“You still think the Kansas will win clear of her difficulties?” she said rather hurriedly. “I am sorry to bring King Charles’s head into the conversation, but, after all, the ship’s safety is essential to your survey.”
“Every hour strengthens my opinion,” was the confident reply. “Suarez says that there is a reasonable chance of occasional brief spells of fine weather at this period of the year. At any rate, the gale may not be absolutely continuous, and Walker is assured that he can patch up the engines for half speed. Given a calm day, a day like this, for instance, we can reach the Straits in a few hours.”
“And the Indians?”
“I leave them out of my reckoning. What else can I do?”
“Kill ’em,” said Tollemache.
Courtenay glanced sharply at his fellow-countryman. He disliked these references to the Alaculof bogy in Elsie’s presence. It was enough that it should exist without being constantly paraded. Though the girl herself was the culprit, Tollemache should have left the topic alone.
But Tollemache was a man of fixed ideas. The device of canvas shields to repel boarders had set him thinking how much more effective it would be if the savages were kept at a distance. He well knew that they would not be deterred by a shotgun and a few revolvers, once they had made up their minds to carry the ship by assault. To explain himself, he was compelled to speak at some length, and his swarthy face flushed under the unusual strain.
“We have dynamite aboard,” he said. “Why not construct a couple of infernal machines which could be fired by pulling a string, and let them drift towards the canoes when the Indians are near enough?”
“It is worth trying,” was Courtenay’s brief comment, though he saw later that Tollemache’s suggestion was a very useful one.
Elsie’s first task was to prepare a large-scale drawing of the southern part of Hanover Island, as set forth in Admiralty Chart No. 1837 (Sheet 2, Patagonia), which is the only trustworthy record available for shipmasters using the outer passage between the Gulf of Penas and the Straits of Magellan. It was a simple matter to fill in the few contours given. The neighboring small islands were shown in reasonable detail, but the whole western coast of Hanover Island itself consisted of a dotted line and a solitary peak, Stokes Mountain, the height of which could be estimated and its position triangulated from the sea. Even Concepcion Straits on the north and the San Blas Channel on the south were marked in those significant dotted lines. The coast was practically unknown to civilized man. One of the last fortresses of the world, grim, inhospitable, it guarded its secret recesses with crag and glacier and reef-strewn sea.