The war had lasted ten years, and the Cubans and Americans hoped that Spain had been taught a lesson which she would remember; but, alas! so shortsighted is the vision of tyrants that they learn nothing even from experience.

CHAPTER VII.

AT SANTIAGO.

THERE are two great rocks on the Cuban coast which rise abruptly from the Caribbean Sea-that sea of brilliant green waters and changing colors which gives the most beautiful shells to the shore for toll, and slips an arm between the great rocks that reluctantly draw apart for it, and stand like sentinels of the ancient harbor of Santiago de Cuba. From the brown rock on the right, the antique yellow walls, the Moorish towers and parapets of Morro Castle, had looked across the sea for over two centuries and a half. The mosses had grown over the crumbling battlements, and wild ivy crept on the queer little turrets and about the grated windows.

The day was warm, the sunbeams danced upon the deep, and the gray lizards basked in the warm light on the great flight of stone steps stretching down to the water's edge, while nesting birds gathered about the huge door or plumed themselves upon the heavy guns pointing out to sea. Perhaps not since the pirates swarmed along the coast, or

met in their chosen and sheltered haunt of Guantanamo half a century before, had the drawbridge over the deep moat been lifted. Those restless waves eternally besieging the castle rock had tunneled a great cave beneath the Morro, high, broad, deep, and unexplored. Strange, wild stories were told of the things hidden within the deep recesses, and of those who used it in years gone by; and the veriest guajiro knew well that he who attempted to penetrate its secrets would never return. Only the waves, murmuring as they go, creep into those black lofty portals and come back to the open sea.

Above the cave, out upon the ramparts of Morro, many condemned patriots had been led, their forms outlined against the clear sea sky as they stood awaiting the end. A last cry of "Cuba Libre!" a rattle of musketry, and then the swift falling of bodies down into the sea ended it all. Sometimes, as the waters closed above the brave men giving their lives for liberty, the fierce battling of monsters beneath for their prey made the whole surface a sheet of foam. It was a mild, delightful day, and sunny peace seemed to have at last assumed sway over the strife of man and elements. The sea was smooth and glassy, and the wavelets gently lapped the stone steps which came down to the water. A small boat from the landlocked bay of Santiago drew near the grim old pile, Morro Castle. There were but two

occupants in the boat, a young man and a beautiful Spanish girl, in whose great dark eyes there was a singular melancholy. She was young, not more than fifteen or sixteen at most, yet in that genial Southern clime beauty buds and blooms at an early age, and she had all the grace and winsome ways of a matured belle.

The boat glided to the steps and lay broadside to, while the boatman shipped his oars, leaped lightly out, and assisted his companion to land. Lightly she tripped from the boat to the old moss-grown steps, and there waited for her escort to make fast the boat to the iron ring in the stone wall and join her; then they slowly ascended the stone steps, he supporting her by gently holding her arm.

A guard at the top of the landing challenged them, but the young man had a passport signed by the commandant, which he handed to the soldier. The guard handed the pass to a soldier who came up at this moment, and that functionary, after reading it carefully, with some apparent reluctance told the sentry they were to be permitted to go inside.

Having gained permission, the two entered the old fort, where antiquated guns were mounted on ancient carriages, and gazed with the curiosity of tourists on the runway along which the ammunition was to be brought in time of siege, without danger from hostile fleets. There were deep dungeons and

grated cells in which prisoners had lingered for years. Grim, silent, and gloomy as death, without hope, was that old castle.

The young man, about two-and-twenty years of age, had the fair face and hair of the Anglo-Saxon, while his companion, with the olive skin and sparkling eyes of the Latin race, was a brilliant and bewitching contrast. He was an American, and she the daughter of a wealthy Cuban, a gentleman in whose veins the bluest blood of old Castile had flowed. Both spoke Spanish and English with equal fluency. The look of fondness which the sunny-haired son of the North bestowed on the brilliant olive-complexioned creature at his side was evidence that his heart was stirred by more tender emotions than friendship or brotherly sympathy. But notwithstanding that these emotions were reciprocal, there was no lightness in the hearts of these young people, over whom a strange melancholy seemed to have settled.

Accompanied by the sentry, they had traversed many of the corridors and curious compartments of the grim old castle, when they paused at the entrance to a long, narrow corridor, and, pointing down to the steps that descended to some subterranean apartment, asked if they might be permitted to visit the "Dungeon del Diableto" (Dungeon of the Devil).

The guide gravely shook his head, and a look of disappointment came over the faces of the young