money and wanted to return. These men came across him and told him
they were going to return East in sixty days, and if he would keep
straight, and drive one of their wagons for them, they would take him
home with them. When they went ashore the first day they left him in
charge of their baggage, and promised him that he could go ashore the
next. They had their private store of wines and brandy. He had found it
and tried it and got full, and treated all the sailors and everybody on
board that would drink with him, and was the most popular man on board
with the sailors. He repented the next day and begged their
forgiveness, and they took him home with them. Like a bad penny, he
returned as he was before. Distance did not reform him.

Well, our next port was Relago my destination. Just after dark one day
we got opposite to what, according to the charts, was that port. It was
necessary for them to wait until morning before they could undertake to
enter it, as they had never been there before, and there were no pilots,
and they decided not to let the steam go down, and they concluded that
they would sail slowly around in a circle, so as to be opposite to the
port in the morning. When morning came it was foggy, and we could not
see the land. But they had such confidence in the correctness of their
chart that they determined to enter it. Instead of the port, we came to
the white caps, dashing against the rocks almost mountains high, and we
came within an ace of being dashed to pieces against them. If the
engineer had not reversed the movement of the engine the instant he
did, we would have been wrecked. The captain was now completely
befogged. In a short time he came to me with a paper to sign agreeing to
go to Panama. It should cost me nothing extra for my passage there; that
the few other passengers for that port had signed it. I thought I had
better sign to go anywhere than to take any more chances in that
steamer. Come to find out afterward, instead of being opposite the port
that morning, we were twenty miles from it, the currents of the ocean
having carried us that distance while we were sailing around in a
circle, which they had not ciphered on, and thus came so near wrecking
us. By chance we saw a sailing vessel. The captain gave orders for the
steamer to follow it, and, when we overtook it, we found it was bound
for Relago. There was a man on board of it who was acquainted with the
port. They got him to come on our st