Among the passengers who left the ship, were several Americans. One, a large, redheaded, heavy-set man, with genial face and friendly manner, from Mississippi, was a timberman, out buying mahogany in the forests of Yucatan. He told me that Americans are purchasing all the available mahogany now standing in the accessible Mexican forests, and he seemed to regard the mahogany of Yucatan as of especial value. Another of the passengers leaving the ship was a man of small stature and clean shaven. He early attracted our attention by his sanctimonious air, and the frightfully fluent American oaths with which he spiced his games of poker in the smoking room, where in company with a group of flashily dressed and bediamonded Mexicans, he played apparently for the highest stakes. The contrast between his smooth exterior and the noisome contents of his mind, as well as the fact that the two or three hard-faced Mexicans who seemed to have in charge the company of little boys, constantly sought him out in consultation, led to the suspicion that he was the chief trafficker in this death trade. In response to our questioning as to his antecedents and business, he became abusive, and upon my taking his picture with my kodak, he grew angry and afterwards fought shy of all intercourse with his fellow-countrymen. As to who he may really be we know not. When the little boys departed from the ship, we noticed that he also sailed away.
The sun was just sinking, like a ball of fire, into the margin of the western sea, when we weighed anchor and steamed eastward to cross the Strait of Yucatan. The surface of the waters lay calm and quiet as a sheet of glass. We were two nights and a day in reaching Havana, and the one day was spent in crossing the Strait.
Most of the afternoon I have sat or lain upon the forward deck watching the waters and observing the sea life everywhere about me. We have passed innumerable flocks of flying fish. Here and there a few porpoises have tumbled and wheeled about us, but the sharks have disappeared. Also, I have caught sight of my first nautilus, so daintily sailing its convoluted shallop upon the sea. These exquisite shell-fish I have never before seen alive, and I have watched them with keenest interest. They appear only when perfect calm prevails. At the least roughness of the sea, they instantly sink from view. We have also all day been passing through extensive masses of yellow gulf weed, such as I have noticed when traversing the Gulf Stream on transatlantic voyages, only here the weed was in great masses, not yet having been broken up by the tempestuous ocean tides. But we have been accompanied by no birds.
As we drew further eastward the air grew more soft and balmy. We were utterly alone, no craft other than our own appeared anywhere upon the waters.
I fell asleep watching the big stars and dreaming of Spanish galleons and British buccaneers, of Portuguese pirates and French marauders, whose adventurous sails have in the centuries gone by whitened in countless multitudes these now silent seas.
When morning broke, the shores of Cuba bounded the horizon on the south, ten or fifteen miles away. Low sandy reaches stretched along the sea; palms, tall and feathery, were waving in the morning breeze behind the white ribbon of the strand, a faint blue line of mountains lying yet beyond. As we approached the island there seemed to be no break in the coast line, but farther on we discovered a narrow channel, between the fortress of El Moro and the city of Havana and, entering it, came into a harbor, landlocked and storm free, one of the securest in the world. We cast anchor near the projecting rusted wreck of the United States Steamship Maine. I had finished my voyage. I was here to go ashore, while a few hours later the Monterey would turn northward and sail on to New York.
THE HARBOR OF HAVANA