The largest schooner of the Falkland fleet, the Lord Hawke, was lying off the coaling station, one day, sending ashore her pelts for shipment to Liverpool. Her skipper, John Nelson, was keeping tally of the load upon a piece of board with the bullet end of a long rifle cartridge. Two other vessels were anchored in the channel, already discharged, and their crews were either getting ready to put to sea or lounging about the station. John Nelson suddenly looked up from his tally and saw a strange figure standing outlined against the sky upon a jagged spur of rock about half a mile distant on the other side of the Strait. The natives to the southward of the Strait are very fierce and dangerous, so Nelson swore at a sailor passing a hide and bade him “avast.” Then he took up his glass and examined the figure closely.
It appeared to be that of a white man clothed in skins, carrying either a staff or gun, upon which he leaned.
“There are no men from the schooner ashore over there; hey, Watkins?” said Nelson.
“Naw,” said his mate, looking at the solitary figure. “It’s one of those cannibals from the s’uth’ard.”
“Pass me a rifle,” said the skipper.
The mate did so, and Nelson slipped in the cartridge he had been using for a pencil.
“Now stand by and see the critter jump,” said he, and his crew of six Fuegians stopped shifting hides and waited.
John Nelson was an Englishman of steady nerves, but he rested his rifle carefully against the topmost backstay and drew the sights fine upon the man on the rock.
It was a useless act of brutality, but John Nelson was a fierce butcher, and the killing of countless seals had hardened him. A man who kills a helpless seal when the poor creature raises its eyes with an imploring half-human appeal for mercy will develop into a vicious butcher if he does it often.
The picture on the schooner’s deck was not very pleasant. Nelson, with his hard, bronzed face pressed to the rifle-stock, and his gleaming eye looking along the sights at the object four hundred fathoms distant. It was a long shot, but the cold gray twilight of the Antarctic spring-time made the mark loom strangely distinct against the lowering evening sky.