At midnight we filed silently out of camp, and felt our way in the dark through the worst stretch of country we had yet encountered. The ferns rose above our hips, and the rocks and fallen logs over which we stumbled were slippery with moss. Every minute a man was thrown by a trailing vine or would plunge over a fallen tree-trunk, and there would be a yell of disgust and an oath and a rattle of accoutrements. The men would certainly have been lost if they had not kept in touch by calling to one another, and the noise we made hissing at them for silence only added to the uproar. At the end of three hours our guides informed us that for the last half-mile they had been guessing at the trail, and that they had now completely lost themselves. So Laguerre sent out Miller and the native scouts to buskey about and find out where we were, and almost immediately we heard the welcome barking of a dog, and one of the men returned to report that we had walked right into the town. We found that the first huts were not a hundred yards distant. Laguerre accordingly ordered the men to conceal themselves and sent Miller, one of Garcia’s officers, and myself to reconnoitre. The moonlight had given way to the faint gray light which comes just before dawn, and by it we could distinguish lumps of blackness which as we approached turned into the thatched huts of the villagers. Until we found the main trail into the town we kept close to the bamboo fences of these huts, and then, still keeping in the shadows, we followed the trail until it turned into a broad and well-paved street. Except for many mongrel dogs that attacked us, and the roosters that began to challenge us from every garden, we had not been observed, and, so far as we could distinguish, the approach to the town was totally unprotected. By this time the light had increased sufficiently for us to see the white fronts of the houses, and the long empty street, where rows of oil-lamps were sputtering and flickering, and as they went out, filling the clean, morning air with the fumes of the dying wicks. It had been only two weeks since I had seen paved streets, and shops, and lamp-posts, but I had been sleeping long enough in the open to make the little town of Santa Barbara appear to me like a modern and well-appointed city. Viewed as I now saw it, our purpose to seize it appeared credulous and grotesque. I could not believe that we contemplated such a piece of folly. But the native officer pointed down the street toward a square building with overhanging balconies. In the morning mist the warehouse loomed up above its fellows of one story like an impregnable fortress. Miller purred with satisfaction.