I made two more trips to Charleston without any very exciting experiences, though we were fired on both times, and then sold the ship to an enterprising Englishman who was waiting for me at Turk’s Island. I had made a comfortable fortune with her and sold her for more than I paid for her. She was in almost as good condition as when I bought her, but I have made it a rule never to overplay my luck, and I knew I had run about as many trips with her as I could expect to make without a change of fortune. I am under the impression that the ship and her new owner were captured on her next trip to Charleston, but am not sure as to that. CHAPTER II FILIBUSTERING FOR THE CUBANS Having succeeded as a blockade runner I was ambitious to become a filibuster, which kindred vocation I thought offered even greater opportunities for adventure. Immediately after the sale of the “Letter B,” in the latter part of 1864, I returned to New York, in the hope that the Cespedes revolution in Cuba would have been sprung and a Junta established with which I could work. I found that the revolt was still hatching and that no New York agent had been appointed, so, for want of something better to do, I bought from Benjamin Wood, editor of the New York _News_, the old Franklin Avenue distillery in Brooklyn. This venture resulted in an open and final rupture with my family, who were virtuously outraged to begin with because of the aid I had given the South as a blockade runner. I left home in a rage and swore that I would never again set foot in it or set eyes on any member of the family, and except for a visit to my father just before he died, not long afterward, I have kept my vow. I was always his favorite son, in spite of my wild love of adventure and the ways into which it led me, and when I got word that he was seriously ill I went to him at once, but I saw no one else in the house except the servants. The Franklin Avenue distillery was then the largest in the East but it had not been in operation for several years. I put Charles McLaughlin in charge of the plant and set it in motion. Two or three other distilleries were then running in Williamsburg, one of which was owned by Oscar King. I had been in the distillery business only a few months, during which time the property had shown a large profit, when, while attending a performance at the old Grand Opera House with Andrew W. Gill, I met “Jim” Fisk, with whom I had become acquainted in my boyhood days. At the time I had known him he was running a gaudy pedler’s wagon out of Boston. He was laid up for a week by a prank which I played on him in George Steele’s store at Ferrisburg, Vermont, but after that we became good friends.