The Captain of the Kansas Part 18

Some brandy and hot water, combined with the warmth of the saloon, soon revived him. He ate a quant.i.ty of bread with the eagerness of a man suffering from starvation; but he could not endure the heated atmosphere, although the temperature was barely sufficient to guard the injured occupants from the outer cold. When offered an overcoat, he refused it at first, saying:

"I do not need so much clothing. It will make me ill. I only felt cold in the water because it is mostly melted ice."

He was so grateful to his rescuers, however, that he took the garment to oblige them when he saw they were incredulous. Christobal brought him to the chart-house, where most of the others were a.s.sembled, and there questioned him.

It was a most astonishing story which Francisco Suarez, gold-miner and prospector, laid before an exceedingly attentive audience. As the man spoke, so did he recover the freer usage of a civilized tongue. At first his words had a hoa.r.s.e, guttural sound, but Dr. Christobal's questions seemed to awaken dormant memories, and every one noticed, not least those who had small knowledge of Spanish, that he had practically recovered command of the language at the end of half an hour.

And this was what he told them. He, with three partners and a few Indians from the Pampas, had set out on a gold-prospecting expedition on the head waters of the Gallegos River. They were disappointed in their search until they crossed the Cordillera, and sighted the gloomy sh.o.r.es of Last Hope Inlet, leading into Smyth Channel. They there found alluvial sand and gold-bearing quartz, yielding but poor results.

Unfortunately, some natives a.s.sured them that the metal they sought abounded in Hanover Island. They obtained canoes, voyaged down the long inlet, crossed the straits, and struck inland towards the unknown mountains beyond the swamps of Ellen Bay.

After enduring all the hardships entailed by life in such a wild country, they blundered into a gully where a brief a.n.a.lysis of the detritus gave a result per ton which was not to be measured by ounces but by pounds.

"Virgin! What a place that was!" exclaimed Suarez, his dark eyes sparkling even yet with the recollection of it. "In one day we secured more gold than we could carry. We threw away food to make room for it, and then threw away gold to secure the food again. We called it the Golden Valley. When weary of digging, we would spin coins to see who drew corner lots in the town we had mapped out on a level piece of land."

White men and Indians alike caught the fever. They acc.u.mulated a useless h.o.a.rd, having no means of transport other than their own backs, and then, all precautions being relaxed, the nomad Indians, whom they despised, rushed the camp when they were sleeping. They were nearly all killed by stones shot from slings. Suarez was only stunned, and he and a Spaniard, with two Indians, were reserved for future slaughter.

"The others were eaten," he said, "and their bones were used for making fires. I saw my friend, Giacomo, felled like a bullock, and the Indians as well. By chance, I was the last. I had no hope of escape.

I was too downcast even to make a fight of it, when, at the eleventh hour, the mad idea seized me that I might please and astonish my captors by performing a few sleight-of-hand tricks. I began by throwing stones in the air, pretending to swallow them and causing them to disappear otherwise, but finding them again in the heel of my boot or hidden beneath any object which happened to be near. When the Indians saw what I was doing, they gathered in a circle. I ate some fire, and took a small toad out of a woman's ear. Dios! How they gaped. They had never seen the like. All the tribe was summoned to watch me."

Then the poor fellow began to cry.

"Holy Mother! Think of me playing the fool before those brutes! I became their medicine man. I fought and killed my only rival, and, since then, I have doctored a few of the chief men among them, so they took me into the tribe, and always managed to procure me such food as I could eat. They gave me roots and dried meat when they themselves were living on putrid blubber, or worse, because they kill all the old women as soon as famine threatens. The women are devoured long before the dogs; dogs catch otters, but old women cannot. In winter, when a long storm renders it impossible to obtain sh.e.l.l-fish, any woman who is feeble will steal off and hide in the mountains. But the men track her and bring her back. They hold her over the smoke of a fire until she is choked. Ah! G.o.d in heaven! I have seen such sights during those five years!"

Elsie, of course, understood all of this. When Christobal put it into literal English, Courtenay looked at her. She smiled at his unspoken thought.

"I am already aware of most of what he is telling us," she said. "It is very dreadful that such people should exist, but one does not fall in a faint merely because they c.u.mber the earth. Perhaps you will not send me away next time, if they try to board the ship again. I can use a revolver quite well enough to count as one for the defense."

"You are henceforth enrolled as maid-at-arms, Miss Maxwell," said the captain, lightly. He was by no means surprised at the coolness she displayed in the face of the new terror. She had given so many proofs of her natural courage that it must be equal to even so affrighting a test as the near presence of the Alaculof Indians. But he broke in on the Spaniard's recital with a question of direct interest.

"Ask him, Christobal, why he said those devils would come again by daylight."

"Because they have guns, and can use them," was the appalling answer given by Suarez. "They secured the rifles belonging to my party, and one of them, who had often seen ship's officers shooting wild geese, understood the method of loading and aiming. They will not waste the cartridges on game, but keep them for tribal warfare, and they think a gun cannot shoot in the dark. To-night they only attempted a surprise, and made off the moment they were discovered. To-morrow, or next day, they will swarm round the ship in hundreds, and fire at us with rifles, bows, and slings. They do most harm with the slings and arrows, as they hold the gun away from the shoulder, but they can cast a heavy pebble from a sling quite as far and almost as straight as a revolver can shoot."

"How do they know the ship will not sail at once?" demanded Courtenay.

Suarez laughed hysterically, with the mirth which is akin to tears, when the query was explained to him. He looked bizarre enough under ordinary conditions, but laughter converted him into a fair semblance of one of those blood-curdling demons which a j.a.panese artist loves to depict. Evidently, he depended on make-up to supplement his powers as a conjurer.

"It is as much as a canoe can manage in fine weather to reach the island out there, which they call Seal Island," he cried, pointing towards the locality of White Horse Island. "Even the Indians were astonished to see so big a ship anch.o.r.ed here safely. They have watched plenty of wrecks outside, and hardly anything comes ash.o.r.e. At any rate, they are quite sure you cannot go back."

It would be idle to deny that the Spaniard's words sent a chill of apprehension down the spine of some of those present; but the captain said quietly:

"Where a ship is concerned, if she can enter on the flood she can go out on the ebb. How came you to escape to-night?"

Tears stood again in Suarez's eyes as he replied:

"When I heard their plan, I imagined they would be driven off, provided a watch were kept. I resolved to risk all in the attempt to reach the company of civilized men once more. I do not care what the outcome may be. If I can help you to overcome them I am ready to do so; if not, I will die by your side. To-night I followed in a canoe unseen. When I heard the shooting, I leaped overboard and swam to the ship. It was lucky for me some one seized the canoe which I found there. The men in her had to swim to other canoes, and two were wounded, I heard them say; this caused some confusion, and I had something to grasp when I reached the ship; otherwise I must have been drowned, as the water was very cold."

"Yet you refused an overcoat a little while ago," interjected Christobal.

"Ah, yes. For many years I have lived altogether in Indian fashion.

My skin is hard. Wind or rain cannot harm me. But melted ice mixed with salt water drives even the seals out to sea."

"Can you speak the Alaculof language?"

"Is that what you call them? Their own name for the tribe is 'The Feathered People,' because all their chief men and heads of families wear these things," and he touched his head-dress. "Yes, I know nearly all their words. They don't use a great many. One word may have several meanings, according to the pitch of the voice."

"They captured you on the Smyth Channel side of the island. Have they deserted it? Why are they on this side now?" asked Courtenay.

"I believe they brought me here at first because they wished to keep me on account of my magic, and they knew I would endeavor to escape to a pa.s.sing ship. We came over the mountains by a terrible road. I have been told that landslips and avalanches have closed the pa.s.s ever since. I do not know whether that is true or not, but if I had tried to get away in that direction they would have caught me in a few hours.

No man can elude them. They can see twice as far as any European, and they are wonderful trackers."

Suddenly his voice failed him. Though the words came fluently, his long-disused vocal chords were unequal to the strain of measured speech. He asked hoa.r.s.ely for some hot water. When Courtenay next came across him in the saloon he was asleep, and changed so greatly by the removal of pigments from his face that it was difficult to regard him as the same being.

His story was unquestionably true. Tollemache, who had fought an offshoot tribe of these same Indians, Christobal, who vouched for the Argentine accent, and Elsie, who seemed to have read such rare books of travel as dealt with that little known part of the world, bore out the reasonableness of his statements. The only individual on board who regarded him with suspicion was Joey, and even Joey was satisfied when Suarez had washed himself.

It was daylight again, a dawn of dense mist, without wind or hail, ere any member of the ship's company thought of sleep. Then Elsie went to her cabin and dreamed of a river of molten gold, down which she was compelled to sail in a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l boat, while fantastic monsters swam round, and eyed her suspiciously.

When, at last, she awoke after a few hours of less exciting slumber, she came out on deck to find the sun shining on a fairy-land of green and blue and diamond white, with gaunt gray rocks and groves of copper beeches to frame the picture. There was no pillar of smoke on the lower hills to bear silent testimony to the presence of the Indians; but the canoe lying alongside told her that the previous night's events were no part of her dreams, and a man whom she did not recognize--a man with closely cropped gray hair and a deeply lined, weather-tanned face, from which a pair of sunken, flashing eyes looked kindly at her--said in Spanish:

"Good morning, senorita. I hope I did not startle you when I came aboard. And I said things I should not have said in the presence of a lady. But believe me, senorita, I was drunk with delight."

CHAPTER X

"MISSING AT LLOYD'S"

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 a.s.sured 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 ma.s.s; in many places small trees and shrubs of dense foliage take root amidst the decaying stumps beneath, so that even the Indians cannot pa.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.similate 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 sh.o.r.es, 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.

Before going in search of the cook, she walked a few steps towards the bridge. At the top of the companion she saw Joey, sitting disconsolately on his tail, a sure indication that Courtenay was occupied in depths approachable only by steep iron ladders whither the dog could not follow.

She whistled softly to her little friend, knowing that Christobal, and perhaps Mr. Boyle, would be on the bridge, keeping the lookout, and she was not inclined for talk at the moment. The doctor would have understood at once that the girl was below par, owing to the strain of the preceding days, and the lethargic rest which exhaustion had imposed on her. Yet, there are times when science does not satisfy. . . .

But Joey, who recked naught of philosophy, and to whom the alarms and excursions of fights on deck came as a touch of mother earth to the sole of Antaeos--Joey, then, sprang down the stairs, barking joyously, and leaped into her outstretched arms.

He honored no other person on board, except his master, with such extravagant friendship, and, as the girl carried him aft to the cook's galley, she asked herself why the dog had taken such a liking to her.