head, I again hove-to and, launching
the dinghy, proceeded toward the harbour's mouth; my crew being two men
who, like myself, were armed to the teeth.

We pulled in with muffled oars, and in due time arrived within a stone's
throw of the shore. The coast here proved to be precipitous and rocky,
the swell which set round the southern extremity of the island breaking
with great violence upon the shore and rendering landing absolutely
impossible; moreover, the night was so dark that--although in every
other respect admirably suited for my purpose--it was impossible to
clearly see where we were going, and two or three times we inadvertently
got so close to the rocks that we narrowly and with the utmost
difficulty avoided being dashed upon them. At length, however, we
rounded the southernmost head and entered the harbour, and almost
immediately afterwards made out a narrow strip of sandy beach, upon
which I landed without difficulty, leaving the two men to look after the
dinghy and lay off a few yards from the shore, ready to pull in again
and take me aboard at a moment's notice if necessary.

Having landed, I ascended a rather steep, grassy slope, some seventy or
eighty feet high, and stood to look about me. The harbour was quite a
spacious affair, the entrance being about half a mile wide, while the
harbour itself seemed--so far as I could make out in the darkness--to be
quite two miles long. The general shape of this inlet immediately
suggested to me the conviction that if, as Garcia had informed me,
Morillo really had established his headquarters here, he would be almost
certain to have constructed a couple of batteries--one on each
headland--to defend the place; and I at once set about the task of
ascertaining how far my conjecture might happen to be correct. Toward
the eastward from where I had halted the land continued to rise in a
sort of ridge, culminating in what had the appearance of a knoll, and it
struck me that, if a battery really existed on that side of the harbour,
I ought to find it not far from this spot. I accordingly wended my way
toward it as best I could, forcing a passage for myself through the
grass and scrub, with a most unpleasant conviction that I might at any
moment place my hand or foot upon a venomous snake or reptile of some
sort; and finally, after about twenty minutes of most unpleasant
scrambling, found myself alongside the "knoll," which, as I had more
than half suspected, now prov