daylight, in slow-pulling boats, for half a mile, then to board the schooner and either float her or burn her and her valuable cargo of the vitally important salt. It was more dangerous than Decatur's exploit at Tripoli, or Cushing's in Albemarle Sound, for both of these were after dark and in the nature of surprises. The enemy was awaiting the Bogota's men; bullets were even then reaching the Bogota. But those reckless Yankee soldiers of fortune were eager for the fray, and there was much grumbling among the unselected ones when the little party under Lieutenant George Parker left the ship's side and pulled in two boats, one with a machine gun in the bow, directly for the enemy. The Bogota covered the daring advance with a terrible shelling of the trenches and the adjoining woods. The enemy's fire slackened noticeably under the cannonade. Sharp-shooters could be seen every now and then falling from trees, and wounded were observed being born from the chapparal to a safer retreat. Just as the boats reached the schooner, the enemy rallied and poured in a deadly fire at close range. The machine gun and the rifles of the boats' crews responded, the fire of the Bogota redoubled, and the enemy was badly demoralized, but there had been loss in the boats, too. Richard Kane, gunner's mate, who had served with me as a quartermaster, under the name of Hanrahan, on board the U. S. S. Dolphin, in Cuba during the Spanish war, was instantly killed. Lieutenant Parker and one other were severely wounded. Yet, as coolly as if at drill in San Francisco Bay, the men from the boats boarded the Santa Maria, and, finding she could not possibly be floated, set fire to her. They then pulled back under a fire which, however, had become almost silenced under the fierce bombardment from the Bogota's rapid-fire and machine. guns.

It was not until a week later that the enemy's vessels were finally located in the narrow San Pedro River, nine miles from its mouth, at a little place called Pedregal. This spot, 300 miles from Panama, and close to the Costa Rican border, was visited after every other conceivable place had been searched in vain. The guns of the batteries at the river's mouth had been silenced by the Bogota in short order, but

there was nothing to indicate the presence of the hostile ships within until a sloop was captured several miles off-shore. In this sloop was a Liberal officer, with letters on his person showing that the Padilla and the other Liberal vessels were at Pedregal. The sloop was bringing to them a supply of palm oil for their machinery and guns.

We

This was indeed cheering news. had the long sought foe at last. The crew was jubilant. We stood back to the mouth of the river, but the stream itself was so narrow and tortuous that we dared not enter it, especially as it was lined with troops, with artillery, which could have swept our unprotected decks at close range after we had grounded, as we surely should have done, without a trustworthy pilot. We therefore hammered the batteries at the river's mouth and then settled down to a blockade which was maintained relentlessly until the morning of the fifth day, when a British man-ofwar, the Phaeton, arrived from Panamawe thought at first she was an enemy and went for her at full speed, with men at quarters and guns loaded-and informed us officially that the war was ended. It appeared that our doings around Parita Bay and elsewhere had inspired the enemy with so much respect for our arınament and marksmanship that they lost heart, asked for a parley, met the Conservative leaders on board the U. S. battleship Wisconsin, and there in the presence of RearAdmiral Silas Casey, U. S. N., signed the peace agreement, by which they surrendered all their ships, guns and other munitions of war.

It was a crushing blow to the troubleseeking, pugnacious men of the Bogota. They had conquered the enemy, ended the war, and entirely fulfilled their mission without a ship-to-ship encounter. They had won back the command of the sea without sinking a ship. They had done this with the loss of but one killed and three wounded, in a fight in which alone the enemy, by his own admission, lost 46 in killed and wounded. It was a cruel disappointment.

Back we went to Panama, and thereafter our experiences were as a nightmare. For days we did nothing but transport the surrendered Liberal soldiers and filthy refugees of both sexes back and

forth. The clean, orderly Bogota, with her happy crew, became a mass of dirt and disorder. Disease broke out, some of our own people became infected, and Lieutenant Mitchell died of yellow fever upon our return to Panama. We were ill supplied with food and water. I can at times hear even now the agonized cries of suffering refugees for "agua! agua!" The Colombian "generals" and others crowded the ship and, now that war and danger were over, annoyed us Americans so greatly that I hourly expected a clash between them and our people. To provide for such a contingency, I had the officers and crew-except the captain, who never knew about it-secretly organized into a sort of "riot formation." When the bugle blew a certain call, each officer and man knew his station, what arms to get, what guns to man, and what to do. the first note of that "riot call," as we called it, the offending Colombians-the very men for whom we had recently been fighting with our lives-would have been slaughtered with system, neatness and dispatch. They would never have known exactly what happened. By patience and diplomacy, however, a clash was averted. As a matter of fact, however, I may say here that, after the war, when we met personally some of the Liberal officers and men, we found that we were really fighting for the wrong side. The Liberals were all their name implies. So were the anachronistic, semi-barbarous Conservatives.

At

As the time for our discharge approached, there were ominous symptoms of a desire on the part of the Colombians to "welch" on the money question. The first symptom was observed when Captain Marmaduke informed me that it was the

intention of the authorities to divide up our American crew among the several vessels Bogota, Padilla, Boyaca, Darien, Clapet and Chucuito-as nuclei for the rest of the outfit, which should be composed of Colombians. I saw through this trick at once. They wanted to separate us, so that we should be helpless against the overpowering numbers of the natives. I refused to agree. After consulting with the other officers, I prevailed upon the captain to impress upon the authorities the fact that the Americans preferred to stick together on the well armed and equipped Bogota. "United we stand, divided we fall," was our motto. We remained united.

Then came pay-day. I moved the Bogota to within 800 yards of the executive mansion, the treasury and other public buildings excellent close range for our guns-and anchored her there. She could have settled anything necessary then and there, with greatest ease. But the Colombians made no trouble, beyond trying to pay us off in their depreciated silver currency instead of in gold, as our contracts demanded, but this difficulty was speedily removed as soon as we exhibited determination.

We welcomed our discharges from so thankless a service. We had high hopes at the outset. Indeed, we thoroughly enjoved ourselves until the war was over, after which our troubles began.

Colombians do not like to admit it, but it is a fact, that a party of American. soldiers of fortune, on an American ship, equipped and partly armed in San Francisco, speedily and easily ended a war which for three long years had devastated the country and threatened its actual existence.

"P

OISON" was the word asneaking round the camp. There'd been a lot of whispered talk, and on the 7th of September, the day we'd buried Jim Gray, we all got together on the river bank by Peep O'Day's road house and held a Miner's Meeting. "Just a bunch o' plain Americans," Peep said, "gathered together in the interests of justice and self-gover'ment 'way up in this here corner of Alaska." We had no lawyers or law books, and we didn't need 'em.

Everybody felt it, considerable, when poor Jim cashed in so sudden. He sure was a first class miner and man. "Straight Goods and Square as a Die"-that was the ep'taph his own pardner, Still Bill McDougall, put on the spruce tree where we planted him.

Bill, he was that same kind. They sure were 0. K. men-all right on the trail and all right in camp. Any of you gentlemen that ever followed the Front knows what that means.

Them pardners differed in two ways: Jim had looks, Bill had a big nose and bristling red whiskers; Jim could always talk and josh some; Bill, he was just Still Bill.

But Mrs. Bill stuck in a man's eye like a-er-mote, making it wink and water. Pretty? Thunder! When we first saw her and she shot those big black eyes at us, everybody in camp, except Limpy Wilson, throwed out his chest and tried to look tall.

"I've seen that woman in Frisco, said Limpy, and that's all he had to say.

She wore some blue bloomer things, and a red sweater, and high laced-up boots that didn't look big enough to hold more'n a good drink of whiskey apiece. She had heaps of black hair and a red knit cap on it, and she stepped round .over the gravel stones like they had springs under 'em.

"Reg'lar High-Stepper," said Peep O'Day, and High-Stepper's what we called her afterward 'mongst ourselves.

Up in Alaska you get to know a heap