This operation, under the direction of the truculent-looking and ruffianly Spaniard already mentioned as the head of the gang in possession of the _Aurora_, was speedily effected. The prisoners, handcuffed with their hands behind them, were sent down into one of the boats lowered for their reception, and there secured to a length of heavy chain, so that where one went, the rest were compelled to go also; and, thus yoked together, they were transferred to the shore. A glance at the star-lit sky, in which the pole-star hung, only some twenty to twenty-five degrees above the horizon, told poor Leicester that they were landing upon a shore open to the northward, and that, from the position of Polaris in the sky, they were somewhere within about twenty-five degrees of the equator; but, beyond that, he was just then unable to learn anything further concerning their whereabouts. As the boat's keel grated upon the beach, the prisoners were ordered by sufficiently significant gestures--none of them understanding a single word of Spanish--to climb over the side and make their way up the beach. The Spaniard in charge pointed significantly with a long whip which he carried to a break in the dense growth of trees which clustered close to the water's edge and then, with an ominous flourish of the lash, gave the word for the miserable band to move forward. A toilsome march of some four or five miles along a track of heavy sand then commenced; a march which, fatiguing enough in itself, after the long period of close confinement to which they had been subjected, was rendered trebly so by the constraint of the heavy chain to which they were secured. Staggering, reeling, and stumbling forward, conscious of nothing beyond their dreadful state of misery and suffering, it took them over three hours to perform that horrible journey, urged on though they were by the incessant application of the cruel whip; and then they found themselves outside an enclosure formed of heavy slabs of planking some nine feet in height. A narrow door gave admittance to the place, and, this being unlocked, the prisoners were driven in, and after the door had been again securely fastened, they were released from the chain, and, still with their hands secured behind them, allowed to stretch their exhausted bodies upon the ground, and take such repose as was possible under the circumstances.