The principal mouth or main-stream is called the Boca de Navios, and it was up this great stream that our heroes went with Miguel next morning, in his pretty little steam-yacht, of which the young fellow was so justly proud.
So light was this craft and so little water did she draw, that she could go anywhere, and being strong even in a buffeting sea-way, could have done anything. She was not, however, quite so light as the Yankee's boat that was warranted to sail wherever there was a heavy dew.
I am writing from memory only, so I cannot give the exact tonnage of the Orinoco Queen, but fifty tons is near enough. Her beam was broad, though. Her little cabin or cuddy quite a lady's boudoir, adorned and perfumed with the rarest tropical flowers, through which at night peeped coyly the glow of fairy-lights. The one great lamp that swung from the skylight had a crimson shade, and thus the cabin looked like a scene from dream-land.
At night Miguel played his guitar, and sang wild and martial ballads of the romantic Spain of years gone by, or soft lullaby-like love ditties. The music of these latter seemed to breathe o'er the strings. You could have told it was a serenade, and in imagination you might have seen a beautiful girl-face appear one moment at an open lattice-window above, and next, from a white and shapely hand extended, you might imagine a flower drop down, to be rapturously caught and pressed to the lips of the serenader. Spain, deprived of its romance, were nothing now.
Hammocks were hung on deck, and surrounded, as far as Miguel's guests were concerned, by mosquito curtains. But the captain, Miguel himself, slept on a grass mat.
The crew of the Orinoco Queen consisted of five men and a boy, two of the men being engineers. This little river craft, however, had a main and fore mast, on which were carried, alow and aloft only, fore-and-aft sails. The men were lanky and brown, dark in hair and eyes, with bare necks and chests, and legs all exposed below the knees. But they were as lithe and active as panthers.
From the very first Creggan and the Duckling knew that they were going to have a real good time of it. Miguel believed in taking life easy. With half-shut eyes, while the yacht steamed slowly up the river, he would lie or recline on a grass hammock on deck, a small perfumed cigar between his lips, making little else save interjectional remarks for an hour at a time.
Miguel had no middle-mind, if I may so express it; that is, he was either dreamy happy in a kind of lethargy, or as active as a pole-cat on the war-path.
In this respect he resembled the monster caymans, or huge alligators with which the yellow-white waters of the river swarmed. Terrible monsters indeed these are! You can see their great heads protruding over the moon-lit water, if you are keeping the middle watch. So lazy look they, that scarcely could you believe that anything could excite them, or wake them into activity. But let a man fall overboard, or—awful accident!—a boat capsize, and they cleave the water, quick as seals, and Heaven have mercy on the mariners, for the caymans have none!
In five days' time, taking it very easy, and often-times landing on wooded islands, or at the mouths of rivers—tributaries to the "Mother of Waters",—they reached Ciudad Bolivar.