ere by this time, with crimps to trepan a man at every
turn, and press gangs to carry a man off so that he might never be heard
of again. As for the others, they did not seem to choose to say anything
now that they had him fairly embarked upon their enterprise.

And so the crew pulled on in perfect silence for the best part of an
hour, the leader of the expedition directing the course of the boat
straight across the harbor, as though toward the mouth of the Rio Cobra
River. Indeed, this was their destination, as Barnaby could after a
while see, by the low point of land with a great long row of coconut
palms upon it (the appearance of which he knew very well), which by and
by began to loom up out of the milky dimness of the moonlight. As they
approached the river they found the tide was running strong out of
it, so that some distance away from the stream it gurgled and rippled
alongside the boat as the crew of black men pulled strongly against
it. Thus they came up under what was either a point of land or an islet
covered with a thick growth of mangrove trees. But still no one spoke a
single word as to their destination, or what was the business they had
in hand.

The night, now that they were close to the shore, was loud with the
noise of running tide-water, and the air was heavy with the smell of mud
and marsh, and over all the whiteness of the moonlight, with a few stars
pricking out here and there in the sky; and all so strange and silent
and mysterious that Barnaby could not divest himself of the feeling that
it was all a dream.

So, the rowers bending to the oars, the boat came slowly around from
under the clump of mangrove bushes and out into the open water again.

Instantly it did so the leader of the expedition called out in a sharp
voice, and the black men instantly lay on their oars.

Almost at the same instant Barnaby True became aware that there was
another boat coming down the river toward where they lay, now drifting
with the strong tide out into the harbor again, and he knew that it was
because of the approach of that boat that the other had called upon his
men to cease rowing.

The other boat, as well as he could see in the distance, was full of
men, some of whom appeared to be armed, for even in the dusk of the
darkness the shine of the moonlight glimmered sharply now and then on
the barrels of muskets or pistols, and in the silence that followed
after their own rowing had ceased Barnaby True coul