He glanced up at her. If aught were needed to complete the contrast
between civilization and savagery it was given by the comparison which
the girl offered to the women in the canoe. The hot sun and the
absence of wind had changed the temperature from winter to summer.
After breakfast, Elsie had donned a muslin dress, and a broad-brimmed
straw hat. Exposure to the weather had bronzed her skin to a
delightful tint. Her nut-brown hair framed a sweetly pretty face, and
her clear blue eyes and red lips, slightly parted, smiled bewitchingly
at the men beneath. The camera in her hands added a holiday aspect to
her appearance, an aspect which was unutterably disquieting in its
relation to the muttered forebodings she had broken in on.
But Courtenay's voice gave no hint of the tumult in his breast, though
some malign spirit seemed to whisper the agonizing question: "Will you
permit her to fall into the hands of the ghouls waiting without?"
"I find the get-up of our visitors distinctly humorous," he said, "and
I hope they are a bit scared of us. We would prefer their room to
their company."
"I thought that Señor Suarez would hail them, as he can speak their
language. Perhaps he does not wish them to know he is on board?"
Now, Elsie had heard the man's impassioned appeal when the Indians were
first sighted, so Courtenay felt that she, too, was acting.
"You look nice and cool up there," he answered, "and your words do not
belie your looks."
"Please, what does that mean exactly?"
"Need I tell you? You treat our troubles airily."
"Shall one 'wear a rough garment to deceive'?" she quoted with a laugh.
"Don't you remember the next verse? You ought to retort: 'I am no
prophet, I am an husbandman!' But that would not be quite right, for
you are a sailor."
She blushed a little at the chance turn of the phrase. Neither the
girl nor her hearers recalled the succeeding verses, wherein the
destruction of Jerusalem is foretold: "And I will bring the third part
through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will
try them as gold is tried."
Indeed, a new direction was given to Elsie's thoughts by the somewhat
scowling aspect of Christobal's face. He was looking at Courtenay in a
manner which betokened a certain displeasure. The Spaniard's
cultivated cynicism was subjugated by a more powerful sentiment. It
seemed to Elsie that he envied Courtenay his youth and high spirits,
for, in very truth, the mere exchange of those harmless pleasantries
had tuned the younger man's soul to the transcendental pitch of the
knight errant. In his heart he was vowing to rescue this fair lady
from the dangers which beset her, though he said jokingly with his lips: "If a husbandman has to do with a tiller I may claim some expert
knowledge, Miss Maxwell."