The next morning I found we were sailing along the Cuban coast, quite near the land, which looked so inviting that I made up my mind to go ashore and stay a month in Havana, so I had my baggage got on deck. Soon after dinner the engines were stopped for some hours for repacking, the captain informing me that it was doubtful whether we should arrive in Havana in time to go ashore that night. At 6 o'clock the sunset gun is fired, the custom house closes and no more debarkations are allowed that day. If I went ashore the next day I must be up and off at an early hour, as the ship sailed at 7.30, so I told the captain if he arrived before 6 o'clock I would go ashore and wait for the next steamer, but if we were late I would go on to Vera Cruz with him. Once having made up my mind to go ashore, I was all eagerness to push matters. To do so I even asked the captain to tell the engineer to force the engines a little if possible. It was well on to 6 o'clock when we steamed past Moro Castle and dropped anchor in the harbor. I engaged two of the boats alongside, our baggage was hurried into them, my wife went down the ladder, and speaking some hurried farewells I ran down after her and sprang lightly into the boat. That instant the sunset gun was fired. Two minutes later and the custom house officers on board would have forbidden my leaving the steamer. I say two minutes, but it was less than half a minute. Half a minute! Thirty seconds changed my destiny. CHAPTER XXX. "HAPPINESS AND I SHAKE HANDS FOR A TIME." Cuba! What a productive and fertile island it is, with its charming climate and lovely scenery! But, as in so many of the green spots of this world, man has blasted and spoiled all that indulgent nature has lavished here. From the days of Columbus the story of Cuba has been one of wholesale murder of natives, of revolutions--later of insurrections, and deadly civil strife, which have ruined whole provinces once covered with large sugar, coffee and tobacco plantations. Slavery now, as in all her past Christian history, is everywhere. Previous to 1861 40,000 slaves were yearly imported in slave ships into the harbor of Havana. Perhaps all men are cruel when they are absolute masters of the lives and fortunes of their fellows and amenable to none for their acts. Certainly the white Cubans, as a rule, are cruel masters in all their dealings with their slaves. Probably to-day, certainly in 1873, most of the large plantations witnessed scenes of cruelty never surpassed in the long annals of human servitude. During my stay I was invited to visit many plantations, but visits to two were enough for me, there being too many signs on the surface of the brutality that lay beneath. I could easily give cases that I saw or heard of, but refrain from doing so here.