me of Mills. Any American sailor who would go to him and
say, "I am sick, Consul," would get an order for admission at once. A
number of seamen imposed on him. It was an object for them to get their
board and clothing free while they were waiting only for seamen's wages
to rise as high as possible; then they would ship for some long voyage.
The hospital authorities were easily enough satisfied, as they were well
paid, and the patients were able to attend to their own ailments.

After our return to the ship, Jimmy was continually coaxing me to remain
in Peru with him, and live among the natives for a while. I was anxious
to get to San Francisco, but no ships in harbour were bound in that
direction, although a number arrived from there, loading with guano and
going around Cape Horn. At last I promised to go with Jimmy. He had
eighty dollars due him, and I twelve, but the captain would not
discharge us and pay us off. Then we got mad and determined to go
anyway. We got our clothes packed up in bags, ready for any chance we
could get to leave the ship. With the ship's telescope we took a good
look at the shores of the bay. At one place the beach looked as if it
would be a good landing-place for us; it appeared like the edge of a
mill-pond. Our chance soon came. The boat had not been hoisted up out of
the water, as was customary, but had been left overnight fastened to the
ship's side. Each sailor in turn had to stand "anchor watch" during the
night for one hour. He would then wake up his relief and go to bed.
There was a Dutchman whose turn would be at three o'clock in the
morning. I told him when he was called to awaken me, then he could go to
sleep again, as Jimmy and I had to make fresh bread for breakfast, and
we would do the anchor watching. Sure enough, "Dutchy" woke me up; then
I called Jimmy, and in a short time we had our clothes in the boat, also
a good double-barrelled shotgun, a pair of pistols, a silver watch, and
a couple of dozen of clean shirts belonging to the captain. We wished to
have something for the money that was due us.

Away we went for the landing-place that we had selected. It was dark,
and quite difficult to see the beach; it appeared to us as though we
were close to a wall, several feet high, of rocks. The noise of the surf
also made us careful about landing. At last we discovered that it was
low tide, and the wall was only the wet cobble-stones left uncovered at
low water. We pulled hard, so as