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Updated: July 12, 2025
And when at length the train drew up at the platform of Pinar del Rio station, and he saw Senor Eugenio Calderon, Don Hermoso's manager, waiting thereon, his heart sank, a momentary feeling of sickness and giddiness seized him, and as he reeled out of the carriage on to the platform he muttered to himself: "I knew it; I was certain that something was wrong!"
Spain poured in fresh troops until, by the close of 1895, its army is reported as numbering 200,000 men. The Cubans carried the contest westward from Oriente and Camaguey, through Santa Clara, and into the provinces of Matanzas, Havana, and Pinar del Rio.
At last when my watch told me it was 10 we rose, and, shaking hands warmly, parted, he going east to Cajio, I west toward Pinar del Rio and the rebel camps. Of course, my great danger lay in meeting soldiers who would stop me. That, of course, meant my return to Havana and possibly to England. Everything is very primitive in Cuba.
Matanzas and Havana are vast stretches of level cultivated plain, with only a few hills of relief. Pinar del Rio is centrally mountainous, with fertile coastward slopes."
The extraordinary activity that characterized the second year of the war, when the insurgents invaded even the thitherto unharmed fields of Pinar del Rio and carried havoc and destruction up to the walls of the city of Havana itself, had relapsed into a dogged struggle in the central and eastern provinces.
Calonna was not at that time an important place, nor is the Cuban railway system remarkable for its efficiency; nothing need therefore be said about either save that after jolting through some exceedingly beautiful country, which grew more beautiful with every mile of progress upon a gradually rising gradient, the travellers were safely landed in the city of Pinar del Rio a distance of some fifteen miles from Calonna in a trifle over an hour!
The hunt began at the tobacco shed, beneath the unbolted shutter of which Juan declared that, despite the hardness of the ground, he had succeeded in detecting the footprints of the fugitive; and thence it took its course northward, strange to say, in the direction of the mountains, instead of toward Pinar del Rio, as the two young white men had naturally expected.
"Yes," said Jack, "I went with them to the station, and chatted with them until the train pulled out." "Then," said Don Ramon, "it is obvious that the disappearance occurred somewhere between Havana and Pinar del Rio possibly at Santiago, or maybe at Bejucal. If I cannot hear anything of them elsewhere I will run down to both those places to-morrow and institute a few judicious enquiries.
The carriage road from Pinar del Rio could be almost, as easily defended, for, at a few yards from the main road, the private road giving access to Don Hermoso's estate was carried across a wide stream by means of a single-arched masonry bridge, which bridge could be readily destroyed by means of dynamite; and Jack soon made all the arrangements for its destruction, if necessary, at a moment's notice.
The pace of the riders was by no means rapid, nothing more than a brisk canter, in fact, but, the route taken being practically the shortest possible distance between Senor Montijo's hacienda and Pinar del Rio, the journey was accomplished in little over an hour; and when at length they pulled up at the railway station they had a good four minutes in hand.
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