It was an interesting place of rendezvous, but we tired of a town that grew cool only after midnight, and in which the fever stalked abroad by day. So we chartered a small boat, and provisioned it, and enlisted a crew of pirates, and set sail one morning for Corinto, seventy-five miles farther south. There was no steamer expected at Corinto at any earlier date than at Amapala, but in the nature of things one had to touch there some time, and there was a legend to which we had listened with doubt and longing to the effect that at Corinto there was an ice-machine, and though we found later that the ice-machines always broke on the day we arrived in port, we preferred the chance of finding Fonseca Bay in a peaceful state to yellow-fever at Amapala. It was an exciting voyage. I would now, being more wise, choose the yellow-fever, but we did not know any better then. There was no deck to the boat, and it was not wide enough for one to lie lengthwise from side to side, and too crowded to permit of our stretching our bodies fore and aft. So we rolled about on top of one another, and were far too miserable to either apologize or swear when we bumped into a man’s ribs or sat on his head. We started with a very fine breeze dead astern, and the boat leaped and plunged and rolled all night, and we were hurled against the sides and thumped by rolling trunks, and travelling-bags, and gun-cases, and boxes of broken apollinaris bottles. The stone-breaker in a quarry would have soothed us in comparison. And when the sun rose fully equipped at four in the morning the wind died away absolutely, and we rose and sank all day on the great swell of the Pacific Ocean. The boat was painted a bright red inside and out, and the sun turned this open red bowl into an oven of heat. It made even our white flannels burn when they touched the skin like a shirt of horse-hair. As far as we could look on every side the ocean lay like a sea of quicksilver, and the dome of the sky glittered with heat. The red paint on the sides bubbled and cracked, and even the native boatmen cowered under the cross-seats with their elbows folded on their knees and their faces buried in their arms; and we had not the heart to tell them to use the oars, even if we had known how. At noon the chief pirate crawled over the other bodies and rigged up the sail so that it threw a shadow over mine, and I lay under this awning and read Barrie’s _Lady Nicotine_, while the type danced up and down in waving lines like the letters in a typewriter. I am sure it was only the necessity which that book impressed upon me of holding on to life until I could smoke the Arcadia mixture that kept me from dropping overboard and being cremated in the ocean below. We sighted the light-house of Corinto at last, and hailed the white custom-house and the palms and the blue cottages of the port with a feeble cheer.