Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/146

  paid me on the spot. The next day we sailed for Curaçao on the Red D.

"There was no difficulty about my part of the programme. I chartered one of the chunky little tubs which you saw in Curaçao, engaged three Papiemento-jabbering negroes and a cook and cleared for Porto Cabello, giving it out that I was on a collecting cruise along the coast.

"It took me six days to slam that old tub against the trade to Porto Cabello, about eighty miles in a straight line; weather just as it is now—as it always is down there—the wind dead ahead and blowing the top off the water, and the sky bright and clear and blue. Arrived, I anchored near the mouth of the little inlet, and, after being duly inspected, went ashore to see if I could gather any in formation; but there was nothing to be learned.

"For a week I hung about that hot, wretched hole; then the Dutch mail steamer arrived from La Guayra, and on going aboard [ 130 ]