His name was Sisson, he told me, but he spoke Spanish like a native. His uncarded beard was a thing long forgotten of razors. He was unmistakably another of those easily identified tramps of the tropics who, in an unguarded moment, unaccountably lose their grip on themselves and thenceforward go sliding unresistingly down to a not unwelcome oblivion.
Sisson did not importune me, as did all the other boatmen; he did not even offer me his services; and it was because of this evidence of some lingering vestige of pride, coupled with the fact that he had an eminently suitable cayuco, that I decided to employ him.
At the narrow gateway of Devil’s Channel the water is so shallow, and there so frequently occur tiny submerged sand-bars, that only the minutest of sea craft can skim over the gleaming rifts and gain entrance. This was confirmed for the nth time when I felt the specially made keel of our tiny cayuco scrape the shiny sand in warning that we were at last entering the canyon-like waterway.
Leanor and I were both playing our splendid oarsman with well-nigh every imaginable question about the gloomy, spooky-looking channel before us.
“Aren’t we nearing the place yet?” Leanor presently asked.
“Farther in,” drawled Sisson, the bearded giant of a boatman, glancing carelessly at the ascending cliffs on either side.
Twisting my body round in the wee native cayuco, I noted that the perpendicular walls of the shadowy strait that lay before us seemed drawing together with every pull of Sisson’s great arms. Leanor’s pretty face was radiant with expectation. Though bored of the world, there was at least one more thrill for her ahead.
Five minutes slipped by. Sisson rowed on steadily.
“There she is!” the boatman said suddenly, for the first time evincing something like a normal human interest in life. One of his huge, hairy hands was indicating an alkali spot on the face of the right-hand wall a stone’s throw ahead. “Just opposite that white spot is where it always happens.”