Francisco to the family in the hut, and rising, one of them lighted a candle. It was a two-story hut, and quarters were engaged in the up-stairs room for the three in Charley's party; while Captain Crosby and the sick man were given a place on the ground-floor.  
The up-stairs was entered by a ladder. There was nothing better to be done than to sleep in wet clothes; and Charley, on his grass mat, was just beginning to be and fairly comfortable, and barely heard his father say to Mr. Grigsby: "We ought to pull out at daybreak, but that depends on what we can do for the captain," when the captain himself came up through the hole in the floor.
 
"Hello!" he said. "It's Crosby. Are you awake?"
 
"Yes, sir. What's wanted?"
 
"Nothing, thank you. I suppose you'd like to get away early."
 
"As early as possible, captain. But we're at your service."
 
"Your time is valuable now, gentlemen. Mine isn't. If you're going to catch the California, you haven't a moment to waste."
 
"We'll miss the California, rather than leave you in the ."
 
"You'll not miss her, if you make an early start and go right on through. I told you you wouldn't lose by your kindness to my mate and me, and you won't. I stay here; you go on whenever you choose."
 
"No, sir," said Mr. Adams. "If we can help you any we'll stay by you."
 
"I stop here," announced the captain. "As for my mate, he stops, too. He'll never travel again. Tomorrow I bury him. He's gone, making his last trip, and I expect he's landed in a better port than California. What I do next I don't know. Go back to Chagres, maybe. At any rate, here's his ticket from Panama up to San Francisco." By the of the storm, now retreating, Captain Crosby was revealed groping across the floor, and extending a folded paper.
 
"What's that for?" demanded Mr. Adams.
 
"You're to take it and use it. Sell it, is my advice. You can get six hundred or more dollars for it, at Panama."
 
"I'll take and sell it, if you say so; but I'll send you the money. Your friend's family ought to have that."
 
"My mate had no alive. I don't want the money, and I know him well enough to know that he'd want you to have it. Yes, I understand that you didn't help us out for pay—you or any in your party. This isn't pay; it's just a little tit for tat. Sell that ticket and divide the proceeds among you, not omitting the boy. It may tide you over a tight place, just as you tided us over a tight place. You see, the ticket's no good to me. And now there's another thing or two, before we part. You've run a big chance of getting left; and even if you reach Panama in time for the steamer, you're liable to find her full up ere that. Here's a note I've written to Captain Flowers, of the California. He's an old ship-mate of mine. I sailed with him before I got my papers, and we're as close as brothers. He's expecting me, at Panama, and he'd hold the ship for me, if possible. I've asked him to take your party on instead, and he'll do so even if he has to give up his own cabin. My two boatmen will ship with your craft and help your boys up-river from here to Cruces. There they'll find you the to carry you on to Panama. Without these fellows you might have difficulty to find any mules, for the crowd in advance probably has hired every tassel-tail in sight. But I'm known all along the trail from Chagres to Panama; I've been across time and again, and I have my lines laid. Now I think you're for a quick passage."
 
"But, my dear man!" exclaimed Mr. Adams. "This is too much. We can't accept——"
 
"It isn't, and you can," retorted the captain, bluntly. "I'm not inconveniencing myself a particle, whereas your party took a risk. Now good-bye and good luck to you, gentlemen; and the same to you, my lad. Here are the documents. You'll find my boatmen with your boatmen in the morning. There'll not be much time to say good-bye then, if you start as early as I think you'll start. I'll leave word for you to be called at four o'clock."
 
So saying, the captain shook hands all around, declined to listen to further thanks, and ducked back down the ladder.
 
"There's a good turn repaying another in short order," remarked Mr. Grigsby. "If we help somebody else off a snag we're likely to have a whole ship put at our disposal!"
 
"Well, don't look for that," laughed Mr. Adams. "I'd help the next man anyway."
 
"Certainly," agreed the Frémonter. "So would I."
 
And Charley sleepily that he would, also. But anyway, the future looked bright again.
 
"We ought to reach Cruces to-morrow, and Panama the day after," remarked Mr. Adams; which were the last words that Charley heard until he was shaken by the shoulder and his father's voice was saying: "All right, Charley. Time to start."
 
The interior of the room was not yet pink with very early morning. Charley stiffly to his feet, and followed his father down the ladder, and through the room below—treading carefully so as not to disturb the there. Mr. Grigsby already was out; and if Captain Crosby was awake he pretended to be asleep so as to avoid more thanks!
 
A little fire blazed on the river bank, near the boat. The boatmen had made coffee and boiled some rice in cocoa-milk for the breakfast, so that within fifteen minutes the boat was headed up-stream, on the for Cruces.
 
Now urged by four paddlers instead of two, it fairly flew, the current while the dim shores and water grew . The mountain divide ahead was gradually drawing closer, and all the country along the stream seemed steeper. One by one were passed which in the midst of cleared forest and jungle looked more prosperous than the ranches of the lower river.
 
Well it was that the boat was equipped with four boatmen, for the current ran very swift off the high hills, and contained several rapids where two of the men—yes, and once all four of them—had to shove with poles. They constantly chewed sections of sugar- cut from an armful that had been tossed in at Peña Blanca. Charley tried the same , and found that the sugar-cane juice was good for a lunch.
 
Shortly after noon the course made a long turn about the foot of a , rounded hill, alone. Great trees clustered thickly to its top; and here, high above all, up rose a single straight palm, like a in the crown of a noble chief. The boatmen spoke, one to another, and Francisco .
 
"There you are, Charley," said Mr. Adams. "That's Mount Carabali. It used to be a for Indians and pirates. From that palm you can see both the Atlantic and the Pacific. We're about ten miles from Cruces."
 
In four miles more a large village called Gorgona was passed. During half the year this was the place where people crossing the changed from boat to -back, but during the other half Cruces, six miles above, was the . (As for old Gorgona, to-day it has been swallowed, the most of it, by the greedy Gatun Lake of the big canal.)
 
Above Gorgona about two miles the Chagres River, whose course had mainly been east and west, turned sharply to the left, while a fork called the Obispo River continued on toward the Pacific. (Here, to-day, at the forks, the Gatun Lake ends, after swallowing Gorgona, and the Culebra Cut proceeds on west into the mountains, making a path for the great canal, with Panama only fifteen miles away. However, in 1849 and for many years , the Panama Canal across the Isthmus was not visible to the eye. There was no Gatun Lake and no Culebra Cut; there was only the beautiful, Chagres River, flowing between its high jungly banks and divided, above Gorgona, where the Obispo entered.) So the canoe carrying Charley and his party turned south up the Chagres, and on, amidst green walls, to Cruces, at last.
 
Las Cruces (The Place of Crosses) was on the west bank of the Chagres, and as the canoe approached appeared to be a village of much importance. As Charley had heard, it had been a famous old town, connected with Panama by a paved stone road called the Royal Road, over which treasure of gold and silver and pearls was borne by slaves and mules and horses, on the way from the Pacific to the Atlantic at Porto Bello and Nombre de Dios. Yes, and in 1670 Las Cruces was captured by the pirates of Henry Morgan (Morgan the Buccaneer, who sacked the whole Isthmus), on their way overland to attack Panama.
 
As the canoe grounded, old Cruces, with its regulation thatched cane huts and a few—very few—wooden buildings, looked sleepy enough in the late afternoon sunlight, as if treasure-trains and pirates and even those other gold seekers, the California Forty-niners, never had been here. One of Captain Crosby's boatmen, named Angel (and a queer black angel he was!), sprang nimbly , to proceed on "up town." The other boatmen hauled the canoe higher.
 
"Angel's gone to find the mules," explained Mr. Adams, as all disembarked, glad to stretch their legs. "There's not an animal in sight; that's sure. The crowd ahead of us cleaned out the place."
 
"They didn't all get away, though. See the tents, yonder?" spoke Mr. Grigsby; for three tents had been pitched, not far back from the river, on the edge of the town.
 
Francisco saw, too, and shook his head , as did his comrades.
 
"Muy malo. Colera—mucha colera. Cuidado (Very bad. —much cholera. Be careful)," he said.
 
"Shouldn't wonder," muttered M............