“You have known Alvarez long, haven’t you?” Kit resumed.

“When I met him first, he was a customs officer with some perquisites and a salary that paid for liquor and tobacco.  Vanhuyten and I ran the old Mercedes then, and Van made a mistake that put us at the fellow’s mercy.  There was a good case for confiscating the schooner, which would have given Alvarez a lift while we went broke.  In fact, the night of the crisis, I dropped Van’s pistol overboard; he’d got malaria badly and was feeling desperate.  Well, all we had given Alvarez didn’t cover that kind of a job, but he’d promised to stand our friend and kept his word like a gentleman.  Guess it needed some nerve and judgment to work things the way he did, and when we stole out to sea at daybreak past the port guard, I knew there was one man in the rotten country I could trust with my life.  Now he’s in a tight place, he knows he can trust me.”

Adam got up and crossing the deck leaned against the rails.  In the distance, where the glitter faded, there was a long gray smear that seemed to float like a smoke-trail above the water.  Higher up, a vague blue line ran across the dazzling sky.  The first was a fringe of mangrove forest; the other lofty mountains.  A minute or two later, the fat, brown-faced captain came down from his bridge.

“Looks like the Punta; we’ve hit her first time,” he remarked.  “In about an hour I ought to get my marks.  When d’you want her taken in?”

“Soon as it’s dark,” Adam replied.  “You’ll have to trust your lead and compass.  Can’t have you whistling for a pilot, and I’d sooner you put out your lights.”

“It’s your risk and not the first time I’ve broken rules.  I guess I can keep her off the ground.  We’ll get busy presently and heave the hatches off.  The B.F. cases are right on top.”

Adam nodded, and beckoned Kit when the captain went away.  “You haven’t been in the Santa Marta lagoon yet.  Stand by and watch the soundings and compass while Mayne takes her across the shoals.  You may find it useful to know the channel.”

Kit understood.  Malaria and other fevers are common on low-lying belts of the Caribbean coast and skippers and mates fall sick.  Moreover, the Rio Negro did not always load at the regular ports.  Sometimes she crept into mangrove-fringed lagoons, and sometimes stopped at lonely beaches and sent loaded boats ashore when her captain saw the gleam of signal lights.

When it was getting dark, Kit and Adam went to the bridge and the former noted that his uncle breathed rather hard and seized the rails firmly as he climbed the ladder.  The red glow of sunset had faded behind the high land and a gray haze spread across the swampy shore, but the water shone with pale reflections.  On one side, a long, dingy smear floated across the sky.  It did not move and Kit thought it had come from the funnel of a steamer whose engineer had afterwards cleaned his fires.  Captain Mayne studied the fleecy trail with his glasses.