There seemed no reply to this, but Stuart noted that, at the station,
the supposed fisherman produced money enough for two tickets.

"Are you coming, too?" queried Stuart, in surprise.

"Senor Cecil said that I was to see that you did not get lost on the
way," came the quiet answer.

Certainly, Stuart thought, the Englishman's word was a word of power.

From Rio Seco, the train passed at first through heavy tropical forests,
such as those in the depths of which Vellano and Stuart had just driven,
but these were thinned near the railroad by lumbering operations. The
main line was joined a little distance west of Guantanamo. Thence they
traveled over the high plateau land of Central Oriente and Camaguey, on
which many foreign colonies have settled, the train only occasionally
touching the woeful palm barrens which stretch down from the northern
coast.

Vellano, who seemed singularly well informed, kept up a running fire of
comment all the way, most of his utterances being colored by a
resentment of existing conditions--for which he blamed the United
States--and containing a vague hint of some great change to come.

At Ciego de Avila, where a stay of a couple of hours was made, Stuart's
companion pointed out the famous _trocha_ or military barrier which had
been erected by the Spaniards as a protection against the movements of
Cuban insurgents, and which ran straight across the whole island.

This barrier was a clearing, half-a-mile wide; a narrow-gauge railway
ran along its entire length, as did also a high barbed-wire fence. Every
two-thirds of a mile, small stone forts had been built. Each of these
was twenty feet square, with a corrugated iron tower above, equipped
with a powerful searchlight. The forts themselves were pierced with
loopholes for rifle fire and the only entrance was by a door twelve feet
above ground, impossible of entrance after the ladder had been drawn up
from within. The forts were connected by a telephone line. They have all
fallen into ruins and are half swallowed up by the jungle, while the
half mile clearing is being turned into small sugar plantations.

Beyond Ciego, the train passed again through a zone of tropical forest
lands and then dropped into the level plains of Santa Clara, the center
of the sugar industry of Cuba. From there it bore northward toward
Matanzas, through a belt of bristling pineapple fields.

One station before arriving at Havana, Stuart's companion, who showe