The story goes also that within men's memory two wandering sailors--Americanos, perhaps, but gringos of some sort for certain--talked over a gambling, good-for-nothing mozo, and the three stole a donkey to carry for them a bundle of dry sticks, a water-skin, and provisions enough to last a few days.

Thus accompanied, and with revolvers at their belts, they had started to chop their way with machetes through the thorny scrub on the neck of the peninsula.
On the second evening an upright spiral of smoke (it could only have been from their camp-fire) was seen for the first time within memory of man standing up faintly upon the sky above a razor-backed ridge on the stony head.

The crew of a coasting schooner, lying becalmed three miles off the shore, stared at it with amazement till dark.

A negro fisherman, living in a lonely hut in a little bay near by, had seen the start and was on the lookout for some sign.

He called to his wife just as the sun was about to set.