Men whom I sent ashore reported that President Baez and his brother had fled and the rebels were in full control of the government, and as soon as it was day I sailed close in and bombarded the fort where my execution was to have taken place. There was a great helter-skeltering of rum-soaked braves when the first shells exploded around their ears, but there were some who did not get away, and the crumbling walls came down and buried them. Then we headed for Venezuela again, after an experience that paid me only in excitement. I had not drawn a dollar from Baez and I had been obliged to pay for the changes made in the “Juliette” and for the guns that were brought from England, for I could not find a banker in Halifax who would advance a cent on the letter of credit from the great Republic of Santo Domingo. Still, I figured that the experience had furnished me enough excitement to justify its cost. Several years later I met Gen. Baez again in Murphy’s Hotel at St. Thomas but did not see him until he took a good-natured shot at me. The bullet smashed a pile of dishes on the arm of a waiter ten feet away from me, and from the start that waiter made I would not be surprised to hear that he is running yet around the hills back of Charlotte Amalia. At Caracas I found that Guzman had been duly elected Constitutional President. He was inaugurating a scheme of public improvements, the country had settled down to business, and the prospect was all for long continued peace, which was displeasing to me and I wanted to get away again. However, Guzman had a plan to keep me busy. There was not then, nor is there now for that matter, a decent map of Venezuela. It was reported from Paris that a Frenchman had gone up the Orinoco to its headwaters and had found that the Casiquiare River, which empties into it, formed a natural canal connecting with the Rio Negro, which runs into the Amazon at Manaos, Brazil. Guzman proposed that I go over this route and seek to verify the Frenchman’s report. Exploring unknown lands has always been as much a passion with me as aiding and abetting revolutions, and I willingly accepted the commission, but, though I did not tell Guzman so, I had no intention of returning to Caracas. As an evidence of my appreciation of his friendship I gave him a Jurgensen watch, which I had had made to order, and the “Juliette,” just as she stood, sending Lorensen and one or two others to London to work under the direction of my agents until I should arrive. He used the good little ship for years as a mail boat between La Guaira and Curacoa. Guzman gave me a Damascus sword of exquisite workmanship, which, not long afterward, I used with good effect on the pirates of the China Sea.