By this time, vessels of the United States navy were employed, supplementing the work of the Revenue Service.  This, of course, added both difficulty and danger to the work.  In March and April, several expeditions were interrupted.  For the Spanish blockade of the Cuban coast, there was only contempt.  Captain O’Brien told a naval officer that if the navy and the revenue cutters would let him alone he would “advertise the time and place of departure, carry excursions on every trip, and guarantee that every expedition would be landed on time.”  In May, 1897, two carloads of arms and ammunition were shipped from New York to Jacksonville, but, by the authority of Mr. Fritot, they were quietly dropped from the train at a junction point, and sent to Wilmington, N.C.  Their contents were transferred to the tug Alexander Jones, and that boat proceeded nonchalantly down the river.  Soon afterward, an old schooner, the John D. Long, loaded with coal, followed the tug.  Two revenue cutters were on hand, but there was nothing in the movements of these vessels to excite their interest.  Off shore, the tug attached a towline to the schooner that was carrying its coal supply, its own bunkers being crammed with guns and cartridges.  Off Palm Beach, General Nunez and some sixty Cubans were taken from a fishing boat, according to a prearranged plan.  Two days later, at an agreed upon place, they were joined by the Dauntless which had slipped out of Jacksonville.  The excursion was then complete.  About half the cargo of the Jones was transferred to the Dauntless and was landed, May 21, a few miles east of Nuevitas.  A second trip took the remainder of the cargo of the Jones and most of the Cuban passengers, and landed the lot under the very guns, such as they were, of Morro Castle, and within about three miles of the Palace of Captain-General Weyler.  All that time, a force of insurgents under Rodriguez and Aurenguren was operating in that immediate vicinity, and was in great need of the supplies thus obtained.  Some of the dynamite then landed was used the next day to blow up a train on which Weyler was supposed to be travelling, but in their haste the Cubans got one train ahead of that carrying the official party.  The row that Weyler made about this landing will probably never be forgotten by the subordinates who were the immediate victims of his rage.

These are only a few of the many expeditions, successful and unsuccessful, made during those three eventful years.  The Treasury Department report of February 28, 1898, gives seventeen successful operations.  As a matter of fact, more than forty landings were made, although in a few cases a single expedition accounted for two, and in one or two instances for three landings.  The experiences run through the entire gamut of human emotions, from absurdity to tragedy.  The former is illustrated by the case of the Dauntless when she was held up by a vessel of the United States navy, and boarded by one