battle of wits.  The groups engaged were the officials of the United States, the representatives of Spain, and the agents of the revolution.  The United States employed the revenue service and the navy, aided on land by the Customs Service, the Secret Service, and other Federal officers.  The official representatives of Spain employed scores of detectives and Spanish spies.  The Cuban group sought to outwit them all, and succeeded remarkably well in doing so.  A part of the story has been told, with general correctness, in a little volume entitled A Captain Unafraid, described as The Strange Adventures of Dynamite Johnny O’Brien.  This man, really a remarkable man in his special line, was born in New York, in 1837, and, at the time this is written, is still living.  He was born and grew to boyhood in the shadow of the numerous shipyards then in active operation along the East River.  The yards were his playground.  At thirteen years of age, he ran away and went to see as cook on a fishing sloop.  He admits that he could not then “cook a pot of water without burning it,” but claims that he could catch cod-fish where no one else could find them.  From fisherman, sailing-master on private yachts, schooner captain, and officer in the United States Navy in the Civil War, he became a licensed East River pilot in New York.  He became what might be called a professional filibuster at the time of the revolution in Colombia, in 1885, following that with similar experience in a revolt in Honduras two years later.  The Cubans landed a few expeditions in 1895, but a greater number were blocked.  In March, 1896, they applied to O’Brien and engaged him to command the Bermuda, then lying in New York and ready to sail.  Captain O’Brien reports that her cargo included “2,500 rifles, a 12-pounder Hotchkiss field-gun, 1,500 revolvers, 200 short carbines, 1000 pounds of dynamite, 1,200 machetes, and an abundance of ammunition.”  All was packed in boxes marked “codfish,” and “medicines.”

The Bermuda sailed the next morning, March 15, with O’Brien in command, cleared for Vera Cruz.  The Cubans, including General Calixto Garcia, who were to go on the expedition, were sent to Atlantic City, there to engage a fishing sloop to take them off-shore where they would be picked up by the Bermuda on her way.  The ship was under suspicion, and was followed down the bay by tugboats carrying United States marshals, customs officers, and newspaper reporters.  O’Brien says:  “They hung on to us down through the lower bay and out past Sandy Hook, without getting enough to pay for a pound of the coal they were furiously burning to keep up with us.  I don’t know how far they might have followed us, but when we were well clear of the Hook, a kind fortune sent along a blinding snow-storm, which soon chased them back home.”  General Garcia and his companions were picked up as planned, and that part of the enterprise was completed.  The vessel