Elsie had slept long and soundly: she found herself in a new world of

sunshine and calm. When she looked over the side to examine the

crudely fashioned canoe, she was astonished by the limpid purity of the

water. She could see white pebbles and vegetation at a vast depth. It

seemed to be impossible that a few hours should have worked such a

change, but Suarez assured her that the streams which tumbled down the

precipitous gorges of the hills ran clear quickly after rain, owing to

the sifting of the surface drainage by the phenomenal tree-growth.

"Wherever timber can lodge on the hillsides," he told her, "fallen

trunks lie in layers of fifteen or twenty feet. They rot there, and

young saplings push their way through to the light and air, while

creepers bind them in an impenetrable mass; in many places small trees

and shrubs of dense foliage take root amidst the decaying stumps

beneath, so that even the Indians cannot pass from one point to

another, but are compelled to climb the rocky watercourses or follow

the slopes of glaciers. When you see what appears to be a smooth green

space above the lower brown-colored belt of copper beech, that is not a

moss-covered stretch of open land, but the closely packed tops of young

trees, where a new tract has been bared by an avalanche."

She was in no mood this morning to assimilate the marvels of Hanover

Island. Her brain had been cleared, restored to the normal, by

refreshing sleep. With a more active perception of the curious

difficulties which beset the Kansas came a feeling akin to despair.

The brightness of nature served rather to convert the ship into a

prison. Storm and stress, whether of the elements or of the less

candid foes who lurked unseen on the neighboring shores, made the

Kansas a veritable fortress, a steel refuge seemingly impregnable.

But the knowledge of the vessel's helplessness, and of the equally

desperate hazard which beset her inmates, was rendered only more

poignant by the smiling aspect of land and sea.

Elsie was not a philosopher. She was just a healthy, clean-minded

Englishwoman, imbued with a love of art for art's sake, a girl whose

wholesome, courageous temperament probably unfitted her to achieve

distinction in the artistic career which she had mapped out for

herself. So the super-Alpine glories surrounding that inland sea, and

the prismatic hues flashing from many a glacier and rainbow of cataract

mist, left her unmoved, solely because the rough-hewn Indian craft

bobbing by the side of the great ship called to mind the extraordinary

conditions under which she and all on board existed.

But she was hungry, and that was a saving sign. She guessed that many

of the men, after mounting watch until broad daylight, were asleep.

Others were at work below, as was testified by a subdued sound of

hammering, with the sharp clink of metal against metal. Walker was

tinkering at the engines. With him, in all likelihood, were the

captain and Tollemache. She and Suarez were the drones of the ship,

and Suarez, poor fellow, had earned an idle hour if only on account of

the scrubbing he had given himself to wash away the tokens of five

years of slavery.




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