For about an hour, during which time little was spoken, Peralta held the helm. He then called us all round him, and apportioned the watches in the ordinary seaman fashion—I being placed with Disco, and he taking his turn of duty with Jenipa. This settled, we tossed up whose watch should begin first, and it falling to the turn of Disco and myself, Peralta gave me the helm, instructing me, as I was not well acquainted with the management of piraguas, to call him if the wind freshened so much as to seem to demand the taking in of a reef. Then creeping beneath the half-deck, which extended from the bows to abaft the foremast, he coiled himself up along with Jenipa, and the pair went very quietly to sleep. During our watch, which was tranquil, I tried to obtain some information from the Indian touching the habits and pursuits of his master, and also relating to the causes of our very sudden departure. But the fellow, although he would talk glibly enough upon the weather, or the piragua, or the manner of our escape, was as close as wax as regarded everything else. Indeed, he reminded me very truly that I ought to know more about the reason of our departure than he, having come from the shore, while he had been sleeping on board the piragua. At that I told him what I had heard from Jenipa, about Juan and Blanco having been detected and taken to the fort, where they had confessed not only the truth, but, as I had heard, more than the truth. The Mosquito man merely shrugged his shoulders, and said he could make nothing of it, although I saw very well, by the intelligent look of the fellow’s face, as the binnacle lamp shone upon his bronzed features, that he understood much more of the matter than he chose to confess. Finding I could make nothing of the Indian, I set myself to consider the whole affair, and putting Peralta’s hints about the way to get pearls cheap, in connexion with what I had actually witnessed and heard, I was not long in arriving at the conclusion, that, in all probability, for every pearl which the merchant bought of the captain of the fishery, he obtained another, and at a very considerably cheaper rate, by dealing quietly with the openers themselves, to which class I concluded that Juan and Blanco must belong. This solution of the riddle seemed the more probable, when I remembered much that I had heard touching the great number of pearls supposed to be secreted by the Indians, in spite of the utmost vigilance of the Spaniards. Jamaica sloops had, I knew, ere now gone to hover near the Rio de la Hacha, having their agents and correspondents, in various disguises, lurking upon the coast, and of course keeping up communication with the Indian divers and openers; but the adroitness and courage shown by Peralta in living as a Spaniard openly amongst Spaniards, and supporting the character of a regular pearl merchant, communicating with the captain of the fishery, while in reality he