“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 passing ship. We came over the mountains by a terrible road. I have been told that landslips and avalanches have closed the pass 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 hoarsely 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 cockle-shell 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, señorita. 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, señorita, I was drunk with delight.”