d beasts and some
tribes of wild men; but a strip of the seacoast south of the mouth of
the Silver River is being rapidly developed.

There are great rivers emptying into the sea here,--the Cobu Leofu, Rio
Negro, the Balchitas, the Chupat Desire and Rio Chico--all water-ways
which are opening up the country. Argentina is as large as all Eastern
and Central Europe together and is enormously rich in mineral and
natural products.

This information was brought home to me as, day after day, and with
favorable gales, the Sea Spell winged her way southward. She was a
fairly fast sailing ship and Captain Adoniram Tugg evidently took pride
in her. But her crew was all that he had given me reason to believe. A
dirtier, more ungovernable gang of penny cut-throats I doubt never
sailed on any honest ship!

I soon learned, beside all the above about Argentina's coast trade, that
Tugg kept his seamen at work through fear. He never changed his drawl in
speaking; but when he gave an order there was a grimness about his mouth
and a flash in his gray-blue eyes that gave one a cold, creepy feeling
in the region of the spine. I don't know that Captain Tugg went armed.
But if an order had been neglected by any man aboard I had the feeling
that a weapon would appear in the skipper's hand and that the mutineer
would have dropped in his tracks!

Pedro, the mate, was a snaky, dusky fellow, with huge rings of gold in
his ears and a smile that showed altogether too many teeth to be
pleasant--a regular alligator smile. As far as I could see, I would just
as lief have Pedro's ill feeling as his friendship. Yet Tugg trusted him
implicitly. But I--I locked my stateroom door whenever I lay down to
sleep; and I kept the Winchester and the Colts revolver loaded all the
time. Perhaps I was foolish; but I felt that we were in a state of war.

The routine duties of the schooner kept me at work, however, for I
tried to earn my sixteen a month. Tugg was a good navigator himself. He
handled his schooner like a professional yachtsman. Captain Rogers would
have admired the man, for he was another skipper who did not believe in
lying hove to no matter how hard the wind blew. There was a week at a
stretch when I didn't get thoroughly dry between watches. The Sea Spell
just about flew over the water instead of through it!

But a calm fell thereafter and we lay for eighteen hours in the Bay of
St. George, the sails hanging dead with not a breath of wind, and t