While still watching the birds at their game of grab, the spectators observe that the kelp-bed has become darker in certain places, as though from the weeds being piled up in swathes.
“It’s lowering to ebb-tide,” remarks Captain Gancy, in reply to an interrogation from his wife, “and the rocks are awash. They’ll soon be above water, I take it.”
“Jest so, Captain,” assents Seagriff; “but tain’t the weeds that’s makin’ those black spots. They’re movin’ about—don’t you see?”
The skipper now observes, as do all the others, a number of odd-looking animals, large-headed, and with long slender bodies, to all appearance covered with a coat of dark brown wool, crawling and floundering about among the kelp, in constantly increasing numbers. Each new ledge of reef, as it rises to the surface, becomes crowded with them, while hundreds of others disport themselves in the pools between.
“Fur-seals they are,” (Note 3) pronounces Seagriff, his eyes fixed upon them as eagerly as were those of Tantalus on the forbidden water, “an’ every skin of ’em worth a mint o’ money. Bad luck!” he continues, in a tone of spiteful vexation. “A mine o’ wealth, an’ no chance to work it! Ef we only had the ship by us now, we could put a good thousan’ dollars’ worth o’ thar pelts into it. Jest see how they swarm out yonder! An’ tame as pet tabby cats! There’s enough of ’em to supply seal-skin jackets fur nigh all the women o’ New York!”
No one makes rejoinder to the old sealer’s regretful rhapsody. The situation is too grave for them to be thinking of gain by the capture of fur-seals, even though it should prove “a mine of wealth,” as Seagriff called it. Of what value is wealth to them while their very lives are in jeopardy? They were rejoiced when they first set foot on land; but time is passing; they have in part recovered from their fatigue, and the dark, doubtful future is once more uppermost in their minds. They cannot stay for ever on the isle—indeed, they may not be able to remain many days on it, owing to the exhaustion of their limited stock of provisions, if for no other reason. Even could they subsist on penguins’ flesh and tussac-stalks, the young birds, already well feathered, will ere long disappear, while the tender shoots of the grass, growing tougher as it ripens, will in time become altogether uneatable.
No; they cannot abide there, and must go elsewhere. But whither? That is the all-absorbing question. Ever since they landed the sky has been overcast, and the distant mainland is barely visible through a misty vapour spread over the sea between. All the better for that, Seagriff has been thinking hitherto, with the Fuegians in his mind.
“It’ll hinder ’em seein’ the smoke of our fire,” he said; “the which mout draw ’em on us.”
But he has now less fear of this, seeing that which tells him that the isle is never visited by the savages.
“They hain’t been on it fur years, anyhow,” he says, reassuring the Captain, who has again taken him aside to talk over the ticklish matter. “I’m sartin they hain’t.”