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My cousin was taken by one while fishing, and was dragged down into the hidden caverns. He was last seen standing on a ledge, and the next day his bones were found picked clean. A shark is easier to fight than such a devil who has so many arms." The boatsmen gathered up the remnants of the foe and brought them to the beach, where the elder Ugh! was tending the fire.
The invitation appeared to gratify the boatsmen, who smiled and winked at each other, as though they thought themselves very clever fellows to have discovered the whereabouts of a hidden treasure, and to be refreshed in the midst of their toil by one whom they knew to be a noted smuggler, and whom they strongly suspected of being concerned in the job they were at that time endeavouring to frustrate.
"And for yourself as well, for I am sure that you too will be glad to see your friend Siegfrid." The boat being ready, all three seated themselves upon a pile of leaves in the stern, and the vigorous strokes of the boatsmen soon carried the frail bark a long way from the shore.
I was behind the barrier of the boatsmen, but once in the throes of the fight a slimy arm passed between two of them and wound itself around my leg. I screamed out, for it was icy cold and sent a sickening weakness all through me, so that I could not have swum a dozen feet with it upon me. One of the natives cut it off, and still it clung to my bloodless skin until I plucked it away.
Arriving at Aspinwall, the point of debarkation, on the Atlantic side, boats and boatsmen were engaged to transport passengers and baggage up the "Chagress," a small and shallow river. Crossing the Isthmus to Panama, on the Pacific side, I found Panama very cosmopolitan in appearance, for mingled with the sombrero-attired South American, could be seen denizens from every foreign clime.
Against the blinding glimmer of it the half-naked boatsmen, bearing bunches of bananas, dozens of drinking nuts, bread, and wine, the gifts of my host, were dark silhouettes outlined against the blue sea. Behind them walked Tetuahunahuna.
The boatsmen thanked him, and Zackey was ordered off to fetch a jug of water; but his father's voice arrested him before he had gone a hundred yards. "Hold on a bit, my son. P'raps," he said, turning to Trezise, "you'd come up hum with me and have a dish o' tay? Missus have got it all ready."
Before the pleasant little tea-party in Maggot's cottage broke up the whole were scattered abroad, and men and mules and horses sped with their ill-gotten gains across the furze-clad moors. "Sure it's early to break up," said Maggot, when the boatsmen at last rose to take their leave; "there's no fear o' the bunches o' copper melting down there, or flyin' away."
The squall had grown into a gale, roaring upon them while they tried to hold it steady. The canoe began to fill with water, it sank deeper and deeper, and in another moment the boatsmen were flung into the ocean. There they struggled with the great seas; they swam; they regained the canoe; they righted it, climbed into it. The storm subsided, the seas went down.
Maggot's absence rendered her position still more perplexing, but she was a woman of ready wit and self-reliance, and she comforted herself with the knowledge that the brandy lay buried far down in the shaft, and that it would take the boatsmen some time to dig to it that possibly they might give up in despair before reaching it.
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