Appleby and another man threw them over, though there were impatient cries from the boat below, and the rest were shoving off when they dropped into her. Somebody was baling furiously, two men tugged and thrust, Spanish fashion, at every oar, and they reeled away shorewards with the water lapping into her. Then a fire grew brighter above the roaring beach, men came floundering waist‐deep through the surf, those in the boat sprang over, and they went up with the wash of a sea. Appleby, scrambling out of the backwash, stood up, dripping, breathless, and aching all over, and saw Harper not far away and a host of dusky figures flitting about the fire. Then there was a flash from seawards, a crash in the forest behind them, and they disappeared. “Well,” said the skipper quietly, “the ‘Ventura’ isn’t going to sea any more. You have to take your chances in this business; and we got most of the inside out of her, anyway.” VII — THE DESCENT OF SANTA MARTA A LITTLE fire burned in a hollow of the dusty barranco that fissured the face of the hill, a clear red fire of the kind that gives little light and makes no smoke, and its pale glow showed but feebly against the rock behind. This was still flushed with a warm lustre caught from the western sky, though the sun had dipped and the fleecy mists were creeping across the dusky plain below. A group of weary men lay about the fire, dusty and ragged, for they had spent most of twelve weary hours forcing a path through thickets and climbing like goats from rock to rock under the heat of the tropics. Two of them wore garments of cotton, which hung about them rent by thorns; three others jackets of American make, looted from a loyalist store; and one trousers of English tweed, through which his knees protruded, and a jacket of alpaca of a kind esteemed in Spain. He had, however, a red silk sash of beautiful texture, which had cost somebody else a good many dollars, round his waist; and his face, which was bronzed to a coffee color, had once been of paler complexion than those of most of his companions. He raised himself a trifle, and glanced about him with a little whimsical smile. “They are a choice collection of scarecrows to take a city with,” he said in English. A man who lay close by looked up with a twinkle in his eyes. “I have seen smarter soldiers,” he drawled. “Still, they’re a hard crowd, and I’d feel kind of sorry for Colonel Morales if his cazadores don’t put up a good fight to‐night. What we have on hand isn’t quite the thing I came out to do, but I guess it’s better than catching fever down there in the mangrove swamps. That’s how it strikes me, though it will scarcely be the kind of business you’ve been used to, Appleby.”