he California coast when he was a
lot younger than he was then, said she'd stand anything we was likely
to get in the Gulf. So we stocked her with provisions and water to
last a month or so, and Nebraska pointed her nose toward Yucatan.

"I didn't think then what a rank job it was that we were going to do,
but it won't do me any harm in your eyes to say that after we'd got
started and I began to realize what it all meant, I was ashamed. I
felt like a sneak and a coward all through the deal, but I couldn't
back out after I'd started, and so I went through with it.

"We run into a spell of bad weather and had to hug the coast mighty
close, and it was two weeks before we pulled into Campeche Bay, on the
northwest coast of Yucatan. We worked the boat about half a mile up a
little creek four or five miles south of Campeche, and worked half a
day hiding her, so that she'd be there when we got back. Then, taking
what grub was left, we struck out for the interior. It won't be any
use telling you about that journey--you couldn't imagine, and I
couldn't begin to tell you, what a miserable, slow, tortuous affair it
was. It gets hot in New Mexico, but we got a taste of hell in that
Yucatan jungle. That country wasn't built for a white man.

"So I'm not going to try to tell you about the trip. We were tough and
eager, and we stuck it out, traveling mostly by night, setting our
course by the stars, about which I knew something. But we were a week
going a hundred miles, and we were beginning to get into that frame of
mind where we were noticing one another's faults and getting not a bit
backward in talking about them, when one night at dusk we got a glimpse
of the place we were looking for.

"Queza had called the place a town, and maybe that name fits it as well
as another. It made me dizzy to look at it. We'd been climbing the
slope of a mountain all afternoon--traveling in the daytime now,
because we were getting near the end of our journey--Nebraska in the
lead, the rest trailing him. We saw Nebraska stop and duck back into
some brush. Then we all sneaked up to him and got our first look at
the town.

"It looked to me as though the place had been made to hide in. The
mountain dropped away below us, straight down about a hundred feet, a
smooth rock wall. Another wall of rock joined it on the right, making
a big L. There was a level that began at the two walls and extended
both ways for probably half a mile, unti