After the withdrawal of this expedition the Seri resumed their range over the borderland plain, with the evident intention of avenging the insult of the invasion. There were a number of skirmishes, in which some of the Papago guards of the 1895 expedition were wounded and had horses killed under them, though they did customary execution on the worse-armed Seri; and extensively published press items indicate that, toward the end of January, 1896, a party of five gold prospectors landed on Tiburon, whence one escaped. A well-attested episode ensued toward the end of 1896: Captain George Porter and Sailor John Johnson spent the later part of the summer in cruising the coasts of the Gulf, collecting shells, feathers, and other curios in the small sloop _World_. About the end of October they apparently anchored in Rada Ballena; and a day or two later Captain Martin Mendez, of Guaymas, in charge of the schooner _Otila_, being driven up the gulf and into Bahia Kunkaak by storms, came on a horde of Seri looting Porter’s vessel. The episode received publicity on Mendez’s return to Guaymas; United States Consular Agent Crocker instituted inquiries, and Governor Corral sent a force to Costa Rica, where, after some delay, a parley was held with a strong band of Seri under the chiefship of “a seven-foot warrior named El Mudo (The Mute), ... so called for his reticence of speech.”[223] The testimony obtained at the parley and from Captain Mendez indicates that Porter and Johnson landed, or at least approached the shore, probably in a small boat; that they were met by a shower of arrows, under which Johnson immediately fell, while Porter defended himself with a shotgun, slaying five of the Seri before he was himself transfixed; that the vessel was then looted, and that Mendez and his crew were prevented from landing and apparently driven off by the Seri force. In the course of the parley the state officials “demanded the surrender of the ringleaders in the massacre”, with the alternative of “regarding the whole tribe as guilty and punishing them accordingly”; but El Mudo, evidently holding the invasion of the island as the initial transgression and deeming the loss of the tribe under Porter’s marksmanship as more than commensurate with the Caucasian loss, peremptorily ended the conference and returned to the island. Vigorous efforts were made to pursue the tribesmen beyond their practically impassable frontier, with the usual product of ruined horses and famished riders. Then the episode died away in an armed neutrality strained somewhat beyond the normal. Meantime the Papago guards remained at Costa Rica. “They are continuously on the lookout for these Seris, and once or twice have killed a stray one or two.”[224]