arks. When d'you want her taken in?"

"Soon as it's dark," Adam replied. "You'll have to trust your lead and
compass. Can't have you whistling for a pilot, and I'd sooner you put out
your lights."

"It's your risk and not the first time I've broken rules. I guess I can
keep her off the ground. We'll get busy presently and heave the hatches
off. The B.F. cases are right on top."

Adam nodded, and beckoned Kit when the captain went away. "You haven't
been in the Santa Marta lagoon yet. Stand by and watch the soundings and
compass while Mayne takes her across the shoals. You may find it useful
to know the channel."

Kit understood. Malaria and other fevers are common on low-lying belts of
the Caribbean coast and skippers and mates fall sick. Moreover, the _Rio
Negro_ did not always load at the regular ports. Sometimes she crept into
mangrove-fringed lagoons, and sometimes stopped at lonely beaches and
sent loaded boats ashore when her captain saw the gleam of signal lights.

When it was getting dark, Kit and Adam went to the bridge and the former
noted that his uncle breathed rather hard and seized the rails firmly as
he climbed the ladder. The red glow of sunset had faded behind the high
land and a gray haze spread across the swampy shore, but the water shone
with pale reflections. On one side, a long, dingy smear floated across
the sky. It did not move and Kit thought it had come from the funnel of a
steamer whose engineer had afterwards cleaned his fires. Captain Mayne
studied the fleecy trail with his glasses.

"I don't know if that's a coffee-boat going north; I can't make out her
hull against the land," he said. "Sometimes there's a _guarda-costa_
hanging round the point."

"Better take no chances," Adam replied, glancing at the _Rio Negro's_
funnel, from which a faint plume of vapor floated.

Mayne signed to the quartermaster in the pilot house and the bows swung
round. Half an hour afterwards, he rang his telegraph and the clang of
engines died away while the throb of the propeller stopped. In what
seemed an unnatural silence, a few barefooted deck-hands began to move
about, and one stood on the forecastle, where his dark figure cut against
the shining sea. The rest went aft with a line the other held, and when
Mayne raised his hand there was a splash as the deep-sea lead plunged. A
man aft called the depth while he gathered up the line, and Mayne
beckoned another, who climbed to a little platform outside t