At last he stooped and gave his hand to some one who emerged from the
darkness beneath.
"Glad to see you again, Miss Baring," he said gruffly. "And you, Mrs.
Somerville. And you, sir," to the missionary. "We thought you'd gone
under, an' good folks are scarce enough as it is."
It was a wan and broken-spirited Isobel whom Elsie led to her cabin,
but notwithstanding her wretched state, her eyes quickly took in the
orderly condition of the room.
"I left my clothes strewed all over the floor," she said, with a
nervousness which Elsie attributed to the hardships she had undergone.
"Why did you trouble to pack them away?"
Then Elsie told her of her hunt for the poudrière, and was so obviously
unconcerned about any incident other than the adventures they had both
experienced since they parted, that Isobel questioned her no further.
A bath and a change of clothing worked marvels. Though thin and weak
for want of proper food, neither Isobel nor Mrs. Somerville had
suffered in health from the exposure and short fare involved by life on
the island. It was broad daylight ere they could be persuaded to
retire to rest, there was so much to tell and to hear.
Meanwhile, the meeting between Tollemache and Gray was full of racial
subtleties.
Tollemache, stepping forward to grasp Gray's hand, felt it was
incumbent on him to utter the first word.
"Had a pretty rotten time of it, I expect?" said he.
"Poisonous. And you?"
"Oh, fair. Beastly close squeak when you turned up."
Gray became more explicit when Courtenay met him in the chart-room,
where the table had to be cleared of debris before some glasses and a
couple of bottles of champagne could be staged.
"When those blackguards cast off from the ship," he said, "we scudded
away in a sort of ocean mill-race which threatened to upset us at any
moment. In fact, we gave up hope for a time, but, as the boat kept
afloat, Mr. Malcolm and I managed to stir up the Chileans, and we got
them to steady her with the oars. Some time before daybreak we ran
into smooth water, and made out land on the port bow. In a few minutes
we were ashore on a pebbly beach, in a place alive with seals. When
the sun rose we found we were on a barren island, and, what was more,
that one of the ship's life-boats had been upset on a reef which we
just missed, and had lost all her stores, though the men had scrambled
into safety. With the aid of our boat, and helped by fine weather, we
raised the life-boat, and recovered some of her fittings. The
water-casks and tins of food were hauled up by a chap who could dive
well. We have been on that lump of rock until today, when I finally
persuaded the others that unless we made for the land which we could
see in the dim distance the weather would break and our food give out.
The trouble with the Chileans was that they were afraid of the natives
hereabouts, and preferred to wait on the off chance of a ship showing
up. At last they saw that Malcolm and I were right, but we missed the
full run of the tide, and were some miles from the mainland, or
whatever it is, when night fell. We pushed along cautiously, found the
entrance to the cove we had made out before the light failed, and were
about to lay to until dawn, when we saw a rocket and heard the
fog-horn. That woke us up, you bet. The Chileans pulled like mad, but
when we came near enough to discover that the ship was being attacked
by Indians, I had a fearful job to get my heroes to butt in. That
fellow Gomez is a brick. He orated like a politician, and finally they
got a move on. From what I have seen since I came aboard, I guess you
were hustling about that time?"