The _Topila_ was a federal gunboat. To complicate the affair, the
constitutionalists, gathered on the north shore in the siege of Tampico,
opened up on the speedboat with many rifles and a machine gun.

"Lord, I'm glad they're Mexicans, and not Americans," Habert observed,
after five mad minutes in which no damage had been received. "Mexicans
are born with guns in their hands, and they never learn to use them."

Nor was the _Chill_ or any man aboard damaged when at last she
rounded the bend of river that shielded her from the searchlight.

"I'll have you in Panuco town in less'n three hours, ... if we don't hit
a log," Peter leaned back and shouted in Wemple's ear. "And if we do hit
driftwood, I'll have you in the swim quicker than that."

_Chill II_ tore her way through the darkness, steered by the
tow-headed youth who knew every foot of the river and who guided his
course by the loom of the banks in the dim starlight. A smart breeze,
kicking up spiteful wavelets on the wider reaches, splashed them with
sheeted water as well as fine-flung spray. And, in the face of the
warmth of the tropic night, the wind, added to the speed of the boat,
chilled them through their wet clothes.

"Now I know why she was named the _Chill_," Habert observed betwixt
chattering teeth.

But conversation languished during the nearly three hours of drive
through the darkness. Once, by the exhaust, they knew that they passed
an unlighted launch bound down stream. And once, a glare of light, near
the south bank, as they passed through the Toreno field, aroused brief