Note 11 — Chapter XV · THE KATIPUNAN

Even as a volunteer surgeon in the yellow fever hospitals he was nominally to be a prisoner always; hence he must go to Cuba by way of Spain and under the Spanish flag; otherwise Spanish sovereignty would lapse and he might escape from its power. He planned to reach Manila in time to take the next mail-boat, the Isla de Luzon, for Barcelona, where he was to transship for Cuba. Mrs. Rizal was to reside in his absence with his relatives at Biñan or in Manila. But the steamer that took him from Dapitan made but a slow voyage. He had time to attend en route a dinner in his honor at Dumaguete, and to perform an operation on the eyes of a patient at Cebu. He reached Manila a few hours after the Isla de Luzon had sailed. Nearly a month must elapse before another steamer would start for Barcelona. Meantime he was detained on the Spanish cruiser Castilla, a beautiful vessel that two years later lay at the bottom of Manila Bay riddled with American shells. But his confinement seems to have been easy. In a few days the officers were his friends. The captain repeatedly invited members of his family to dine with him on board. Mrs. Rizal came to see him, and so did former pupils of his that had drifted from Dapitan up to Manila. He wrote letters to his family, including one of great tenderness to his mother, in which he included loving messages to all the household at Los Baños.11