RESCUE PLAN

In August, the New York Journal correspondent Karl Decker was told to leave the Washington Bureau and go to the New York office at once. “We have promised the women of this country and England that this girl shall be freed by the Journal’s efforts,” the managing editor in New York told Decker. “So far we have been unsuccessful. We must now resort to other means. I want you to go to Havana, get this girl out of the Recojidas, and send her to the United States.”

Decker agreed. “If you will give me my own time to work in and leave me absolutely unhampered until I succeed, I will bring Miss Cisneros back with me.”

The terms were settled, and four days later, Decker was in Havana. The prison that had held Evangelina for more than a year, reported Decker, was beyond description with filth and squalor.

In October, his carefully laid plans succeeded. With the help of two Cuban patriots, Decker rescued Evangelina, and the Journal made history as the first newspaper to perform such a mission.

The Journal told the story of the rescue in great detail: the signals Decker and Evangelina used to communicate to each other, how Decker rented a room across from her cell window, how she drugged cellmates with opiates in their coffee, how he sawed the iron bars in her window with a hacksaw, how they escaped under cover of darkness. (Decker also bribed the guards, but that detail did not make it into the story.) Two days after she was rescued, Evangelina donned a boy’s disguise and sailed for Key West.

By the time she arrived in New York on October 13, a great throng was there to celebrate her freedom. The Journal’s lead editorial asked, in its typical provocative style, “We have freed one Cuban girl. When shall we free Cuba?” The public sentiment continued to be groomed for war.

While Evangelina Cisnero’s life had been redeemed by her rescuers, God’s rescue plan for us—Christ’s atonement on the cross—redeems us for all eternity. The Lord took up our case and saved us from death for abundant life now and to be forever with him.

Prayer: Lord, thank You for taking up my case and rescuing me from an eternity without you.