w. I will have another chat with you when we reach the
coast."

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

I PLAN A MOST DARING AND HAZARDOUS ENTERPRISE.

Our run across to the Main was uneventful, and on the sixth morning out
from Port Royal we made Point Gallinas, arriving off Cartagena some
twenty hours afterwards.

By great good luck the weather happened to be favourable for our
immediate embarkation upon our adventure, so after a further and final
chat with Hoard, the schooner was headed in for the land. The night was
dark as pitch, the sky being overcast, and there was a gentle breeze
blowing off the land, affording us smooth water for the delicate
operation of landing. But there was no time to be lost, it wanting only
four hours to daylight, by which time it would be necessary that the
schooner should have secured a good offing; so, having under Hoard's
pilotage stood in until the lead gave us twenty-one fathoms--at which
point Hoard informed us that we might consider ourselves half a mile
from the land--the gig was lowered, and, with her crew armed to the
teeth, we shoved off, the second mate being in charge, with Hoard and
myself sitting on either side of him in the stern-sheets, the former
still acting as pilot. We paddled gently in, with muffled oars, and in
the course of about ten minutes the boat gently grounded on a narrow
strip of smooth, sandy beach at the base of a low, rugged cliff in a
shallow bay. Here Hoard and I landed, the second mate receiving
instructions to be at the same spot with the boat and a small supply of
cooked provisions every night at midnight, and to remain a couple of
hours, when, if he saw nothing of either of us, he was to return to the
schooner until the next night.

We stood on the beach until the boat had shoved off again and was lost
in the darkness, when we turned away, and, Hoard leading, proceeded to
climb the face of the cliff, which was by no means a difficult matter,
as the ground, although somewhat precipitous, was grass-grown and
thickly dotted with low, sturdy bushes. Five minutes sufficed us to
reach the top, when we found ourselves facing a hillside, rising on our
right to a very respectable height. This, however, was not the hill to
which Hoard had alluded in his conversation with me. To reach the
latter we should have to walk about a mile, he informed me; so, having
paused for a minute or two to get our breath after our unwonted
exertions, we struck inland, passing