head of the creek, where,
carefully housed under a low thatch covering, we found the canoe.

She was, indeed, a frail craft in which to undertake such a journey as
ours, being only some two feet six inches beam, by about sixteen inches
deep, and twenty feet long; hollowed out of a single log. She had no
thwarts, and the paddlers were therefore compelled to squat tailor-
fashion in the bottom of her, looking forward. This was, so far,
fortunate; since she was so frightfully crank that, with such
unaccustomed canoeists as ourselves, it was only by keeping our centres
of gravity low down that we prevented her capsizing the moment we
stepped into her. Pedro, worthy soul, detained us about twenty minutes
whilst he explained the peculiarities of the craft and the proper mode
of handling the paddles; and then, with Smellie aft and me forward, we
bade the old fellow good-bye and boldly shoved off down the creek.

The channel here being narrow, and overarched to a great extent with
trees, the darkness was quite as intense as it had been on our journey
from the house through the wood and down to the creek; so dark was it,
indeed, that but for the lightning which now flashed around us with
rapidly-increasing frequency, it would have been quite impossible for us
to see where we were going. This stygian darkness, whilst it proved an
obstacle to our rapid progress, promised to afford us, by way of
compensation, most valuable assistance in another way, since we hoped to
slip past the schooner undetected in the impenetrable obscurity; our
desire just then being to avoid anything like a renewal of our
acquaintance with Senor Madera so soon after our very recent little
misunderstanding. Unfortunately there were two or three phenomena which
combined to render this feat a matter of difficulty. The first was the
vivid lightning which, at increasingly brief intervals, lit up the
channel with noontide distinctness. The next was the failure of the
wind; a stark breathless calm having fallen upon the face of nature like
a pall, in the which not so much as a single leaf stirred; and the whole
insect-world, contrary to its usual custom, awaiting in hushed
expectancy the outburst of the coming storm, a great and death-like
silence prevailed, through which the slightest sound which we might
accidentally make would have been heard for a long distance. And
another, and perhaps the worst of all, was the highly phosphorescent
state of the wat