Just as I had expected, the “Virginius” after many narrow escapes was finally captured by the Spaniards on October 31, 1873, as she was about to land a mixed cargo of men and arms near Santiago. General Cespedes, the life of the revolution, and three of his best fighting chiefs, Generals Ryan, Varona, and Del Sal, who happened to be on board, were summarily executed. This was done, it was claimed, under prior sentences, but as a matter of fact there was not so much as a mockery of a trial, either at the time they were put to death or previously. All of the others who were on board were tried for piracy and promptly convicted, of course. Within a week after the seizure of the ship, Capt. Joseph Fry, her American commander, thirty-six of his crew, and sixteen “passengers,” were lined up and shot to death, with an excess of brutality. The rest of the prisoners, who were to have been similarly disposed of, were saved, not through intervention from Washington whence it should have come, but by the timely arrival of a British warship, whose commander refused to permit any further butchery. England peremptorily compelled the Spanish Government to pay a substantial indemnity for the British subjects who had been thus lawlessly executed, while the United States Government, as an evidence of the protection it gave American citizens in those days, waited twenty-five years before taking vengeance on Spain for the murder of Captain Fry and his companions. But for the “Virginius” Massacre and the bad blood it engendered between America and Spain, Cuba might still be taking orders from Madrid instead of from Washington; had it not been for that never forgotten butchery the blowing up of the “Maine” might have been regarded as an accident. Along about 1868, after it had run half its length, the Ten Years’ War began to bog down. The Cubans were out of funds and appeared to have lost heart, and it looked as though the revolt would be another failure. There was nothing else doing in this part of the world in which I was interested so I decided to go to Europe, being attracted by the prospect of war between France and Germany and the adventurous possibilities which it suggested. CHAPTER III IN LEAGUE WITH THE SPANISH PRETENDER