The Dust of Conflict by Harold Bindloss

A WEEK had passed since the Alcalde's ball, when Appleby awakened late one night from a restless sleep at the hacienda San Cristoval. He had shut the lattices of his window because the moonlight streamed in, and it is not advisable for white men to sleep under that pale radiance in the tropics; and the room was almost insufferably hot, which Appleby surmised was the cause of his awakening. He was, however, anxious to get to sleep again, for his post was no sinecure, and he usually rose in the early morning.

Cuba was in a very unsettled state just then, steeped in intrigue and overrun with spies, while among Loyalists and Insurgents alike faction plotted against faction. Both were divided by internecine jealousies, and the mixed population of native-born Cubans of Iberian blood, Spaniards from the Peninsular and the Canaries, Chinamen, negroes, and mulattoes, appeared incapable of cohesion. Stability of purpose is not a prominent characteristic of the Latins, and while the country drifted in discord towards anarchy, a similar state of affairs existed on a smaller scale at the hacienda San Cristoval. The men who by the favor of the military rulers were allowed to take Harding's pay apparently disdained continuous effort, and desisted from it to discuss politics on every opportunity; while knives were not infrequently drawn in defence of their somewhat variable convictions.