The savages, desisting from their murderous intent, stand with eyes turned toward the ridge, on the crest of which appears a crowd of moving forms that look like anything but human beings. On their way to the beach, they are forced into single file by the narrowness of the path, and become strung out like the links of a long chain. But not even when they come nearer and are better seen, do they any more resemble human beings. They have something like human heads, but these are without necks and indeed sunken between the shoulders, which last are of enormous breadth and continued into thick armless bodies, with short slender legs below!
As they advance along the beach at a slow pace, in weird, ogre-like procession, the white people are for a time entirely
mystified as to what they may be. Nor can it be told until they are close up. Then it is seen that they are human beings after all—Fuegian savages, each having the head thrust through a flitch of whale-blubber that falls, poncho-fashion, over the shoulders, draping down nearly to the knees!
The one in the lead makes no stop until within a few yards of the party of whites, when, seeing the two youths who are in front, he stares wonderingly at them, for some moments, and then from his lips leaps an ejaculation of wild surprise, followed by the words:
“Portsmout’! Inglan’!”
Then, hastily divesting himself of his blubber mantle, and shouting back to some one in the rear, he is instantly joined by a woman, who in turn cries out:
“Yes, Portsmout’! The Ailwalk’ akifka!” (“The white boys.”)
“Eleparu! Ocushlu!” exclaims Henry Chester, all amazement; Ned Gancy, equally astonished, simultaneously crying out:
“York! Fuegia!”