ruined, and those of them who had been concentrated in the fortified towns were dying by thousands, perishing of starvation as the result of gross, culpable mismanagement, if not callous indifference; and the Cubans were firmly resolved never again to submit to a Government capable of such shocking abuses. Their experience of the last two years had convinced them that they had now but to persevere and they could compel Spain to evacuate the island in the course of another year at the utmost; while now, so incensed was the United States with Spain that its intervention might come at any moment. They therefore received General Blanco’s conciliatory advances coldly, and, so far from surrendering or laying down their arms, pursued their operations with even intensified energy. Meanwhile, on January 1, 1898, the new Constitution, which was one of Spain’s conciliatory measures, was proclaimed as in force, and a Colonial Government was appointed, with Señor Galvin as its nominal leader; but it possessed very little power, since so long as Spain persisted in retaining its hold on Cuba, and the revolution continued, the question of governing the island was necessarily a military one. Then, to add still further to the difficulties of Spain, and to bring the tension between her and the United States to practically breaking-point, came the “Dupuy de Lome” and the “Lee” incidents. The first of these arose out of a letter written by Señor Dupuy de Lome, the Spanish Minister at Washington, to his friend Señor Canalejas, who was then in Cuba on a visit. In this letter Señor Dupuy de Lome was imprudent enough to express, in very emphatic language, his doubts as to the good faith of the United States in the attitude which it had taken up on the Cuban question; and, not satisfied with this signal act of imprudence, the writer must needs indulge in certain very insulting remarks respecting President McKinley. This letter was stolen from Señor Canalejas in Havana, and sold to a New York newspaper, which promptly published it, with the natural result that de Lome was compelled to resign his post. The second, or “Lee”, incident was a sequel to the first, and was doubtless prompted by a desire for revenge. It was nothing less than a request by Spain that General Lee should be recalled from his position as Consul-General for the United States at Havana, upon the ground that he was a persona non grata to the Spanish authorities there. Needless to say, the request was not complied with. And then, finally, came the Maine incident.
This last had its origin in certain serious military riots which occurred in Havana on the 12th and 13th of January, 1898, due to the opposition of the Spaniards, military and civil, to General Blanco in his character as pacificator; the pacification of the island otherwise than by military operations being very unpopular with the resident Spaniards, and especially with the army. In consequence of these riots, and in view of the danger to American citizens arising out of the disorderly state generally of the city, the battleship Maine was sent to Havana by the United States Government.
She arrived in Havana harbour at eleven o’clock in the forenoon of January 25, 1898, and was duly saluted by the forts and the Spanish ships of war, whose salutes she as duly returned; after which, under the direction of the port authorities, she was moored in the man-o’-war anchorage. Nothing that could, even by the most hypersensitive, be construed into an act of discourteous behaviour was shown to either the officers or men of the ship; on the contrary, the Spaniards, no doubt shrewdly suspecting that the eye of the United States, quickened by recent events to a state of preternaturally acute perception, was suspiciously watching their every action, were at the greatest pains to exhibit the utmost courtesy, not only official but also non-official, to their visitors, to whom the officials and residents alike extended the most generous hospitality, in return for which several receptions were held on board the ship by Captain Sigsbee and his officers.
Now it happened that on February 15th—which fell on a Tuesday—Don Hermoso Montijo, his son Carlos, and Jack Singleton, completely worn out by many months of campaigning among the mountains, and several sharp attacks of fever, having amalgamated their considerably augmented band with that of another insurgent leader, and turned the command over to him, succeeded in entering the city of Havana unrecognised, and made their way on board the Thetis—which had then been for some time lying idle in the harbour—with the intention of recruiting their health by running across the Atlantic for the purpose of procuring a further supply of arms and ammunition, which the continual accessions to the revolutionary ranks caused to be most urgently needed. They were most enthusiastically welcomed by Milsom, who, having heard nothing from any of them for more than three months, was beginning very seriously to fear that, like many others of the revolutionaries, they had been “wiped out” in one or another of the countless skirmishes that were constantly occurring with the Spanish troops. He was delighted to learn that they were all to make a run across the Atlantic and back together; and within an hour of their arrival on board set to work upon the necessary preparations for the trip, which, however, he explained, it would be scarcely possible to complete under a couple of days, in the then disordered state of the city, with its attendant disorganised business conditions.
But, great as Milsom’s pleasure at their appearance undoubtedly was, Singleton soon became aware of a certain subtle constraint and uneasiness in his friend’s manner toward him; and as soon as he had satisfied himself that it really existed, and was not the result of his own imagination, he taxed his friend with it.
“Look here, Phil,” he said, “there is something wrong somewhere; I can see it by your manner. What is it? Out with it, man! You will have to tell us sooner or later, you know, so you may as well let us know what it is at once. Have you got into collision with the authorities, or roused their suspicions in any way, or what is it? We may as well know first as last, old man; so get it off your mind!”
“So you have noticed it, have you?” responded Milsom, rather grimly. “Well, you have guessed rightly, Jack; there is something very seriously wrong, though not in the directions which you have suggested. Of course the authorities have their suspicions—and very strong ones, too, I don’t doubt—about this vessel; they would be fools if they had not, seeing the length of time that she has been hanging about in these waters. But whatever their suspicions may be, they cannot possess an atom of proof, or they would have seized the craft before now, and clapped all hands of us into prison. No, it is not that, but—Jack—I don’t know what you will say, or what you will think of me—I give you my word of honour that it was not through any carelessness on my part—but—well, the fact of the matter is that—your submarine has been stolen!”