The History of Cuba, vol. 2

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

"Your excellency is desirous of apprehending the pirates who infest the coasts of the island?"

"You must have been reading the proclamations," jocosely suggested Tacon.

"And you wish to take Marti, dead or alive?"

Tacon signified that such was his purpose. His strange visitor then exacted the Captain-General's promise that he would be granted a free pardon in return for the valuable information which he was about to divulge. When this promise was given he said:

"I will lead you to the strongholds of the smugglers."

"You?" cried Tacon. "Who are you?"

"I am Marti!" was the reply.

Marti, who so calmly and unscrupulously betrayed his followers, was of course a welcome visitor to the Captain-General, and one worthy of his warmest co-operation and friendship. He was placed under surveillance, and was obliged to remain in the palace for the night, but the Captain-General refrained from telling anyone his identity. On the next day he acted as pilot for one of the Captain-General's boats, and after the course of several weeks he had exposed every hiding place of his men. The amount of money and property thus secured and appropriated by the Captain-General cannot be estimated, but it was very great. A great deal of it never found its way into the treasury. Marti was a scoundrel so much to his liking that the Captain-General decided not only to give him a free pardon, but an order on the treasury for a large sum of money. However, Marti had his own ideas of what he desired. In place of the money he chose the absolute right to fish the waters surrounding Havana, to the exclusion of all fishermen who were not in his employ. He had in his wild career marked for his own all the best fishing grounds in the harbor. This concession granted, there must naturally be found a market for his fish, and thus the fish market project was born. Then fishing made Marti so wealthy that he now had time for more elegant occupations, and turned his mind to theatricals. He is said to have obtained some sort of monopoly from the government over theatrical performances in the island, and then the public theatre idea was formed.

Tacon had as many press agents as an opera singer, albeit they had no methods of getting their material into public print and disseminated it by word of mouth. His agents told many stories of him to illustrate his love of justice, his wonderful generosity, and his many other admirable traits, for which he was in reality only negatively to be celebrated. The one which follows is merely illustrative of the others.

In the first year of his rule there was a young Creole girl, of surpassing beauty and modesty, of the name of Miralda Estalez. She was an orphan of seventeen, and kept a cigar store, which her beauty and grace made very popular with the young men of Havana. Miralda, like all proper heroines of fiction or fairy stories, was good as well as beautiful, and although many of the young bloods sighed for her, her glance fell with favor only on a handsome but, of course, poor and deserving young man, of the name of Pedro Mantenez. Pedro was a boatman, which is a most romantic and fitting occupation for an impoverished but righteous hero. He was more than this. By his wit and sagacity—which as we have seen failed to line his coffers, but if they had done so he would have been out of drawing in this affecting picture, since he would no longer have been poor but deserving—he was a leader among the other boatmen and beloved by all. The records of his noble and self-sacrificing deeds would have filled a volume as large as an unabridged dictionary. Miralda loved Pedro, and Pedro loved Miralda, and all was going as merry as a marriage bell, when entered the villain, a famous roué of the name of Count Almonte, who liked Miralda's cigars and cast melting glances at Miralda herself, but all in vain, because, as we have said, Miralda was good as well as beautiful. Finding that he would have to do something more substantial than make eyes, the worthy count offered Miralda a costly present which so affected her that she fainted, not with joy, but with horror. Then she ordered the count from her shop, but he refused to go and continued to hang around and buy her wares. Next the fine count offered her money and lands and rich clothes and what not, but the pure-minded young girl righteously spurned his offer. Acting quite in character the count then decided to kidnap her. His plans were ingenious, but in order to gain popularity for Tacon it was necessary that not far from this point he should get into the story.