"
"You're rich. My landlady cleaned me. Is it the practice of
beneficent monarchies to provide transportation for their
departing guests?"
"Undoubtedly."
Branch coughed dismally. "It 'll be all right if they just buy me
a ticket to the first fog. One more hemorrhage and I'll wing my
way aloft. God! I'd hate to be buried at sea."
"Cheer up!" O'Reilly reassured him, irritably. "There may be ice
aboard."
"ICE!" Leslie gasped. "Oh, bullets!"
In marked contrast to the difficulties of entering Cuba was the
ease of leaving it. A ship was sailing from Neuvitas on the very
afternoon when the two Americans arrived, and they were hurried
aboard. Not until the anchor was up did their military escort
depart from them.
With angry, brooding eyes O'Reilly watched the white houses along
the water-front dwindle away, the mangrove swamps slip past, and
the hills rise out of their purple haze. When the salt breath of
the trades came to his nostrils he turned into his state-room,
and, taking the crate of cocoanuts with which General Antuna had
thoughtfully provided him, he bore it to the rail and dropped it
overboard.
"Rheumatism was a fool disease, anyhow," he muttered.
"Great news!" Esteban Varona announced one day as he dismounted
after a foraging trip into the Yumuri, "We met some of Lacret's
men and they told us that Spain has recalled Captain-General
Campos.
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