Our little vessel hugged the Florida Keys for more than a week. Meantime we were reinforced by small parties of twos and threes, who came in open boats by night. The stores of rifles, ammunition and dynamite came by small sailing craft. We now numbered thirty-seven men. Eight of us were Americans, two were Germans and the others were Cubans from Tampa and Key West. On the night we were ready to start the distinguishing lights of a revenue cutter were seen, so we lay close in a little cove and banked the fires in our furnace until four o’clock the next afternoon, when we slipped out and put for the high seas, headed straight for the coast of Cuba. When night fairly set in, there came small squalls and a drizzling rain. We had no signal lights out and every sound was muffled, even the funnel was so protected that not a spark could escape. All night long everybody was most keenly alert, and it was towards daylight that the irregular mountain lines of Cuba could be discerned, standing in shadowy relief against a darkened sky. On entering a little landlocked harbor we signaled with flash lanterns and were soon answered from the shore. Nearly a hundred insurgents met us, and the work of unloading quickly began. During the morning we were reinforced by nearly a hundred more Cubans who brought ponies and pack mules. As soon as we were unloaded our vessel hoisted the Danish flag and with all possible speed put out for the high seas. Her hull was well down on the horizon when we took up our march inland. Our route lay over tortuous mountain trails over which our ponies climbed with the agility of goats. The trail was often dangerous in the extreme, for the slip of a pony’s hoof would have sent both horse and rider hundreds of feet below. We had taken trails unknown to the Spanish soldiery. When about fifty miles in the interior, we reached a plateau and here found encamped some eight hundred men under General Ruloff. From the very first I had but little confidence in him. He was a Polish Jew, well educated in military tactics, but unfitted to conduct a guerrilla warfare with men like us who were virtually fighting under the black flag. Subsequent events proved this, for at the fight of Santo Esperitu we left our improvised hospital unguarded, and Captain Sandoval cut to our rear and captured it and after destroying much of our valuable stores, put every sick man to death. Our rendezvous lay in the province of Puerto Principe and our line of action westward. After the fight at Santo Esperitu we never massed in action, but divided into companies of about one hundred, free to run or fight as our commander ordered. Our detachment captured Captain Sandoval and a party of his men, and in view of his inhuman treatment of our prisoners, he was promptly shot. Sandoval went to his death as all other cowardly butchers do, trembling like a leaf in the wind.