Overhead the crew worked fitfully all night long. I could move the hatch curtain, look up and see the sturdy old Captain with his hand on the rudder—a picture which was to become familiar to us through many nights. What a picturesque old figure he was—rugged and stern, yet as gentle and courteous as any gentleman of the old school—and bearing his three-score and eight years with wonderful vigor. Now and then his deep voice would rise above the roar of wind and waves in hoarse commands in Spanish to the crew. Then he would push the rudder hard up, the boom would swing over with a jerk which made the whole sloop tremble and a wave would wash over the deck and send a trickle of cold drops down upon my face. Smothered exclamations from the crew and the sound of their bare feet splashing along the deck would end the audible part of the manœuvre. Then I would shift to meet the new angle of the floor and wait for the next race of the rats. Now and then the Captain would reach behind the hatch curtain for his watch and examine its dripping face by the light of the candle in the compass box. “_Faltan las cinco á la una_,” he would mutter, and I knew that midnight had passed and that somewhere in our wake, morning was on its way to end this night of nights. The tempest increased and tossed our sloop like a flying leaf. Sometimes it seemed as if we never would right ourselves after heeling far over into the depths. But the calm face of our helmsman dispelled all uneasiness, and I lay staring into the darkness, feeling myself the veriest atom amid this fierce tumult. To this moment I cannot tell how long it took us to get from Trinidad to Venezuela across that awful Gulf of Paria. To me it seemed an endless space of time—day succeeding night—with choppy seas, ominous noises in the pitching cabin, hot sleepy hours on deck in the shade of the sail, with the great green waves forever rolling after and breaking partly over us. By the Captain’s reckoning, however, it was the noon of only the second day which revealed the distant shore, and soon we forgot all the discomforts of the past hours in the wonderful beauty of the scene before us—the still, brassy waters and the rich green mangroves. Entering the wide Caño San Juan we dropped anchor in the lee of a solitary guard ship, a poor derelict, a rusty and worn-out freighter, whose last days were to be spent here in the calm waters at the edge of the mangrove forest. Our little sloop was soon over-run with young custom-house officials from the guard ship, curious but courteous, and far more appreciative of the stiff rounds of rum which our Captain willingly served to them under our direction, than of our gilt-sealed letters of introduction.