Christobal frowned perplexedly. During many previous voyages to Europe he had invariably traveled on the mail steamers of smaller draft which use the sheltered sea canal formed by the Smyth, Sarmiento, and Messier channels, the protected water-way running for hundreds of miles to the north from the western end of the Straits of Tierra del Fuego, and, in some of its aspects, reminding sailors of the Clyde and the Caledonian Canal.
“I fear I do not know much about them,” he said. “Behind those hills there one sees a few Canoe Indians; I have heard that they are somewhat lower in the social scale than the aborigines of Australia.”
“Are they?” said Courtenay. He looked Christobal straight in the eyes, and the doctor returned his gaze as steadily.
“That is their repute. They live mostly on shellfish. They do not congregate in communities. A few families keep together, and move constantly from place to place. They have a quaint belief that if they remain on a camping-ground more than a night or two the devil will stick his head out of the ground and bite them. Obviously, the real devil that plagues them is the continuous wandering demanded by their search for food.”
Christobal would have aired such a scrap of interesting knowledge at the foot of the scaffold, and expected the executioner to listen attentively.
“They are called the Alaculof. They use bows and arrows, with heads chipped out of stone or bottle-glass,” put in Tollemache.
“Oh, you have been in these parts before?” cried Courtenay, regarding his compatriot with some interest, while the Spaniard surveyed his rival doubtfully.
“Yes—was on the Emu—wrecked in Cockburn Channel.”
Now, the story of the Emu is one of those fierce tragedies which the sea first puts on the stage of life with dire skill, and then proceeds to destroy the slightest vestige of their brief existence. But such things leave abiding memories in men’s souls, and Courtenay had heard how twenty-seven survivors, out of a muster-roll of thirty who escaped from the wreck, had been shot down by Indians ambushed in the forest. Elsie, whose tears were dispelled by the doctor’s amusing summary of the Canoe Indians’ theological views, was listening to the conversation, so the captain did not carry it further, contenting himself with the remark:
“That will be useful, if we are compelled to go ashore. You will have some acquaintance with the ways of our hosts.”