One day Gray brought Senor Andrez to dinner, along with a common friend, a Senor Alvarez. All three joined in imploring me to make one of the party, promising sport as novel as good; said the wild boars were plentiful; that we would have two days' shark fishing, turning turtles and hunting their eggs, and could vary it by a slave hunt, the jungle and some of the smaller islands being "full of runaways," and as they were by law wild beasts we might be lucky enough to shoot a few of them--shoot, not capture, as the planters knew that a runaway slave who had tasted the joys of freedom if caught was useless as a slave. So, as a matter of sport, as well as a warning to other slaves, they organized yearly hunts to bag a score or two. But so great is the depravity of the human heart that these wretches, in their desperate wickedness, objected to being shot, and at times were guilty of the enormity of shooting back again. History records how, on certain occasions, they did so with such good effect that the hunted became hunters; but these were rare events. After long urging I consented. At the time there were only two short railways in all Cuba. We were to cross the island to the south coast, and there embark for the Isle of Pines in a boat owned by our host, which would be in waiting. The railway would take us to the little hamlet of San Felipe, some forty miles south, and there we were to take horses to the seaport town of Cajio. We were to start on Saturday, two days ahead. My wife did not relish my going, and I disliked it more than she did, but for totally different reasons. Mine were that, as a matter of prudence, I ought to recall my consent and remain in Havana until steamer day, and then sail without fail to Mexico. But fearing the ridicule of my friends, I went, persuading myself that there could be no danger and that everything in London was buried in so dense a fog bank that the detectives would struggle in vain to find a way out of it or any clue to our identity. Had I known of the clever work of the Pinkerton brothers in London and the discoveries in Paris I should have been ill at ease; but had I known that Capt. John Curtin--then a member of the Pinkerton staff in New York, but now (1895.) of San Francisco--had with perfectly marvelous intuition and rare detective skill let daylight into the whole plot, and had reported to his chief that whenever F. A. Warren was discovered he would prove to be Austin Bidwell; I say if I had known this, instead of going off on a ten days' pleasure jaunt into an isolated corner of the world I should have taken instant flight, leaving Cuba, not by the usual modes of departure, but by sailing boat, and alone, for one of the Mexican ports.