El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1900-07-21
CHAPTER XIII.

MINDLESS swell and a burning sky.
Ahead broken palings of mop headed tree
trunks growing straight across the sea.
On one beam scattered patches of white
where the surf crumbled over hidden coral
reef, on the other the bright blue water
of the Mexican gulf, with its yellow float
ing tangleS of weed. \ steamer lunging
through the rollers at small six knots.
On her decks was visible one man, and
one alone, and he was on the upper bridge,
with his fists on the spokes of the steam
steering wheel He was swaying with
WEAKNESS; his eyes were dull and leaden;
his cheeks were of an unwholesome yellow
because the tan would not let them turn
pale white Yet his task was one which
put to strain every piece of his alertness.
He was taking a steamer drawing 10 feet
through a channel whose very existence
no man on earth besides himself had ever
guessed, and already he was deep in sea
territory which the charts of 1898 still
mark as unsurveyed. He had vaguely
found the channel some months before in
an open boat and written cross compass
bearings Oh the back of crumpled envel
ope. These he carried in his head now
and used as the sea marks closed, but they
were frail reed for much dependence.
For such work leadsman is an abso-
lutte necessity, and on board the Port
Edes a leadsman was an absolute impossi
bility. The remaining two of her man.
ming were working as ten men to keep up
any head of steam for her engines. And
Patrick Cambel took his soundings
with eye and nostrils, as do some of the
more ancient of the coaster folk, and in
stinct did not upon the whole, serve him
badly. Twice he secured the steamers
bottom plates over branching coral plants,
which broke away with Gathering jars and
let her through to deeper water beyond,
and once he ran upon a tail of white sand,
which pinned her just forward of mid
ships. But he rung off the engines, waited
till the scream of the escape pipe showed
n full head of steam and then on n flowing
tide put her full speed astern and slid
clear.
The skipper in the stokehold below
waXed blasphemous at the man who had
got the shore on board, - but he did not
cease from shoveling Goals. Neither did
the big donkeyman, save at those mo-
ments when the clang of the telegraph
bell called him to stand by the throttle or
reversing gear i'll tho engine room.
So the Port Edes drew up this narrow
unknown sea river through the shadows
which fill that blight of the southwest
Floridian coast, and the tired man who
was governing her stcerCd every hour W tn
stronger confidence and Gulicr conscious
ness. Now he held on to what was ap
pareEtly an unhrOl.cl line of sand, Where,
if the steamer stuck, she would be a
stove in wreck within the hour, but as she
closed with IL passage opened out which
took her through III clear water, although
the ycasty surges of the backWash would
leap like live things far up her sides and
scream and below through the scuppers.
Now he lodged, with helm hard starboard
one minute, hard to port the next, among
an archipelago of unnamed keys, where
the first Inangrove trees were getting to
work at building these outlying scraps of
animal stone into part of the North Amer
lean continent.
Beyond was broad, smooth lagoon
shimmering in the sunlight, dancing with
little silver waves, and beyond again was
a wall of woodwork growing in one solid
mass of franks from behind the tangle of
Shiny mangroves which sprawled along
the waters edge. Bare land was to be