At this point the tides from the Atlantic and the Pacific meet, and in the strait, as on the outside coast, their meeting makes a commotion of whirlpools and combers that in a gale of wind is dangerous to canoes and other frail craft.
A few miles farther along was a large steamer ashore, bottom up.
Passing this place, the sloop ran into a streak of light wind, and then--a most remarkable condition for strait weather--it fell entirely calm.

Signal-fires sprang up at once on all sides, and then more than twenty canoes hove in sight, all heading for the _Spray_.

As they came within hail, their savage crews cried, "Amigo yammerschooner," "Anclas aqui," "Bueno puerto aqui," and like scraps of Spanish mixed with their own jargon.

I had no thought of anchoring in their "good port." I hoisted the sloop's flag and fired a gun, all of which they might construe as a friendly salute or an invitation to come on.

They drew up in a semicircle, but kept outside of eighty yards, which in self-defense would have been the death-line.
In their mosquito fleet was a ship's boat stolen probably from a murdered crew.