The story had its dramatic situations and Filo made the most of them. Even Maestro was moved to utter a low “_Dios mio!_” at the description of the entrance of the ghost, the angel of death and finally the devil; at which the poor corpse, who had been shaking with fear through it all, started up and fled in terror. Filo’s story lost nothing in his telling and the superstitious crew went very soberly to rest that night. W—— and I lay, as we so often did, staring wonderingly out into the night,—the marvellous tropical night. It was all like a dream; the shining water of the _caño_, the deep, mysterious forest growing down to the water’s edge, the cries of unknown birds and beasts, the impressive southern cross and the extraordinary brilliancy of the moonlight shining down upon the tiny deck of the “Josefa Jacinta,” and upon us and the sleeping forms of its dusky crew. We were sometimes awakened in the night by a sudden bright light in our faces. It was Maestro making a fire, in which operation he used alarming quantities of kerosene, to prepare the midnight repast for the crew, who whenever they woke in the night would call loudly “_Maestro—café!_” [Illustration: FIG. 46. GUARAUNO SQUAWS AND CHILD WITH MONKEY.] Again the sound of an unusually heavy downpour of tropical rain on the tarpaulin overhead would waken us, and I would occasionally discover that my feet were in a puddle of water. A shifting of beds to prevent our being drowned while we slept would invariably result in our feet being higher than our heads, and because of the horde of mosquitoes which found their way in while the beds were being moved, the rest of that night would be sleepless. With the dawn came the roar of the howling monkeys; a dainty _Tigana_[24] picked its way among the mud-flats; a flock of _Hervidores_[80]—which being translated means “boilers,” an appellation perhaps suggested by the notes of these black Cuckoos—bubbled away as cheerily as a bright kettle on a breakfast table. And with these sounds of the dawn all our troubles of the night were forgotten. After weeks of solitude in the mangrove jungles our prow was headed inland and a long night of silent drifting with the tide brought us to the mouth of the Guanoco River. Here the Captain and the unruly crew at dawn had their usual heated argument as to the management of the boat, with the result that they nearly ran her aground—one of the many narrow escapes which had happened so often as to create but little interest on our part. Guanoco was a river of bends, around each one of which the Captain assured us we would see the village. But it was twilight before we turned the final bend and saw picturesque Guanoco at the hour of _vespertino_—a hill rising steep and blue, with the silvery river at its foot and a cluster of little thatched huts perched one above another on the hillside.