ays after I saw the man from the Casa Viola get on the
engine, and wondered what it meant, Barrios's transports were entering
this harbour, and the 'Treasure House of the World,' as The Times man
calls Sulaco in his book, was saved intact for civilization--for a
great future, sir. Pedrito, with Hernandez on the west, and the San Tome
miners pressing on the land gate, was not able to oppose the landing. He
had been sending messages to Sotillo for a week to join him. Had Sotillo
done so there would have been massacres and proscription that would have
left no man or woman of position alive. But that's where Dr. Monygham
comes in. Sotillo, blind and deaf to everything, stuck on board his
steamer watching the dragging for silver, which he believed to be sunk
at the bottom of the harbour. They say that for the last three days he
was out of his mind raving and foaming with disappointment at getting
nothing, flying about the deck, and yelling curses at the boats with the
drags, ordering them in, and then suddenly stamping his foot and crying
out, 'And yet it is there! I see it! I feel it!'

"He was preparing to hang Dr. Monygham (whom he had on board) at the end
of the after-derrick, when the first of Barrios's transports, one of our
own ships at that, steamed right in, and ranging close alongside opened
a small-arm fire without as much preliminaries as a hail. It was the
completest surprise in the world, sir. They were too astounded at first
to bolt below. Men were falling right and left like ninepins. It's a
miracle that Monygham, standing on the after-hatch with the rope already
round his neck, escaped being riddled through and through like a sieve.
He told me since that he had given himself up for lost, and kept on
yelling with all the strength of his lungs: 'Hoist a white flag! Hoist
a white flag!' Suddenly an old major of the Esmeralda regiment, standing
by, unsheathed his sword with a shriek: 'Die, perjured traitor!' and ran
Sotillo clean through the body, just before he fell himself shot through
the head."

Captain Mitchell stopped for a while.

"Begad, sir! I could spin you a yarn for hours. But it's time we started
off to Rincon. It would not do for you to pass through Sulaco and not
see the lights of the San Tome mine, a whole mountain ablaze like a
lighted palace above the dark Campo. It's a fashionable drive. . . . But
let me tell you one little anecdote, sir; just to show you. A fortnight
or more later, when Bar