"They will not get out of Chiriqui Lagoon," the Jefe said solemnly. "I am no animal without reason. I am a man. I know they will not get out. Have I not sworn eternal vengeance? The sun is setting, and the promise is for a night of little wind. The sky tells it to one with half an eye. Behold those trailing wisps of clouds. What wind may be, and little enough of that, will come from the north-east. It will be a head beat to the Chorrera Passage. They will not attempt it. That nigger captain knows the lagoon like a book. He will try to make the long tack and go out past Bocas del Toro, or through the Cartago Passage. Even so, we will outwit him. I have brains, reason. Reason. Listen. It is a long ride. We will make it straight down the coast to Las Palmas. Captain Rosaro is there with the Dolores-"
"The second-hand old tugboat? that cannot get out of her own way?" Torres queried.
"But this night of calm and morrow of calm she will capture the Angelique," the Jefe replied. "On, comrades! We will ride! Captain Rosaro is my friend. Any favor is but mine to ask."
At daylight, the worn-out men, on beaten horses, straggled through the decaying village of Las Palmas and down to the decaying pier, where a very decayed-looking tugboat, sadly in need of paint, welcomed their eyes. Smoke rising from the stack advertised that steam was up, and the Jefe was wearily elated.
"A happy morning, Senor Capitan Rosaro, and well met," he greeted the hard-bitten Spanish skipper, who was reclined on a coil of rope and who sipped black coffee from a mug that rattled against his teeth.
"It would be a happier morning if the cursed fever had not laid its chill upon me," Captain Rosaro grunted sourly, "the hand that held the mug, the arm, and all his body shivering so violently as to spill the hot liquid down his chin and into the black-and-gray thatch of hair that covered his half-exposed chest. "Take that, you animal of hell!" he cried, flinging mug and contents at a splinter of a half-breed boy, evidently his servant, who had been unable to repress his glee.
But the sun will rise and the fever will work its will and shortly depart," said the Jefe, politely ignoring the display of spleen. "And you are finished here, and you are bound for Bocas del Toro, and we shall go with you, all of us, on a rare adventure. We will pick up the schooner Angelique, calm-bound all last night in the lagoon, and I shall make many arrests, and all Panama will so ring with your courage and ability, Capitan, that you will forget that the fever ever whispered in you."
"How much?" Capitan Rosaro demanded bluntly.
Much?" the Jefe countered in surprise. "This is an affair of government, good friend. And it is right on your way to Bocas del Toro. It will not cost you an extra shovelful of coal."
"Muchacho! More coffee!" the tug-skipper roared at the boy.