his escape on board of a vessel bound for Boston, and at length reached his home in safety. He was charged with a message to Lovell’s parents, and Fanny, should he ever reach home, and this he took an early opportunity to deliver.
William Lovell’s family and friends had long mourned him as lost, not having heard one word concerning him since his departure, or of the vessel in which he had sailed. But Fanny would not give up all hope, and insisted that they should hear from him at last, and now that they had done so, and knew him to be pining in a Spanish prison, still they were grateful that his life was spared, and were led to hope for his eventual release and return.
‘And how do these Spaniards treat him?’ asked Fanny with a trembling voice, yet flashing eye, of the messenger, Jack Herbert.
‘Rough enough, Miss.’
‘Has he sufficient food?’
‘They used to bring us grub once a day,’ was the answer.
‘But once a day?’
‘That’s all, Miss.’
‘And what did it consist of?’ asked Fanny.
‘The very coarsest, you may be assured, Miss.’
A tear stole into Fanny’s eye, as she thought upon the suffering that William was then experiencing in a foreign prison.
‘At Havana, in the island of Cuba,’ said Fanny, musingly to herself; ‘can you describe the port, my friend?’
‘Why it’s a sunny little basin, not so very small neither, and quite land-locked and guarded by the castle and its entrance, tho’ for the matter of that, the castle is’nt always manned—at any rate ‘twas’nt the night we went in with the tag-boat. It’s a pocket of a place, Miss, large enough to hold a thousand sail and yet not more than one can work in or out at a time. It’s in the hands of the Spaniard now, from whom the English took it awhile ago, but have given it back again.
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