I found my idea of joining the rebels by sea impracticable, and as to go by land was perilous in the extreme, I made up my mind to send Nunn back to Havana and to make the venture alone. I did not care to chance his life, and I also felt that it was safer for one than for two. Forty miles away was the last fortified post on the Rio Choerra, at the small town of Voronjo. Once across that small stream I would be on neutral ground, liable at any time to fall in with a rebel band. Nunn was very plucky and most devoted. He by no means wanted to go back, but at last consented. I determined to chance traveling on the beach by night. So at 12 o'clock the day after our arrival at Cajio we mounted our horses and announced that we were returning to Havana. Two miles away, at the small hamlet of Zoringa, we put our horses out and struck for the beach about four miles west of Cajio. Then we went a few yards into the jungle and sat down for our last talk and to wait for the darkness. We were no longer master and servant, but friends. The hours went slowly by; we did not say much, but felt strongly. We had good cigars and smoked almost incessantly. I told him to see Curtin, to give him my regards and laugh at him in a nice way, and to tell my wife that I would limit my stay with the rebels to a year. I told Nunn to send for his wife to join him in New York, and my wife would take her into service so that they could be together. I did not dare to keep the gun we had, but retained the revolvers in a belt around my waist. They were rather old-fashioned, and, as the sequel proved, the ammunition was not waterproof or else was defective. I had two bottles of water, a hundred cigars in my pocket, 300 cartridges, four pounds of dried beef and a loaf of bread. I wore a soft hat and had on a fine pair of English walking boots, an important article for the tramp ahead of me. I wore my chronometer tied by a stout string. I sent my wife all my valuables save three diamond studs, $700 in gold and $5,000 in notes, mostly Spanish bank notes, and I kept $10,000 in bonds. Nunn cut me a stout ironwood cudgel as a handy weapon. At last the night came, and still we waited, loath to say good-bye. We had come out of the jungle and were sitting in the still warm sand talking in low tones and watching the stars. At last when my watch told me it was 10 we rose, and, shaking hands warmly, parted, he going east to Cajio, I west toward Pinar del Rio and the rebel camps. Of course, my great danger lay in meeting soldiers who would stop me. Indeed any one who met a stranger and a foreigner heading west would either stop him or give an alarm, and if once arrested (passports so near the enemy's camp were useless) it meant death, or what was quite as bad, incarceration in a filthy prison until my case was reported on to the Captain-General in Havana. That, of course, meant my return to Havana and possibly to England.