d have dozed off as I walked
up and down, and got a heavy fall. I kept on smoking cigar after cigar,
more to protect myself from being eaten up alive than from any real
relish for the weed. Then, sir, when perhaps for the twentieth time I
was approaching my watch to the lighted end in order to see the time,
and observing with surprise that it wanted yet ten minutes to midnight,
I heard the splash of a ship's propeller--an unmistakable sound to a
sailor's ear on such a calm night. It was faint indeed, because they
were advancing with precaution and dead slow, both on account of the
darkness and from their desire of not revealing too soon their presence:
a very unnecessary care, because, I verily believe, in all the enormous
extent of this harbour I was the only living soul about. Even the
usual staff of watchmen and others had been absent from their posts for
several nights owing to the disturbances. I stood stock still, after
dropping and stamping out my cigar--a circumstance highly agreeable,
I should think, to the mosquitoes, if I may judge from the state of my
face next morning. But that was a trifling inconvenience in comparison
with the brutal proceedings I became victim of on the part of Sotillo.
Something utterly inconceivable, sir; more like the proceedings of
a maniac than the action of a sane man, however lost to all sense
of honour and decency. But Sotillo was furious at the failure of his
thievish scheme."

In this Captain Mitchell was right. Sotillo was indeed infuriated.
Captain Mitchell, however, had not been arrested at once; a vivid
curiosity induced him to remain on the wharf (which is nearly four
hundred feet long) to see, or rather hear, the whole process of
disembarkation. Concealed by the railway truck used for the silver,
which had been run back afterwards to the shore end of the jetty,
Captain Mitchell saw the small detachment thrown forward, pass by,
taking different directions upon the plain. Meantime, the troops were
being landed and formed into a column, whose head crept up gradually so
close to him that he made it out, barring nearly the whole width of
the wharf, only a very few yards from him. Then the low, shuffling,
murmuring, clinking sounds ceased, and the whole mass remained for about
an hour motionless and silent, awaiting the return of the scouts. On
land nothing was to be heard except the deep baying of the mastiffs at
the railway yards, answered by the faint barking of the curs inf