hey pushed her across the mud
while leaves and rotting branches floated up the creek. No light pierced
the forest, and the feeble beam of Kit's lantern scarcely touched the
shadowy trunks that moved past until they came to an opening. Kit thought
this was the spot he had been told about and turned the boat. She would
not float to the bank and he and his four men got out and lifted the
coffin. They sank in treacherous mud, but reached a belt of sand riddled
by land-crab's holes. All was very quiet except for the ripple of the
tide and the noise made by the scuttling crabs. The sand, however, was
dry and warm and they sat down to wait for morning when the boat went
away.

CHAPTER X

THE ROAD TO THE MISSION

The sun was high when Kit and his tired men reached the village. He was
wet with sweat and the moisture that had dripped upon him from the leaves
in the early morning, and the men gasped when they put down their load.
Two wore greasy engine-room overalls, and two ragged suits of duck; their
soft hats were stained and battered and they looked like ruffians.
Although Mayne paid good wages, respectable seamen avoided the _Rio
Negro_ and her crew were, as a rule, accustomed to fight with knives and
sandbags on disorderly water-fronts. Now they carried pistols, hidden as
far as possible, but ready for use.

Small, square mud houses occupied the hole in the forest. Where the
plaster had not fallen off, their white fronts were dazzling, but they
were dirty and ruinous and the narrow street was strewn with decaying
rubbish. Although the _pueblo_ had once prospered under Spanish rule, it
was now inhabited by languid half-breeds of strangely mixed blood,
engaged in smuggling and revolutionary plots. They stood about the
doorways, barefooted and ragged, watching Kit with furtive black eyes.

"I want porters and a guide to the mission," he told the _patron_, who
lounged against a wall smoking a cigar.

"It is a long way, senor, and the road is bad. Besides, one cannot travel
when the sun is high."

"The road is, no doubt, safer then than in the dark."

"That is true," agreed the other with a philosophic shrug. "The country
is disturbed."

"I must start at once," Kit said firmly. "I am willing to pay for
the risk."

The _patron_ spoke to the others in a harsh dialect, but none of the
loafing figures moved.

"They say the risk is great," he remarked. "There has been fighting and
the president's soldiers are in