Sentinels challenged the _Chill_ from the shore and shot at random
at the noise of her in the darkness.

A mile beyond, where a lighted river steamer with steam up lay at the
north bank, they ran in at the Apshodel wells. The steamer was small,
and the nearly two hundred Americans--men, women, and children--crowded
her capacity. Blasphemous greetings of pure joy and geniality were
exchanged between the men, and Habert learned that the steamboat was
waiting for his Billy Boy, who, astride a horse, was rounding up
isolated drilling gangs who had not yet learned that the United States
had seized Vera Cruz and that all Mexico was boiling.

Habert climbed out to wait and to go down on the steamer, while the
three that remained on the _Chill_, having learned that Miss Drexel
was not with the refugees, headed for the Dutch Company on the south
shore. This was the big gusher, pinched down from one hundred and
eighty-five thousand daily barrels to the quantity the company
was able to handle. Mexico had no quarrel with Holland, so that the
superintendent, while up, with night guards out to prevent drunken
soldiers from firing his vast lakes of oil, was quite unemotional. Yes,
the last he had heard was that Miss Drexel and her brother were back at
the hunting lodge. No; he had not sent any warnings, and he doubted that
anybody else had. Not till ten o'clock the previous evening had he
learned of the landing at Vera Cruz. The Mexicans had turned nasty as
soon as they heard of it, and they had killed Miles Forman at the Empire
Wells, run off his labor, and looted the camp. Horses? No; he didn't
have horse or mule on the place. The federals had commandeered the last
animal weeks back. It was his belief, however, that there were a couple
of plugs at the lodge, too worthless even for the Mexicans to take.