“Here I remained in almost absolute concealment, so as to avoid the spies that dog one’s steps wherever one may go, and make impossible any clever work of this kind.  Both the men who accompanied me, Joseph Hernandon and Harrison Mallory, pursued the same course, and remained quiet until all plans had been completed.

“The fact that Miss Cisneros was incommunicado made the attempt seem at first beyond the possibility of success, but we finally, through Hernandon, who was born on the island, and speaks Spanish like a native, succeeded in sending a note to her through an old negress, who called upon one of her friends in the prison.  A keeper got this note through two hands to Miss Cisneros, and three keepers later got to her a package of drugged sweets.  Having established communication with her, we began work without losing a day.”

The prison left behind.

Mr. Decker then tells hew he rented a house adjoining the prison, and instructed Miss Cisneros to give the drugged candies to the other women who were in the prison with her.  As soon as the drug produced the desired effect on them, the bars of the prison were cut from the outside, and Miss Cisneros was assisted through the window, onto the roof of the house Mr. Decker had rented, kept in concealment for two days, and then smuggled on board a ship, bound for the land of liberty.

Her arrival in New York is thus described: 

“Evangeline Cisneros, one week ago a prisoner among the outcast wretches in a Havana prison, is a guest at the Waldorf hotel.  Surrounded by luxury and elegance, she is alternately laughing and crying over the events of one short week.  One week ago last night a correspondent broke the bars of her cell and led her to liberty over the flat roofs of the Cuban capital.  It is the memory of those thrilling few minutes that meant for her a lifetime of captivity or a future of peace and liberty that most often occurs to her now.

“She arrived to-day on the Ward liner, Seneca, and was taken from the steamer by a boat at quarantine, thanks to the courtesy of the Government and the quarantine authorities.  When the Seneca sailed from Havana there figured on the passenger list one Juan Sola.  A girl who signed the name of Juana Sola to the declaration, exacted by the Custom House officers, was the nearest passenger to making good the lost one.  Her declaration was that she brought nothing dutiable into the country.

“If ever that declaration was truthfully made, it was made in the case of this brown-eyed, chestnut-haired girl, who was so anxious to please the man who made her sign.  All she had was the simple red gown she had on her back and a bundle that contained a suit of clothes such as a planter’s son might have worn.

“Those were the clothes that Juan Sola wore when he ran up the gang-plank in Havana, with a big slouch hat over the chestnut hair, that even danger of discovery could not tempt her to cut, and a fat cigar between a red, laughing pair of lips that accidentally, maybe, blew a cloud of smoke into the face of the chief of police, who was watching that plank, and made the features of the young man very indistinct indeed.