gone to the bottom when the canoe upset; so, having shouted ourselves hoarse, we had nothing for it but painfully to converse with each other. Our discourse turned upon the cause of our mishap. The rope was, by this time, far beneath the water, but we could observe the tremor of the two stout mangroves to which it was attached. It was Nicky’s opinion that there were Spaniards upon the coast, and that we had fallen into one of their traps—they being aware that we sometimes used these canals to paddle to the savannahs, and return with the ebb of the tide. ‘If so,’ said my comrade, ‘we shall not be left long here, and shall come by a fate not much better than that of poor Sam Walshe.’ I inquired if there was no hope of escape at low water, when we might wade through the water to firm ground; but my comrade replied, that unless we were giants, we could hope nothing from that. Neither would it be practicable to clamber shorewards from tree to tree, on account of the great multiplicity of canals and passages which traverse the mangroves, the smaller of which harboured caymans in their muddy depths. ‘No, no,’ concluded Nicky, ‘we can do nothing; we must wait and take our chance.’ Presently the tide began silently to ebb, and in due time it left the marsh bare. But, oh! what a dismal spectacle that was! Everywhere fat banks of black mud, nourishing everlasting mangroves, the obscene slime here piled up in great rotting masses, there smooth in beds, from which bubbles of impure air would come bursting to the surface, and sending up hideous smells of putrefaction. The air, indeed, became as the air of a pest-house. Dank vapours began to roll amid the trees, a sort of seething steam boiled up from the pools and canals, and by night-time a wet grey fog, which was as the very breath of fever, brooded all through the marsh. The night wind was hardly felt amid these woody solitudes; and if a gust sometimes swept by us, it only brought the unwholesome vapour in fresh supplies. From time to time, we called to each other. Nicky recommended me to keep the collar of my doublet between my teeth, so as to breathe through the stuff, but we suffered terribly from hunger. With the morning, the fog lifted, and the tide, which had of course flowed and ebbed during the night, began to flow again. Still, there was no appearance of relief. We would even have welcomed the arrival of the Spaniards, but not an oar or paddle-splash broke the terrible silence. We were both, I think, falling into a sort of stupor, when Nicky suddenly shouted to me. ‘There—see, there!’ he cried; ‘down the channel!’ I looked, and lo! our canoe, still floating on her side and full of water, was coming drifting up, rubbing the mangrove stems, on my side of the channel. ‘Now or never, Will Thistle!’ cried Nicky. ‘This is life or death! Catch her as she passes!’