This girl displeased the Spanish commanders, and in revenge they accused her of being a dangerous rebel, and had her thrown into prison.
She is a very young girl, but a little over fifteen years of age, but the Spaniards thrust her into the prison where all the worst women criminals were kept, and she had for her companions tipsy negresses and all the roughest and worst kinds of women, white and colored.
Every one who heard of this thought it such a shameful thing for a delicate young girl to be forced to spend her days in the society of such terrible companions that the women of this country got up a monster petition, thousands signing it, and sent it to the Queen of Spain.
This petition urged the Queen to have little Miss Cisneros removed to a more suitable prison, and to order that she be given a speedy trial, so that she might have an opportunity of proving her innocence.
Her Majesty, Queen Christine, did order that the girl should be less hardly used, but General Weyler saw fit to disregard the royal instructions, and the child was kept locked up in this horrid prison.
Finding that Weyler did not mean to help Señorita Cisneros, nor yet to give her a proper trial, some friends went to her rescue. Hiring a room opposite to her prison, two young men built a bridge of planks by which they were enabled to reach the window of her prison, and, as the story goes, after sending her drugged candies to give to her room-mates so that they might sleep heavily and not hear what was going on, these men sawed through the bars of her prison, lifted her out on the roof beside them, and hurried her away over the bridge to freedom.
She was kept in concealment for a day or two, and then, disguised as a boy, passed under the nose of the police officer who was watching the steamers to prevent her escape to this country. Once on board and safely out of sight of Cuba, she confessed her secret to the stewardess, who gave her some woman's clothes, and took care of her until she was safely landed in New York.
One of the New York papers, The Journal, claims the credit for the young girl's rescue, and states that the two men who freed her from her prison were reporters sent out from the paper to do the work. It is to be hoped that this is not true, for while we must sympathize with all unfortunate prisoners, we have no right to break open the jails of another country and free her criminals. If this story is true, Spain has a just cause of complaint against us.
Señor Sagasta has published the contents of the note presented to him by General Woodford, and which was said by so many people to be practically a declaration of war. It turns out to have been merely a polite inquiry as to how much longer the war was going to last, and whether Spain saw a possibility of bringing it to a speedy close.