about us. Well, perhaps they were hardly to blame, for a more disreputable-looking set of scarecrows it would not have been easy to find. But each man had a bag or bundle of those unclassified odds and ends that a sailor will hoard and make use of, although apparently only fit for the dust-heap. Therefore it became necessary to shepherd us into a low shed for the purpose of examining our luggage! Now, every one of those officials was hungry for a bribe, and their disappointment at the discovery that we were actually penniless, as well as entirely innocent of smuggling intention, was deep and unconcealed. The few poor rags we owned were tossed contemptuously about as if they were haymaking, and their remarks (happily understood by none of the company but myself) were quite unfit for publication. As a sort of solace I suppose, they confiscated all the sheath-knives which, like most merchant seamen, we carried at our belts, the vice-consul explaining that the carrying of weapons was illegal. Yet, as we were the only unarmed persons I saw during my stay in Havana of six months, I am inclined to think they were mistaken.

At last, it appearing that we were not too dangerous, we were allowed to proceed, and sheepishly enough we followed the viceconsul up town, objects of much comment to the unemployed passers-by. The number of men of all shades who seemed to be independent of labour astonished us, until we saw two or three gangs of slaves toiling like ants in loading and discharging oxwagons. Then, of course, matters were clearer. After a tramp of about twenty minutes, during which we saw only two females, both negresses, we emerged from a narrow evil-smelling alley upon a noble

square of immense size, at the corner of which I read the name * Plaza de Armas. Here there were trees, fountains, flagged or asphalted walks, seats, and cafés with their little tables and shady verandahs in plenty. But our eyes were instantly attracted by a company of armed men, or rather boys, who were apparently being drilled in a curious fashion in one of the open spaces. I had done with laughter for a while, although it was enough to remind one of Falstaff's ragged regiment. And even had I felt inclined to smile, one sight of the faces of that miserable company

bove effectually quenched any such desire. They were

the offscourings of the city, lean, wolfish, undersized,
'
rably sad. There was a faint attempt at uniformity in

ing, but it was filthy and tattered in the extreme. 1 ts variously armed, but the majority carried only an ugly

а

weapon at their side—a compromise between a bowie-knife and a machete, or cane-cutlass. The officers were smart, soldierly-looking men, well dressed and armed, but evidently profoundly contemptuous of their rank and file. This sight, however interesting to us, was wearisome to our guide, who impatiently ordered us on, saying, as he did so, “What do you want to look at that vermin for? One good job, you won't see 'em any more after to-nightat least not many of 'em.' I eagerly asked him why, receiving the information that they were marching that evening to the front against the rebels, who would assuredly slay the majority of them within a week. This remark, conveyed in a matter-of-fact tone, as of one who was describing the destiny of a flock of sheep, filled me with horror, and somehow I felt glad that my informant was no countryman of mine. I cannot say that he was a Spaniard, for such was the mixture of Latin races in this place, as in the Mexican ports we had recently left, that it was impossible to judge of a man's nationality. For instance, the shipping master, a New Orleans creole, one day invited me to his house to dine. There I met his wife, a soi-disant Spanish lady, and their three daughters, born in Havana. The young ladies were each engaged to be married, and their fiancés were present. One was French, one Italian, and one Teuton. The result of these unions would no doubt grow up in the city and speak Spanish as their mother tongue, but their nationality would be an indeterminate quantity,

But to resume. The place we were bound for was, I understood, to be our abode while in Havana, and now to our great relief was before us. Over its wide front ran the legend · Fonda del buen gusto,' which, if names meant anything, was consoling. It was a large and well-appointed café with rows of spotlessly white tables glittering with silver and glass; and I wondered how our grimy ragged condition would assort with such splendour. I was relieved to find that at the back of the building there was a huge apartment, innocent of all ornament, with a paved floor, two immense deal tables, and a number of benches of the straightest sort. This saloon was lighted by unglazed holes in the walls, and an exit into a dilapidated courtyard at the back was through an irregular breach in the wall that somehow savoured of bombardment or earthquake. In one corner of the room was an unprotected well which supplied the establishment with water, and provided a convenient shelter for anything living or dead that rolled too near its yawning curbless edge. Nevertheless, the

a

barrenness of this place suited our condition much better than the splendid restaurant in front, and when the waiters brought in a really sumptuous meal of many courses, and crowned the banquet with two bottles of wine (vino ordinario) per individual, it was generally conceded that few places we had known were comparable with the capital of Cuba. A benevolent old gentleman, with an American accent, strolled in and introduced himself as the shipping master, bringing his welcome in the shape of a bundle of cigars, and after dinner commanding cocktails round with a lordly air which delighted us. The rest was peace, at least until late in the afternoon, when some of us ventured out of doors for a stroll, and succeeded, as if by a natural instinct, in fetching the waterside whichever way we tried to go. But when nightfall came and the question of sleeping accommodation arose, we were told that at the present time of speaking the dormitory intended for us was occupied by a party of recruits, who would be leaving for the front next day. Would we, therefore, kindly content ourselves with a shakedown in our dining hall for the night ? Candour compels the statement that most of us were in that happy state when bed is the last consideration, so that the matter was easily settled. The tables and benches were drawn to one side, our rags spread on the stones nearest the wall remote from the well, and by ten o'clock, when the smoky kerosene lamp was removed, all hands were asleep but myself. I was too young to be affected in the same way as they were, that is, by over-indulgence in drink, and the novelty of my surroundings effectually kept me awake. The place was pitchy dark, except where the rising moon shot in a bar of silver through the breaches in the walls. And that pure white glow, like an electric beam, threw a shadow so solid and black that except in the light itself nothing was visible. For a seemingly interminable time I lay watching the slowly rising tide of moonlight up the fungus-covered walls, shuddering occasionally at the antics of the wicked-looking little lizards that scampered about the crevices of the brickwork.

Presently, with a stealthy tread, two or three dark figures entered from the courtyard, and my heart stopped beating for quite a while. Once within I could not see the visitors, but I felt like a newly plucked fowl as far as my skin was concerned. Then, as a body intercepted the moonbeam before me, I saw that the new arrivals were searching my sleeping shipmates—a thankless errand had they known it. Still, the situation was unbearable, and I nudged the carpenter, who lay next to me, receiving a sulky query in reply. In a rapid whisper I told him what was happening, and in less than five minutes all hands were outside the building. The courtyard, which looked almost like some ancient ruin from the massive fragments of stone scattered about, lay in a flood of molten moonlight, so dazzling as to be painful to our enlarged pupils. But when we saw clearly, there were at least a dozen most truculent-looking villains standing about, the recruits of whom we had heard. Some of them began ostentatiously whetting their bowie-knives upon the stones, which seemed to us so alarming that, seeing a way out into the street, we left those insecure precincts, keeping up a good round pace until we had placed at least half a mile between them and us. We had no notion of the hour, but the city was as silent as the grave. There was no light other than that of the moon, which, as I have before noted, cast such solid shadows that some of the narrow streets were Egyptian in their darkness.

Utterly ignorant of our whereabouts or our direction, we stumbled on, our disordered fancy peopling the shadows with innumerable enemies, until catching my foot in some obstruction I fell, my outstretched hands going splash into a little pool of mud. Scrambling to my knees upon the heap which had thrown me, I trembled from head to foot, for it was a corpse,

and
my

hands were besmeared with a crimson paste for which the body was responsible. We did not wait to investigate, but fled faster than we had yet moved during our journey, until, overcome with fatigue, we dropped our weary bodies upon the wide steps of some public building. Five minutes, perhaps, of rest ensued, and then one of the night-watchmen (serenos or vigilantes) appeared. He carried a sort of javelin, from the upper part of which a lantern was suspended, and with this pointed threateningly at the nearest of us he growled Vamos, perros !' The universal unspoken language which accompanied his words needed no translation, nor we a second invitation to begone, dogs.' In two minutes we were out of his sight, and had subsided into our former listless trudge. We must have been a lovely group. My own equipment consisted of a brief singlet of flannel and a pair of canvas trousers, so wooden that as I walked they creaked like an ungreased wheelbarrow. I was bareheaded and barefooted as most of my shipmates were, but in other respects they were all better provided with clothing than myself. In that mellow climate this mattered little, while

on the move, but as soon as we slackened speed we felt chilled and damp. Several times we essayed to rest, being unable to believe that we could again be molested in this city of darkness and silence, but fate was evidently against us. We would scarcely have settled into an uneasy doze when one of those ghostly serenos—evil befall his tribe !—would appear and start us on our travels once more. During that miserable night we must have traversed most of the city, although we never reached the Plaza de Armas in our wanderings. Finally, we came to a narrow turning between high buildings, which was distinguished by having a kerosene lamp suspended at one of its corners in front of the word · Aguacalle.' This I took to be the name of the street, but it was only part of the truth. “Water Street' was fair, but ‘Mud Lane' would have been better. Trottoir there was none, but at the sides of this filthy gutter the mud was a little less deep than in the unknown cavities of its centre. Unhappily for me, what we considered to be our 'way' lay through this lane. It was dark as a sewer, and when about halfway into its obscurity, I tripped over a stone and plunged sideways into a trough of mud up to my armpits. I was lugged out without comment, and we resumed our journey, making the difficult passage of this boulevard without further mishap. Ten minutes after getting clear of its precincts we emerged upon a wide desolate-looking plain, which must have been at a good elevation, as we were travelling uphill the whole night more or less. Here surely we were safe from molestation, and we sank down upon the short stubbly tussocks, bone-weary. A variety of unmusical sounds soon testified to the contentment of my shipmates, who lay like a group of corpses under the full glare of the moon, getting saturated by an incredibly heavy dew. To my heated imagination there were millions of centipedes, scorpions, and tarantulas rioting about this blasted heath;'consesequently I sat grasping my unprotected feet with both hands, and watching with feverish anxiety the widening of a pale streak of green and silver on the verge of the western horizon.

It could not have been long before the sun appeared, and I ventured to rouse my shipmates, who were all wet to the skin. Sulkily enough they rose, and without exchanging a word tacitly struck into the first road they came to. Many were the stealthy glances cast at us as we slouched along the hardly roused thoroughfares, but none saluted us until to our astonishment we halted in

of the building we had escaped from the previous night,