So presently, having returned to the Will-o’-the-Wisp, and satisfied the eager demands of those on board, we very soon cast off our moorings, and the trade wind blowing steadily, we set our forestay sail and mainsail and began to run down the channel towards the launch. The way being well buoyed, and all hands working very smartly, and keeping a bright look-out, there was no difficulty, and little danger in making the run, and in less than an hour from the time I had left the launch, the schooner glided into the fork of deep water between the two tails of the reef, and then forging near the edge of the weathermost bank we furled our canvas, and the anchor plunged down, twelve fathoms to the bottom, sinking well into the soft sand, which here formed good holding-ground. CHAPTER XVI. HOW THE DWARF TURNS TRAITOR, AND OF HIS FATE. The launch lay at about a cable’s length distance, and Captain Jem hailed me to shove off the shallop again, and bring a couple of hand-leads, and some strong lines for the use of the divers, with one block of the pig-iron which we had for ballast, and a good stout rope attached to it. As we pushed off with these articles on board, we saw the naked, dusky forms of both the Mosquito Indians, poising themselves with their clenched hands above their heads upon the gunwale of the launch, when, after swinging and swaying their bodies for a moment or two, they sprang into the air together, and dived head-foremost down. By this time, so great was the eagerness, that half of the men were stripped as well as the Indians, and no sooner had the latter disappeared, than near a dozen stalwart fellows leaped overboard and dived after them. But our countrymen were none of them skilful enough in the art to descend through five fathoms of water and yet keep their eyes keenly open and their wits well about them; and as the shallop rubbed sides with the launch, their black, sleek heads and red, strained faces, began to appear puffing and blowing, like so many grampuses, all round the boats, and crying out that the water was too deep for them. One man alone, a slender, muscular young fellow, a Frenchman, who had been used, when a boy, as he told us, to dive from a pier, at Brest, for sous, alone brought up in his clutch a mass of slushy sea-weed, grasped from the stump of one of the masts.