"Kill 'em," said Tollemache.

Courtenay glanced sharply at his fellow-countryman. He disliked these

references to the Alaculof bogy in Elsie's presence. It was enough

that it should exist without being constantly paraded. Though the girl

herself was the culprit, Tollemache should have left the topic alone.

But Tollemache was a man of fixed ideas. The device of canvas shields

to repel boarders had set him thinking how much more effective it would

be if the savages were kept at a distance. He well knew that they

would not be deterred by a shotgun and a few revolvers, once they had

made up their minds to carry the ship by assault. To explain himself,

he was compelled to speak at some length, and his swarthy face flushed

under the unusual strain.

"We have dynamite aboard," he said. "Why not construct a couple of

infernal machines which could be fired by pulling a string, and let

them drift towards the canoes when the Indians are near enough?"

"It is worth trying," was Courtenay's brief comment, though he saw

later that Tollemache's suggestion was a very useful one.

Elsie's first task was to prepare a large-scale drawing of the southern

part of Hanover Island, as set forth in Admiralty Chart No. 1837 (Sheet

2, Patagonia), which is the only trustworthy record available for

shipmasters using the outer passage between the Gulf of Penas and the

Straits of Magellan. It was a simple matter to fill in the few

contours given. The neighboring small islands were shown in reasonable

detail, but the whole western coast of Hanover Island itself consisted

of a dotted line and a solitary peak, Stokes Mountain, the height of

which could be estimated and its position triangulated from the sea.

Even Concepcion Straits on the north and the San Blas Channel on the

south were marked in those significant dotted lines. The coast was

practically unknown to civilized man. One of the last fortresses of

the world, grim, inhospitable, it guarded its secret recesses with crag

and glacier and reef-strewn sea.

It was borne in on the girl, while she worked, that the chiefest marvel

in her present condition was the triumph of science over nature in its

most hostile mood. The Kansas boasted all the comforts and luxuries

of a well-equipped hotel. Seated at the same table as herself was a

skilful sailor, using logarithms, secants and cosecants, polar

distances and hour angles, as if he were in some university class-room.

Near the door, enjoying the warm sun, Boyle was stretched on a

deck-chair, while Christobal was offering a half-hearted protest

against his patient's manifest enjoyment of the first cigar he had been

able to smoke since a Chilean knife disturbed certain sensory nerves

between his shoulder-blades. The every sociableness of the gathering

was a paradox: the truth lay with the ice-capped hills and the ape-like

nomads who infested the humid forests of the lower slopes.




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