support an uprising with financial and moral aid.  Cuban workingmen in the United States promised to contribute a tenth of their earnings, or more if necessary.  There were firearms on the island that had remained concealed since the former war, some had been bought from corrupt custodians of the government arsenals, who, finding it impossible to get pay due them from Spain, took this method of securing what was rightfully theirs.

An expedition checked.

An expedition that planned to sail in the yacht Lagonda from Fernandina, Fla., on January 14, 1895, was broken up by the United States authorities.  General Antonio Maceo, its leader, with Jose Marti, the political organizer of the new government, went to Santo Domingo, where they could confer with the revolutionist leaders living in Cuba.  There Marti found Maximo Gomez, the veteran of a dozen struggles and a brave and able soldier, and offered him the command and organization of the army.  Gomez accepted and began at once to arrange his programme.

The plan of the revolutionists was to rise simultaneously in the six provinces on February 24.  The leaders on the island and the organizers abroad had a thorough understanding.

Heroism of Cuban women.

The men of Cuba were not alone in their plans for independence, for their wives and sisters, mothers and sweethearts, were enthusiastic and faithful allies.  The island was full of devoted women reared in indolence and luxury who were tireless in their successful efforts to get word from, one scattered rebel band to another, and to send them food, medicines and clothing.  These women were far better conspirators than their fathers and brothers, for Cuban men must talk, but the women seem to know the value of silence.

Beautiful and delicate senoritas would disguise themselves in men’s attire and steal out at night to the near-by haunts of lover or brother in the “Long Grass,” as the insurgents’ camps are called, with food secreted in false pockets, or letters, whose envelopes had been dipped in ink, hidden in their black hair.  Medicines were carried in canes, and cloth for clothes or wounds was concealed in the lining of coats.  One girl, disguised as a vender, frequently carried to the woods dynamite in egg shells deftly put together.

She had many thrilling experiences, but her narrowest escape was when a Spanish soldier by the roadside insisted on taking from the basket an egg, to let its contents drop in a hot and ready pan.  He was with difficulty persuaded to forego the meal.  The dynamite was made by another woman, who carefully obtained the ingredients at various times and at widely scattered drug stores.

And so, with almost every Cuban man, woman and child united in a fixed determination to make the island one of the free and independent nations of the earth, the final struggle was begun.

CHAPTER XVII.