If we would but take their photographs on board the “Pontón,” they would row us close along the shore while we waited for the “fulling tide,” as the Captain called it. Of course we agreed. Shouldering their rusty muskets they stood in a row to be photographed,—young inexperienced boys, whose idle days on the derelict were spent in drinking, smoking cigarettes and lying in hammocks playing the mandolin, watching for the rare sloop or schooner which might enter Venezuela by this desolate and unfrequented caño. We promised to send them the pictures; but Captain Truxillo said afterwards with a sad shake of his head that they would have lost their positions long before the pictures could reach them. No one ever stayed long; there was always someone to carry reports to Castro of treachery and plotting, and there would be new faces on the “Pontón,” to stay a little while and then to disappear like their predecessors. [Illustration: FIG. 41. VENEZUELAN SOLDIERS ON THE “PONTÓN” GUARD SHIP.] Now for many days the sloop was our home, and the innumerable gleaming _caños_ of the delta our highways. By day we explored the mangroves in our _curiara_ or dug-out, and by night we slept the dreamless sleep of healthful outdoor life, safe from the persecution of the humming _Anopheles_ outside our netting on the after deck. When midday heat or sudden rain drove the wild creatures from our view I studied our motley crew and found them a never-failing source of entertainment. The tally of the crew must begin with Filo, the mate, a huge black creole, speaking Spanish besides his own strange vernacular; then there were two sailors from the Island of Margarita, and Antonio, cook by profession, admitting some Dutch blood, but of unknown extraction and decidedly uncertain disposition. The cook on board a Venezuelan craft is always given the respectful title of Maestro (_Mai’stro_), so Maestro he always was to us. Maestro as an individual was an interesting psychological study. Although he probably never heard of such a thing as a labor union, yet he was the embodied spirit of one. He declared, in terms that left no possibility of misunderstanding, that he was cook, not sailor, and that he would do nothing _but_ cook. He would cook cheerfully over a stove that smoked like Dante’s Inferno, but when called upon in an emergency to help hoist a sail, he would fly into a violent torrent of angry Spanish. Later when the temper had spent itself he would often go and do what was asked of him. I have seen many high tempers, but never one that quite equalled Maestro’s. There were times when he would draw his huge cutlass or machete on the Captain. For a long time these were all false alarms, but at last Maestro threatened once too often and so seriously that he was discharged on the spot, and left marooned in a little Indian village with no means of returning to Trinidad. But this was at the end of our voyage.