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The railway would take us to the little hamlet of San Felipe, some forty miles south, and there we were to take horses to the seaport town of Cajio. We were to start on Saturday, two days ahead. My wife did not relish my going, and I disliked it more than she did, but for totally different reasons.
It probably meant death if we were captured. I think on the whole it would have been the wiser plan to have gone to Senor Andrez's plantation at San Jose. The fear in that case was that if an order arrived from Madrid to deliver me up I might not be safe even in the Isle of Pines. At Cajio I resolved to lose myself so far as the Spanish authorities were concerned, and only travel by night.
If on meeting Nunn I found from the papers he brought that there was any sign of danger I would not return to Havana, but would secure a boat, provision it, set sail alone for some port in Central America and send my servant back after my wife. At 10 o'clock our party set out in an open-decked cargo boat from Cajio for San Jose, seventy miles across the water and on the west coast of the island.
We arrived in due time at Cajio, and here our passports were demanded by a little yellow monkey of a sergeant. I did not quite like having passports scrutinized and determined to try and avoid any more of it. We found no boat at Cajio, nor could we buy, or, if we bought, could not manage one alone. The only thing we could do was to charter one with a crew of four men.
Just as the sun was flinging its dyes over the clouds and waters, one week from the Sunday of my arrival at San Jose, I was sailing into the little bay of Cajio. Gray was to remain another week, and I was returning in a small sloop manned by two of Senor Andrez's men. I found Nunn waiting for me on the beach. He handed me a letter from my wife and said everything was well at home.
I determined to chance traveling on the beach by night. So at 12 o'clock the day after our arrival at Cajio we mounted our horses and announced that we were returning to Havana. Two miles away, at the small hamlet of Zoringa, we put our horses out and struck for the beach about four miles west of Cajio.
The roadbed was execrable, the trucks of the cars were without springs, and to me it seemed as if we must leave the rails at any moment. In Havana we regarded Don Andrez as a good fellow, but upon our arrival at San Felipe he had grown into a man of importance. When we came to Cajio he had grown into a person of distinction, and at the island he had swollen into a local Caesar.
Another mile and we were in Cajio, and the Caribbean, blue and lovely as a dream, lay spread before us, with hundreds of palm crowned islets and coral bays, all with sandy beaches of dazzling whiteness. Senor Andrez had a house here, and as they had notice of our coming everything was prepared for our reception. Entering the house, we were served with black coffee and thin rice cakes fried.
I proposed as when on my visit to embark from Cajio, but to take a westward course along the coast, and when well off Pinar del Rio and night fell to put about and steer to shore under cover of the darkness. Once ashore, to get as far inland as possible before dawn. Then to keep a lookout for any body of rebels and join them as a volunteer in the cause of "free Cuba."
My mind was in a tumult of delight, and I almost forgot I was a fugitive; fortunately the Spaniard is not a suspicious animal, and no notice was taken of us; and so we bumped slowly on southward through the tropic night. Seven o'clock on the morning of the 11th found us at Guisa, a small station on the railroad about ninety miles from Havana and west from Cajio some twenty miles.
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