Harper's Round Table, November 26, 1895

IN FRONT OF A SPANISH CRUISER.

BY WILLIAM DRYSDALE.

"An hour's sport with a Spanish cruiser--that's what it will be," Benito Bastian said to himself.

But the care he was giving to his boat looked like more serious business than an hour's sport. She is a swift sharpie that he called Villa Clara, after his native town, and she was drawn up on the beach and turned over, and Benito was scraping her clean. If she ever did fast sailing, he wanted her to do it that night.

"Let this wind hold, and give me a dark night," he went on, "and it will take a faster cruiser than El Rey to catch me."

Benito is a handsome dark-eyed Cuban boy, who lives on the little Cuban island called Ginger Key, forty miles north of the Cuban coast. The boys of Ginger Key, like their older brothers, are full of excitement just now; for occasionally a band of Cuban patriots makes its way over from Florida and goes into hiding in the thick woods, and watches its chance to land on the coast of Cuba. These hands need guides; and it is the Ginger Key boys who know the waters well, and the coast too. Benito handles his sharpie to perfection on the darkest nights and in all kinds of weather; and as to helping his countrymen, the Cuban insurgents, he feels about it just as the Boston boys felt about Bunker Hill.

"I ought to be doing something for the cause," he said to himself several months ago. "It's a pity I'm only sixteen; they may think I am too young. But I know these waters as well as any man on the key."

He looked down regretfully at his bare feet and legs, for his trousers were rolled well up. He took off his old straw hat and smiled at it; but he could not see how his brown eyes flashed, nor how handsome his brown hair looked, waving in the wind. He is tall and strong for his age, and brown as a berry--not only from the sun, but by nature.

"Yes, they'll say I'm only a boy, that's sure," he continued; "so I must have my wits about me if I want to get a chance."

Two large parties of armed men Benito saw land on Ginger Key, and saw neighbors of his pilot them across to Cuba, dodging the Spanish cruisers. Then a third party came and went into camp, while the schooner Dart cruised up and down in the Florida straits. This last party staid so long that something seemed to be wrong, and Benito made up his mind that he might be useful; at any rate, he would try. He said little, but learned all he could, and when the opportunity came he went to the leader of the party.

"You don't get away very fast," he said to the leader, taking care to speak in a low voice. "It's ticklish work, landing men near Sagua la Grande. That's well watched."

The man looked at him curiously, surprised that this boy should know so much about his arrangements.

"Yes," he answered, "that is well watched. El Rey, the big Spanish cruiser, patrols that coast day and night."

"I think I could draw her off long enough for you to land your men," Benito whispered.

"You?" the man exclaimed; "why, you are only a boy!" It was just as Benito expected.

He went on to unfold the plan he had made; and it was a plan so full of daring and danger that the man opened his eyes wide.

"Well," said he, "you're full of grit, if you are only a boy. But you are very young, and I don't know anything about you. I don't even know whether you could make your way over to Cuba. You run over there alone and bring me some token to show that you've been there, and then I will talk to you."

"That's easy," Benito answered. "What shall I bring you?"

The man thought a moment. "Bring me a bunch of red bananas," he answered. "They are plenty in Cuba, but you raise only yellow ones on this key. If you bring me a bunch of red bananas, I will know that you have been in Cuba."

Forty-eight hours later Benito laid a bunch of red bananas in the leader's tent, and gave him some valuable information about the movements of the cruiser.

"I think you'll do," said the man. "You are not all talk and no action, like some of these fellows. If you can draw the cruiser off and keep her out of our way for two hours, you are worthy to call yourself a Cuban."

"Very good," Benito answered. "I will try."

They talked over the details of the plan, and agreed that they must wait for a pitch-dark night and a brisk wind. On the morning that Benito scraped his boat, there was every promise of such a night. There would be no moon, the sky was overcast, and a lively breeze came in from the southeast.

Seventy-five men and a great many cases of rifles were on board the schooner Dart, at five o'clock that afternoon, the hour agreed upon for sailing to make sure of reaching Sagua la Grande by midnight; and the sharpie Villa Clara seemed impatient for Benito to hoist her sails.

"We will give you a line and tow you over," said the leader.

"Oh, I guess you don't know the Villa Clara," Benito answered. "I think she will show the schooner the way."

"One thing I must ask you," were the leader's last words before he went on board the schooner--"do your father and mother know what danger you are going into to-night?"

"I have no father or mother," Benito replied, sadly; "so if I don't come back it will not make much difference."

None knew better than he the risk he was taking. The cruiser would blow him out of the water if she could; and if any of them were captured, they would either be shot or be sentenced by the Spaniards to long terms of imprisonment.

The night was all they could ask, and just what they had waited for. No moon, the sky full of black clouds to obscure the stars, and half a gale blowing from the southeast. Benito was willing to risk his life on the sharpie being a faster boat than the Spanish cruiser on such a night.

Neither schooner nor sharpie showed a light; and if Benito had been captured on the way over his captors would have been astonished at the cargo he carried. In the bottom of his boat were a dozen boards, each two feet long by a foot wide, with a shallow tin can nailed to the middle of each board. And there were four canisters of colored fire--one red, one yellow, one green, and one white. And there were several yards of fuse, and a box of sand. The colored fire and the fuse Benito had bought when he visited Cuba for the bananas.

"The schooner is to lie to as soon as we sight the lights on the Cuban coast," was the arrangement Benito made with the leader. "After I find the cruiser you will see her lights moving; but she will be nearer to me than to you. I will give you a white light when all is safe. When I burn a white light you can land your men."

The sharpie and the schooner kept well together till they were near the coast of Cuba, and they saw the lights of Sagua la Grande before ten o'clock. This was so much earlier than they had expected that it made some difference in Benito's plans. By midnight the cruiser, following her usual course, should be somewhere off Cardenas; but instead of that they saw her lights directly in front of the spot where they proposed to land the men.

"So much the better," said Benito, when he boarded the schooner for a moment before setting his dangerous plot in motion. "I will coax her down to the eastward."

The leader of the party gave him a warm grip of the hand before they parted.

"You are a brave lad," said he. "When you are under the cruiser's fire, remember that it is in the cause of freedom."

"Oh, I don't think they can hit me," Benito answered; "and I am sure they can't catch me." And he was off.

The schooner and the sharpie had this great advantage; they could see the cruiser's lights, but she could not see them.

Benito beat down the coast till he was about five miles to the eastward of the cruiser, and several miles from the shore. Then he took up one of his boards with the shallow tin can nailed to it.

He poured sand into the can till it was about two-thirds full, and then put in a good inch of red fire. Through a little hole that he had punched in the side of the can he inserted the end of a full half-yard of fuse, and wound it round and round the can, and tied it with a cord to keep it out of the water. Cautiously he struck a match under the stern seat and touched it to the fuse, and laid the board on the surface of the water and left it floating there.