“Yes. Or a whole whacking big great oak, Mr. Stukeley, fallen right across, and rotting there. With its branches all jammed up with drift and drowned things. Hornets’ nests stuck in ’em. Great grey paper bags. So then you land, and take out your macheat, and cut a path around that tree, and drag your boat round. May take you an hour or more. Then into your boat again, after sliding down a mud-bank with eighteen inch of slime on top. Presently you come to a lot more trees. Out you get and cut another road. Perhaps you go back a half-mile to find a place where you can land. Oh. It’s death, going up one of them brooks. Then, there’s shallows where you wade. Rapids where you wade and haul, losing your footing and getting soused. By and by comes a cloud-burst somewhere in the hills above. Or perhaps a jam of logs bursts, a kind of a natural dam, a mile or two above you. Then. Woosh. You see a wall of water a yard high coming at you. If you’re slippy on your oars you get ashore from that. Maybe you hear it coming. It makes a roar like the tide. You drag your boat ashore.” “Aren’t you rather laying it on for my benefit?” “As for laying it on, Mr. Stukeley, I’ll make you judge for yourself as soon as we come on the coast. I tell you one thing. You’ll sing mighty small when you come to tackle such a country. That’s something you won’t have learned, where you learned your manners.” Stukeley laughed. “Well. Go on with your yarn,” he said. “I like hearing of foreign parts.” “No,” said Cammock. “I’m not going on. But there’s your city. It’s within twenty miles of the sea, and within five of the eastern Conception.” “Will you come to look for it with me?” “No, sir,” said Cammock. “I won’t. I don’t fancy your company.” “I like you, captain.” Cammock looked at him steadily for a moment, and then lit his pipe at the brazier. “What are the women like in Darien?” “You’re a married man, Mr. Stukeley.” “Thank you. I know I’m a married man. I asked you what the women are like?” “They’re mostly a rather duskish brown or copper colour.” “So I think I know. Can a fellow have any fun with them?” “They’re modest, merry creatures. Very kind, simple creatures. Another thing. They’re strong as colts. You see, they do most of the work. They’ll carry a man like you. I guess you’re one and a half hundred-weight. They’d carry you across a swamp. And they’re only very small, you know. As for fun, I don’t know what you mean.” “Cammock, the chaste pirate.” “Now go easy, Mr. Stukeley. I can take a lot, but I don’t take pirate of any man.” “The virgin martyr.”