UNDER THE BLACK FLAG.

As the sun went down below the rolling glassy waters of the gulf of Mexico, I sat on the hatchway steps of the little steamer Dauntless, fully realizing for the first time that perhaps before morning I would be swinging to the yard-arm of a Spanish man-of-war.

I was sick, anyway, and the abominable mixture of whiskey and garlic which Mark Witherspoon had given me as a preventive against yellow fever, had made the contemplation worse.

The Dauntless was loaded with arms and munitions of war for the Cuban Insurgents and if the Spaniards caught us we would doubtless share the fate of the crew of the Virginius at Santiago de Cuba in 1873.

I had credentials as a newspaper correspondent, but Mark Witherspoon and I had duly enlisted at Tampa, Florida, in the cause of Cuban liberty, and we were assigned to the third division of Garcia’s army under command of General Ruloff.

Our little vessel hugged the Florida Keys for more than a week. Meantime we were reinforced by small parties of twos and threes, who came in open boats by night. The stores of rifles, ammunition and dynamite came by small sailing craft. We now numbered thirty-seven men. Eight of us were Americans, two were Germans and the others were Cubans from Tampa and Key West.

On the night we were ready to start the distinguishing lights of a revenue cutter were seen, so we lay close in a little cove and banked the fires in our furnace until four o’clock the next afternoon, when we slipped out and put for the high seas, headed straight for the coast of Cuba. When night fairly set in, there came small squalls and a drizzling rain. We had no signal lights out and every sound was muffled, even the funnel was so protected that not a spark could escape. All night long everybody was most keenly alert, and it was towards daylight that the irregular mountain lines of Cuba could be discerned, standing in shadowy relief against a darkened sky. On entering a little landlocked harbor we signaled with flash lanterns and were soon answered from the shore. Nearly a hundred insurgents met us, and the work of unloading quickly began. During the morning we were reinforced by nearly a hundred more Cubans who brought ponies and pack mules. As soon as we were unloaded our vessel hoisted the Danish flag and with all possible speed put out for the high seas. Her hull was well down on the horizon when we took up our march inland. Our route lay over tortuous mountain trails over which our ponies climbed with the agility of goats. The trail was often dangerous in the extreme, for the slip of a pony’s hoof would have sent both horse and rider hundreds of feet below. We had taken trails unknown to the Spanish soldiery.

When about fifty miles in the interior, we reached a plateau and here found encamped some eight hundred men under General Ruloff. From the very first I had but little confidence in him. He was a Polish Jew, well educated in military tactics, but unfitted to conduct a guerrilla warfare with men like us who were virtually fighting under the black flag.

Subsequent events proved this, for at the fight of Santo Esperitu we left our improvised hospital unguarded, and Captain Sandoval cut to our rear and captured it and after destroying much of our valuable stores, put every sick man to death.

Our rendezvous lay in the province of Puerto Principe and our line of action westward. After the fight at Santo Esperitu we never massed in action, but divided into companies of about one hundred, free to run or fight as our commander ordered.

Our detachment captured Captain Sandoval and a party of his men, and in view of his inhuman treatment of our prisoners, he was promptly shot. Sandoval went to his death as all other cowardly butchers do, trembling like a leaf in the wind.

We were ordered by Ruloff to burn all azucaderos (sugar mills) and to blow up with dynamite all railroad culverts and bridges and to destroy all telegraph lines. Our division frequently made rapid raids, always gaining ground westward. The division to which we were attached raided the town of San Lazaro which was defended by a small body of Spaniards. We routed them and captured some two hundred Mauser rifles and a large quantity of ammunition and other military stores. Our commander then ordered the execution of the alcalde (mayor) for having betrayed a number of insurgent sympathizers, causing them to be shot, and their families to be driven through the streets, beaten with sticks.

Early in November we were encamped near Nuevitas where we had lain inactive for several days. One afternoon scouts had reported an advancing column and we had chosen for our ambuscade the ruins of a stone building, now overgrown with vines and nearly hidden from view by a cactus thicket.

There was a hushed stillness in the dark forest that lay beyond the long yellow road, and in the cane fields that stretched away for leagues to our right. To the left the San de Cubitas mountains, with their covering of dense tropical vegetation, rose dark and silent. A lookout had climbed a tall cebra tree and was watching with a field glass. He suddenly gave the signal. Then the men were told in whispers each to select a man and to fire at a given order. The Cuban sun blazed hotly down that day. The air was close and stifling in our position behind the cactus thicket and our hearts beat quick and fast in those moments of waiting. There was the low rumble of horses hoofs, a cloud of yellow dust arose from down the road, and soon the Spanish column was almost abreast the 150 rifles that pointed from behind the stone wall. I peered over the sights of my Winchester and drew a bead on the breast of a young officer. He was chatting gaily with a companion and as he turned his face revealed a handsome countenance. It was a boyish face with the dawn of manhood just settling upon the brow. Thoughts crowded each other in my mind just then: Perhaps the young man was a conscript, not here by his own choice to imperil his young life, and I, whom he had never wronged, an unsuspected foe, safely hid in the cactus thicket behind the stone wall, about to send his soul into eternity. I lowered my aim from his breast to his horse just behind the shoulder. The order came to fire. The trigger that would have pulled like a ton weight a second before pulled easily now. And so all through those dreadful volleys that we poured into the struggling ranks. For firing into a mass of men is a different thing from that of firing upon one man singly. When the smoke of battle cleared away more than forty of the routed Spanish column lay dead or wounded in the road. I went to the place where the young trooper’s horse had fallen and there lay the young officer pinioned underneath with a broken leg. I felt that I wanted to help him. I knew from the look on his manly face that in private life he would have been my friend, but to show a kindly feeling at that time would have made me a suspect among my comrades in arms. Their machetes flashed in the sunlight and their strokes falling swift and fast reddened the soil of Puerto Principe. Mark and I stood silent, helpless spectators of the horrors of war and revenge, wreaked by men, who in the remembrance of wrongs and outrage, were lost to any feeling of common humanity. There was only one act of kindness which I dared perform. In the pocket of his blood-stained blouse I found a letter. It was from his mother in Seville, and bore a mother’s love and sister’s prayer for his safe return. When I afterwards landed at Galveston, I sent it to his home, with an account of how he died upon the battlefield.

The blazing sun was yet high when we were in our saddles and moving away. I saw a vulture circling above the battlefield, one, two, then a dozen, then a score. These black-winged scavengers had scented death, and there let contemplation end. Night comes suddenly in the tropics, when the sun dips beyond the sea, but here and there in the valley were lights, lantern like at first, spreading soon like a long prairie fire. They were in the cane fields which our men were firing, and as the flames swept on, the bursting stalks sounded like a battle with light revolvers. It lit the night, and its glare and gloom added mystery to the dark forest beyond the road. Morning came and we were safely encamped amid the hills. The birds sang merrily and the sun dried the dew upon the tall, rank grass, and when it came roll call, two names were stricken off. They had reported the day before to the Great Commander of the great beyond.