had no men ashore were
the most determined to be first.

"Pshaw! Let 'em go," spoke Mr. Grigsby, as the shoving crowd jostled
him and Charley hither and thither. "We can wait. I'm not specially
anxious to be capsized and lose all our stuff."

Boat after boat, loaded to the water's edge, pulled away from the ship
for the shore, canoes hastened to help, and still the passengers
clamored and fought. In the confusion Charley lost all track of the
long-nosed man and his partners. The main thought now was, when could
he and Mr. Grigsby get ashore and find his father?

When the boats returned for their second loads there was another
hurly-burly, but the decks were thinning out, and pushing to the
nearest ladder Charley and the Fremonter managed to climb down,
lowering their baggage, into the boat there. The boat was loaded full
almost instantly, and away it pulled, for the shore again.

Standing up, because there wasn't space to sit down, Charley eagerly
gazed ahead. Slowly the shore enlarged; and turning the high point on
which was the Castle of San Lorenzo the boat entered the mouth of the
river. A little bay unfolded, its shore high on the left, low and
marshy on the right. On the left, at the foot of the thickly wooded
bluffs, among bananas and plantains, appeared a little group of
peak-roofed huts, all the muddy bank in front of them alive with the
_Georgia's_ passengers. Was that the town of Chagres? Well, who would
want to live _here_!

The passengers already landed were running about like ants, every one
acting as if his life again depended upon his getting away immediately.
The landing place was covered with baggage which had been dumped
ashore. A number of canoes were lying in the shoal water, and a number
of others had been hauled out while their owners repaired them. Amidst
the baggage, and over the canoes, swarmed the _Georgia's_ passengers,
in their flannel shirts or broadcloth or muddy white, shouting and
pleading and threatening, trying to hire the boatmen.

"There's your father," spoke Mr. Grigsby, suddenly, to Charley, as
their boat neared the busy landing.

Charley had been anxiously searching the shore, looking for his father;
and now he saw him, standing in a canoe drawn up out of the water, and
beckoning.

This looked promising; maybe that was their canoe! The moment that the
ship's boat grounded, its passengers tumbled out, helter-skelter, into
the mud, and raced for land, luggin