War makes soldiers, and the struggle for life had assuredly made these two girls brave women.
CHAPTER XVII
RUNNING THE GANTLET
Maseden was not greatly concerned about the dead Indian lying on the shore. What he really expected was a sudden rush of savages from an ambuscade, since it was now certain that a party of natives had descended on Hanover Island. Some might have escaped, but others had come to grief.
The mere presence of a body showed that one, at least, must have died quite recently, while the bleaching bones passed in Hell Gate had probably been alive two days earlier. Some vultures were already circling high overhead, and he wondered why the birds had not begun their ghoulish task.
He could not recollect what manner of sepulture the aborigines adopted, but, from every point of view, it was more than strange to find a corpse abandoned on the beach in such conditions, unless, indeed, some drowned man had just been cast up there by the receding tide.
If that were so, why did the vultures wait?
He was on the alert, therefore, for any suspicious movement among the nearest trees and tall grasses, and warned Sturgess to keep a sharp look-out in the same direction.