With a pilot, a negro who called himself Bob, taking the place in their party vacated by Henry’s defection, they made the run safely, if under rough conditions. The entrance into the harbor of the ancient Spanish port was attended with only the usual dangers of any of the reef-locked, rock-studded passages along the coast.
Tom, Nicky and Cliff saw, with amazement, the ruins of the once noted place. There were the demolished battlements of its old fortifications, visible as they dropped anchor in a quiet harbor.
They found the population composed of Spanish and Negro people, of the most advanced state of dejection. No trade came to Porto Bello, no ships bothered to run the menace of her reefs, except for a very rare sailing sloop which might put in rather than to face a storm.
It took only a short time to land, and the crowd which assembled at the decrepit old shacks near the beach, astonished the boys by its slovenliness and its apathy. The people watched but made no effort to be pleasant or to help them.
“Did you ever see so many sickly people?” Nicky asked, and with good cause: hookworm was prevalent, from a diet that never varied; and the unclad bodies of the younger children seemed a very breeding place for sores. The ragged adults were in a like state.
“Father says that’s what comes of this kind of a life,” Cliff declared. “These folks never see anybody but themselves. They don’t have anything to interest them. They just eat, and sleep and exist, waiting till they die.”
“I don’t think I’d stay here, even if I had to build a canoe and run the risk of the reefs and the ocean rollers,” Tom stated. “I’d rather meet my end fighting for life than sitting down and waiting for the other thing.”
“So would I,” Nicky agreed. “But these people are just too lazy and dejected to care, I guess.”
“They have lost their self-respect and their wills,” Bill said. “I suppose I ought to feel sorry for them, but I don’t, because I was always of the idea that it’s up to every man to make himself what he wants to be.”
“I feel that way,” Tom agreed. “It isn’t easy, though.”