“Not a bit. My only regret is that I am not permitted to help in the defense. It must be irksome for you, Dr. Christobal, to be stationed here when the ship is in danger. I am certain you would prefer to be up there with the others.”
“Thank you for saying that. I wish you were able to read all my thoughts as accurately.”
His right hand went to the pocket in which he had placed the revolver. The stock appeared to have a peculiar clamminess as his fingers closed around it. Though he was proud of the iron nerve which had won him repute in his profession, he almost prayed now that it might not fail him at the last. What a horror, to be compelled with his parting glance to see this bright and gracious woman crumple up on the deck!
“But I know you are a brave man,” she said with a confidant smile. “It demanded a higher courage to pass undaunted through the ordeal of the storm than to face these ill-armed Indians. Please don’t think I am a warlike person, but it makes my blood boil to find that there are wretches who regard our distress as their opportunity to murder us and pillage the ship. What have we done to them? If they are poor and hungry, and they would only come to us in a peaceful way, Captain Courtenay would give them all the stores he could spare.”
Christobal heard ominous sounds from the fore part of the vessel. The revolver shooting had ceased, for the convincing reason there were no more cartridges. Courtenay’s double barrelled gun was being fired as quickly as he could reload it, and the sharp snap of one of the rifles in the Indians’ possession was recognizable as coming from the poop, the remaining marksmen having preferred to fire wildly from their canoes. But Christobal knew that a deadly struggle was in progress on the fore deck. Tollemache, Frascuelo, and three Chileans were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with nearly a score of savages; the doctor could distinguish the cries of the combatants, the irregular stamping of boot-shod feet.
He wondered why the girl, with her acute senses, did not grasp the significance of the yells and trampling on the deck, until it occurred to him, with a quick pang, that she was listening for one voice alone; owing to her ignorance of the desperate nature of the conflict raging overhead she had ears for nothing further.
He placed a hand on her shoulder. She turned and looked at him. There was a gravity in his eyes, which startled her.
“Elsie,” he said, “you believe in the efficacy of prayer, don’t you? Well, then, pray now a little. I shall be glad to think, when this time of danger has passed, that we owed something to your invocation.”
It was in his mind that he must shoot her within a few seconds, and the immeasurable agony of the thought reflected itself in his face. He had no notion that she would give his words a more direct significance than he intended them to bear. But a strange, hoarse yell of triumph, the war-cry of an Alaculof leader who had hauled himself to the bridge and found it undefended, warned her in the same moment that all was not well with the defense.
She sprang towards the saloon stairs.