steadily on his father’s slightly anxious gaze, Charles asseverated that he would faithfully attend every instruction. At the identical moment of this commitment he pictured himself firing into the braided tunic of a beastly Spanish officer and supporting a youthful Cuban patriot, dying pallidly of wounds, in his free arm. The Morro Castle hadn’t left its New York dock before 21 he had determined just what part he would take in the liberation of Cuba—he’d lead a hopeless demonstration in the center of Havana, at the hour when the city was its brightest and the band playing most gaily; his voice, sharp like a shot, so soon to be stilled in death, would stop the insolence of music.

This was not a tableau of self-glorification or irresponsible youth, he proceeded; it was more significant than a spirit of adventure. His determination rested on the abstraction of liberty for an oppressed people; he saw Cuba as a place which, after great travail, would become the haunt of perfect peace. That, Charles felt, was not only a possibility but inevitable; he saw the forces of life drawn up in such a manner—the good on one side facing the bad on the other. There was no mingling of the ranks, no grey; simply, conveniently, black and white. And, in the end, the white would completely triumph; it would be victorious for the reason that heaven must reign over hell. God was supreme.

Charles wasn’t at all religious, he came of a blood which delegated to its women the rites and 22 responsibilities of the church; but there was no question in his mind, no doubt, of the Protestant theological map; augustness lay concretely behind the sky; hell was no mere mediæval fantasy. He might ignore this in daily practice, yet it held him within its potent if invisible barriers. Charles Abbott believed it. The supremacy of God, suspended above the wickedness of Spain, would descend and crush it.

Ranged, therefore, squarely on the side of the angels, mentally he swept forward in confidence, sustained by the glitter of their invincible pinions. The spending of his life, he thought, was a necessary part of the consummation; somehow without that his vision lost radiance. A great price would be required, but the result—eternal happiness on that island to which he was taking linen suits in winter! Charles had a subconscious conception of the heroic doctrine of the destruction of the body for the soul’s salvation.

The Morro Castle, entering a wind like the slashing of a stupendous dull grey sword, slowly and uncomfortably steamed along her course. Most of the passengers at once were seasick, and either retired or collapsed in a leaden row under the lee of the deck cabins. But this indisposition didn’t touch Charles, and it pleased his sense 23 of dignity. He appeared, erect and capable, at breakfast, and through the morning promenaded the unsteady deck. He attended the gambling in the smoking saloon, and listened gravely to the fragmentary hymns attempted on Sunday.

These human activities were all definitely outside him; charged with a higher purpose, he watched them comprehendingly, his lips bearing the shadow of a saddened smile; essentially he was alone, isolated. Or at least he was at the beginning of the four days’ journey—he kept colliding with the rotund figure of a man wrapped to the eyes in a heavy cloak until, finally, from progressing in opposite directions, they fell into step together. To Charles’ delight, the other was a Cuban, Domingo Escobar, who lived in Havana, on the Prado.

Charles Abbott learned this from the flourishing card given in return for his own. Escobar he found to be a man with a pleasant and considerate disposition; indeed, he maintained a scrupulous courtesy toward Charles far transcending any he would have had, from a man so much older, at home. Domingo Escobar, it developed, had a grown son, Vincente, twenty-eight years old; a boy perhaps Charles’ own age—no, Andrés 24 would be two, three, years younger; and Narcisa. The latter, his daughter, Escobar, unashamed, described as a budding white rose.

Charles wasn’t interested in that, his thoughts were definitely turned from girls, however flower-like; but he was engaged by Vincente and Andrés. He asked a great many questions about them, all tending to discover, if possible, the activity of their patriotism. This, though, was a subject which Domingo Escobar resolutely ignored.

Once, when Charles put a direct query with relation to Spain in Cuba, the older man, abruptly replying at a tangent, ignored his question. It would be necessary to ask Andrés Escobar himself. That he would have an opportunity to do this was assured, for Andrés’ parent, who knew the Abbotts’ banking friend intimately, had told Charles with flattering sincerity how welcome he would be at the Escobar dwelling on the Prado.

The Prado, it began to be clear, of all the possible places of residence in Havana, was the best; the Escobars went to Paris when they willed; and, altogether, Charles told himself, he had made a very fortunate beginning. He picked up, from various sources on the steamer, 25 useful tags of knowledge about his destination:

The Inglaterra, to which he had been directed, was a capital hotel, but outside the walls. Still, the Calle del Prado, the Paseo there, were quite gay; and before them was the sweep of the Parque Isabel, where the band played. At the Hotel St. Louis, next door, many of the Spanish officers had their rooms, but at the hour of dinner they gathered in the Café Dominica. The Noble Havana was celebrated for its camarones—shrimps, Charles learned—and the Tuileries, at the juncture of Consulado and San Rafael Streets, had a salon upstairs especially for women. Most of his dinners, however, he would get at the Restaurant Français, excellently kept by François Garçon on Cuba Street, number seventy-two.

There he would encounter the majority of his young fellow countrymen in Havana; the Café El Louvre would serve for sherbets after the theatre, and the Aguila de Oro.... The Plaza de Toros, of course, he would frequent: it was on Belascoin Street near the sea. The afternoon fights only were fashionable; the bulls killed in the morning were no more than toro del aguadiente. And the cockpit was at the Valla de Gallo.

There were other suggestions as well, put mostly in the form of ribald inquiry; but toward them Charles Abbott persisted in an attitude of uncommunicative disdain. His mind, his whole determination, had been singularly purified; he had a sensation of remoteness from the flesh; his purpose killed earthly desire. He thought of himself now as dedicated to that: Charles reviewed the comfortable amount of his letter of credit, his personal qualifications, the derringer mounted in mother-of-pearl, in the light of one end. It annoyed him that he couldn’t, at once, plunge into this with Domingo Escobar; but, whenever he approached that ordinarily responsive gentleman with anything political, he grew morose and silent, or else, more maddening still, deliberately put Charles’ interest aside. The derringer, however, brought out an unexpected and gratifying stir.

Escobar had stopped in Charles’ cabin, and the latter, with a studied air of the casual, displayed the weapon on his berth. “You must throw it away,” Escobar exclaimed dramatically; “at once, now, through the porthole.”

“I can’t do that,” Charles explained; “it was a gift from my father; besides, I’m old enough for such things.”

“A gift from your father, perhaps,” the other echoed; “but did he tell you, I wonder, how you were going to get it into