We were tired that first night at Guanoco. The night before had been a hard one—sailing all night long, with the boom swinging back and forth and making impossible the hanging of our mosquito nets. All through the night the Captain and his crew worked. Down the narrow river the Captain skilfully guided the sloop in the darkness of a moonless night, following the line of the trees against the sky to mark the channel. His commanding old voice rang from stern to bow, the orders being there repeated by the mate to the sailors who were towing us, and who paused in the wild melody which they chanted through that wonderful night, to listen and obey. It was a difficult and dangerous task—the guiding of that sloop down so narrow and winding a river: and even the unruly crew were obedient that night, rendering the homage which in time of danger the ignorant unconsciously yield to a superior intelligence. When we wondered at the Captain’s confidence, he replied in his deep voice, “Ah yes!—but I am old here and I know these caños as I do my house.” And indeed here the curtain had risen upon his life and here it was likely to fall at the end of the last act. When finally quite exhausted we had laid down upon the deck to sleep, it was to fall into so profound a slumber that the mosquitoes devoured us unmolested, in spite of our head nets which proved insufficient protection. So it was that on that first night at Guanoco we were very tired. I sat lazily rocking in the cool evening breeze, anointing my irritating bites with Tango, a preparation dependent upon faith cure for its healing properties—and listening to the desultory talk of the young men. The conversation was desultory, however, only so long as the Venezuelan element of the household was present. On this occasion that element was represented by the young Mr. Lugo who had met us at the wharf. After he had gone out on some errand the story of Pitch Lake was poured into our interested ears. It was a story of intrigue and revolution and treason quite worthy of some mediæval court. First there was the passive Venezuelan possession; then the active, enterprising, money-making reign of the North American; having as its natural result the jealousy of Castro, his oppression and injustice to the American Company; their rebellion, in which they aided a great revolution against Castro; his revenge being to seize the property and put it in charge of Venezuelans. Then came the departure of the American Company, which had done so much to develop the Pitch Lake, followed by the arrival of the Venezuelans appointed by the Government—men who knew just about as much about managing a great Pitch Lake as they did about guiding an aëroplane. We were told of the time long before the advent of the Lugo family—when for weeks it was necessary to live always on the alert, with revolver ever ready for defence; when the very men with whom one sat down at table were