low and stately movement out of the anchorage toward
the somewhat contracted passage between the island of Tierra Bomba and
the Main.

Once fairly clear of the anchorage, and the shipping that encumbered it,
we crowded sail upon the old hooker, and were soon booming down toward
the chain of shoals at the rate of fully seven knots. And now Hoard
once more made himself useful by undertaking to pilot us through the
shoals, which he did very successfully, hugging Brujas Island pretty
closely, and then bearing almost square away for the Boca Chica channel.
A short half-hour sufficed to carry us to the inner end of it; and here
our utmost vigilance was called into play in the navigation of the
sharply-winding passage. But we managed to achieve it successfully, all
still being dark and silent in the San Fernando battery as we passed it,
and after an anxious ten minutes I had the satisfaction of feeling
_Nostra Senora del Carmen_ rising and falling ponderously upon the swell
of the open Caribbean.

In anticipation of the possibility that we might be pursued, I now
shaped a course due west, right off the land, that being, in my opinion,
the direction in which we were least likely to be looked for, and when
we had been running to leeward for about half an hour, and had made an
offing of nearly four miles, I burned three portfires simultaneously as
a preconcerted signal to the schooner that all was well and that she was
to follow us, and an hour later she came foaming up on our weather
quarter and hailed us. We now hove-to and sent alongside her the boats
that had hitherto been towing astern; and as soon as they were hoisted
in we both filled away once more, still standing straight off the land,
so that when day dawned I had the satisfaction of finding that we had
run the coast out of sight.

We had, of course, long ere this secured our prisoners, numbering in all
two hundred and twenty-six men, and now the problem was how to get rid
of them; for I did not at all care to have so many men aboard who would
require to be constantly watched in order that they might not rise upon
and overpower us at some unguarded moment. Happily, the problem was
soon solved; for about noon we sighted a trading felucca, bound from
Porto Bello to Santa Marta, which the schooner brought to, and as she
proved to be a fine, roomy craft I hove-to, lowered the boats, and
transhipped our prisoners into her, despite the protests of her unhappy
captain,