Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude
steamed past Moro Castle and dropped anchor in the harbor. I engaged two
of the boats alongside, our baggage was hurried into them, my wife went
down the ladder, and speaking some hurried farewells I ran down after
her and sprang lightly into the boat. That instant the sunset gun was
fired. Two minutes later and the custom house officers on board would
have forbidden my leaving the steamer. I say two minutes, but it was
less than half a minute. Half a minute! Thirty seconds changed my
destiny.
CHAPTER XXX.
"HAPPINESS AND I SHAKE HANDS FOR A TIME."
Cuba! What a productive and fertile island it is, with its charming
climate and lovely scenery! But, as in so many of the green spots of
this world, man has blasted and spoiled all that indulgent nature has
lavished here. From the days of Columbus the story of Cuba has been one
of wholesale murder of natives, of revolutions--later of insurrections,
and deadly civil strife, which have ruined whole provinces once covered
with large sugar, coffee and tobacco plantations.
Slavery now, as in all her past Christian history, is everywhere.
Previous to 1861 40,000 slaves were yearly imported in slave ships into
the harbor of Havana.
Perhaps all men are cruel when they are absolute masters of the lives
and fortunes of their fellows and amenable to none for their acts.
Certainly the white Cubans, as a rule, are cruel masters in all their
dealings with their slaves.
Probably to-day, certainly in 1873, most of the large plantations
witnessed scenes of cruelty never surpassed in the long annals of human
servitude.
During my stay I was invited to visit many plantations, but visits to
two were enough for me, there being too many signs on the surface of the
brutality that lay beneath. I could easily give cases that I saw or
heard of, but refrain from doing so here.
One day's stay in Cuba convinced us we could spend a month very happily
on the island, and, discovering that Don Fernando, the proprietor of
the hotel, had a furnished house in a lovely situation to let, we
resolved to remain, renting the house for a month at a fixed rate per
day. This rate included the ten servants--slaves--in the house, he to
furnish good horses and everything except wine. The service proved good,
and the cooking exquisite. This was rather expensive, but certainly a
handy kind of housekeeping, taking all worry and household cares from my
wife's shoulders.
There were a large number of American visitors on the island, lovers of
and seekers after sunshine and warmth, which they found in abundance
while swinging in hammocks under the palm or cocoanut trees, or in
strolling along the white strand, with its innumerable sunny coves,
while the Winter storms and blizzards were raging in the Northern
States. Here we formed many pleasant acquaintances, and, throwing off
much of the reserve maintained during the voyage, we mingled freely in
the nice but gossipy society which winters there.
Our house was on a lovely slope in full view of the Gulf of Mexico, and
in the midst of what was more like a tropical plantation than a garden.
I made the acquaintance of Gen. Torbert, our Consul, and was introduced
by him to the Spanish officials, including the colonel of police. I
assiduously cultivated the acquaintance of the latter, and frequently
had him out to the house to dinner and lunch, and felt pretty confident
that if any telegrams came about me he would certainly bring them to me
at once for an explanation. Even if my presence became known, and
telegraphic orders for my arrest should arrive, no speedy action would
be taken and ample time given me to escape. In all the assemblies,
picnics and balls I was gratified to find my wife very much sought after
and admired. It was well she had a few happy days; enough misery lay not
far ahead.
In the mean time I had no word from my friends in London. In fact, they
did not know where I was. When I bade them good-bye at Calais they told
me not to inform them of my destination until I had got there, and then
to do so through some relative.
Every day I watched the New York papers to see if there had been any
explosion in London, but the silence of the press told me my friends
were having an amazing success, and we might expect two or three months
more to elapse before there would be any discovery.
We had been some weeks in Havana.
It was well into the month of February when one day, being in my hammock
on the veranda, with my wife sitting near me, my servant rode up with
the papers, and, handing me the New York Herald, I leisurely opened it,
while chatting with my wife, but could not suppress an exclamation when
my eyes fell upon an Associated Press dispatch from London, in staring
headlines. They read:
AMAZING FRAUD UPON THE BANK OF
ENGLAND!
* * * * *
MILLIONS LOST!
* * * * *
GREAT EXCITEMENT IN LONDON!
* * * * *
L5,000 REWARD FOR THE ARREST OF THE
AMERICAN PERPETRATOR, F. A. WARREN.
"London, Feb. 14, 1873.
"An amazing fraud has been perpetrated upon the Bank of England by a
young American who gave the name of Frederick Albert Warren. The
loss of the bank is reported to be from three to ten millions, and
it is rumored that many London banks have been victimized to
enormous amounts. The greatest excitement prevails in the city, and
the forgery, for such it is, is the one topic of conversation on
the Exchange and in the street. The police are completely at fault,
although a young man named Noyes, who was Warren's clerk, has been
arrested, but it is believed that he is a dupe.
"The bank has offered a reward of L5,000 for information leading to
the arrest of Warren or any confederate."
I took a long walk on the beach to think over the situation. I was
alarmed over the arrest of Noyes, which I knew ought not to have
occurred if the proper precautions had been taken, but I concluded that
at the worst his arrest only meant for him a brief incarceration.
I knew that no human power and no fear could ever make him betray us.
Two things never entered my calculations at all; that is, that my right
name would ever transpire, or that George and Mac would ever, by any
possibility, be brought into question for the fraud.
So I came back from my walk with my plans outlined. It was to remain
quietly where we were for a fortnight longer, then take the steamer to
Vera Cruz, go to the City of Mexico and there buy an estate, as I had
originally proposed. Then, after a few months, leave my wife there and
travel incog. through Northern Mexico and Texas, meet Mac and George and
afterward return to Mexico.
Not a soul in all Europe knew I was in Cuba, and so long as my name did
not transpire I was as safe in Cuba as if in the desert.
Consequently I determined to go on in the same way since our landing. In
the mean while I would watch the papers, and if any signs of danger
appeared I could take instant measures for my safety.
As the days passed the cable dispatches appearing in the papers
increased in volume, and the papers everywhere had editorials, which, as
a rule, were humorous or sarcastic, poking fun at the Britishers in
general and the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street in particular. Then the
comic papers took it up, and from week to week published cartoons
intended to be funny.
One of the funniest of these came out in one of the New York comics,
which appeared after the mail arrived from London with the particulars
of the simplicity of the bank officials in their dealings with the
mysterious F. A. Warren. This full-page cartoon represented a young dude,
seated on a mule, riding down a steep declivity.
At the bottom the devil stood, holding in the fingers of his extended
hands a quantity of thousand-pound bank notes tempting Warren, and John
Bull stood behind the mule, belaboring it with an umbrella and driving
Warren down to the devil.
I tried to keep the papers from my wife, but one day she came home from
a visit with a flushed face and eager to talk, and began telling me
about some daring countryman of mine "who had the audacity to rob the
Bank of England," and "who ought to have a whipping." On several
occasions Americans there asked my opinion as to who the party could be.
I always told them he was some clever young scamp, with plenty of money
of his own, who did it for the excitement of the thing and from a wish
to take a rise out of John Bull.
The next French steamer for Mexico was advertised to land at Havana for
passengers and mails for Vera Cruz in a few days, and I determined to
sail by her. Soon after my arrival I had formed the acquaintance of a
wealthy young countryman of mine from Savannah by the name of Gray. We
soon became fast friends, and I had him out to dinner nearly every day.
He had a warm friend in Senor Andrez, a rich young Cuban planter, and
had accepted an invitation to visit his coffee plantation in the Isle of
Pines, the largest of all that immense body of islets and keys of the
south coast of Cuba in the Carribean Sea, one of the loveliest tropical
isles imaginable, and Gray insisted upon my making one of the party.
It was proposed to spend a week on the island, and to take three days in
going and coming. But if I went then I would be unable to sail on the
steamer of the 25th, and would have to wait another week.
One day Gray brought Senor Andrez to dinner, along with a common friend,
a Senor Alvarez. All three joined in imploring me to make one of the
party, promising sport as novel as good; said the wild boars were
plentiful; that we would have two days' shark fishing, turning turtles
and hunting their eggs, and could vary it by a slave hunt, the jungle
and some of the smaller islands being "full of runaways," and as they
were by law wild beasts we might be lucky enough to shoot a few of
them--shoot, not capture, as the planters knew that a runaway slave who
had tasted the joys of freedom if caught was useless as a slave. So, as
a matter of sport, as well as a warning to other slaves, they organized
yearly hunts to bag a score or two. But so great is the depravity of the
human heart that these wretches, in their desperate wickedness, objected
to being shot, and at times were guilty of the enormity of shooting back
again. History records how, on certain occasions, they did so with such
good effect that the hunted became hunters; but these were rare events.
After long urging I consented. At the time there were only two short
railways in all Cuba. We were to cross the island to the south coast,
and there embark for the Isle of Pines in a boat owned by our host,
which would be in waiting. The railway would take us to the little
hamlet of San Felipe, some forty miles south, and there we were to take
horses to the seaport town of Cajio. We were to start on Saturday, two
days ahead. My wife did not relish my going, and I disliked it more than
she did, but for totally different reasons. Mine were that, as a matter
of prudence, I ought to recall my consent and remain in Havana until
steamer day, and then sail without fail to Mexico. But fearing the
ridicule of my friends, I went, persuading myself that there could be no
danger and that everything in London was buried in so dense a fog bank
that the detectives would struggle in vain to find a way out of it or
any clue to our identity.
Had I known of the clever work of the Pinkerton brothers in London and
the discoveries in Paris I should have been ill at ease; but had I known
that Capt. John Curtin--then a member of the Pinkerton staff in New