"It is not yet half-past four."
The blue eyes opened wide. "Are you in earnest?" she demanded.
He showed her his watch. Then she perceived that the sun had not yet
risen high enough to illumine the wooded crest of the opposite cliff.
The snow-clad hills, the blue glaciers, the wonderful clearness of
atmosphere, led her to believe that the day was much more advanced.
Land and sea shone in a strange crystal light. None could tell whence
it came. It seemed to her, in that solemn hour, to be the reflection
of heaven itself. By quick transition, her thoughts flew back to the
previous night. Scarce four hours had elapsed since she had waited in
the captain's cabin, amidst the drenching spray and tearing wind, while
he took Isobel, and Mrs. Somerville, and the shrieking maid to the
boat. The corners of her mouth drooped and tears trembled on her
eyelashes. She sought furtively for a handkerchief. Knowing exactly
what troubled her, Courtenay turned to Christobal.
"This island ought to be inhabited," he said. "Can you tell me what
sort of Indians one finds in this locality?"
Christobal frowned perplexedly. During many previous voyages to Europe
he had invariably traveled on the mail steamers of smaller draft which
use the sheltered sea canal formed by the Smyth, Sarmiento, and Messier
channels, the protected water-way running for hundreds of miles to the
north from the western end of the Straits of Tierra del Fuego, and, in
some of its aspects, reminding sailors of the Clyde and the Caledonian
Canal.
"I fear I do not know much about them," he said. "Behind those hills
there one sees a few Canoe Indians; I have heard that they are somewhat
lower in the social scale than the aborigines of Australia."
"Are they?" said Courtenay. He looked Christobal straight in the eyes,
and the doctor returned his gaze as steadily.
"That is their repute. They live mostly on shellfish. They do not
congregate in communities. A few families keep together, and move
constantly from place to place. They have a quaint belief that if they
remain on a camping-ground more than a night or two the devil will
stick his head out of the ground and bite them. Obviously, the real
devil that plagues them is the continuous wandering demanded by their
search for food."
Christobal would have aired such a scrap of interesting knowledge at
the foot of the scaffold, and expected the executioner to listen
attentively.
"They are called the Alaculof. They use bows and arrows, with heads
chipped out of stone or bottle-glass," put in Tollemache.
"Oh, you have been in these parts before?" cried Courtenay, regarding
his compatriot with some interest, while the Spaniard surveyed his
rival doubtfully.
"Yes--was on the Emu--wrecked in Cockburn Channel."
Now, the story of the Emu is one of those fierce tragedies which the
sea first puts on the stage of life with dire skill, and then proceeds
to destroy the slightest vestige of their brief existence. But such
things leave abiding memories in men's souls, and Courtenay had heard
how twenty-seven survivors, out of a muster-roll of thirty who escaped
from the wreck, had been shot down by Indians ambushed in the forest.
Elsie, whose tears were dispelled by the doctor's amusing summary of
the Canoe Indians' theological views, was listening to the
conversation, so the captain did not carry it further, contenting
himself with the remark: "That will be useful, if we are compelled to go ashore. You will have
some acquaintance with the ways of our hosts."