Chapter XXVIII
In Which are Related Several Disappointments
The attack on the encampment of the animal trappers had evidently been made several days before. The fire had devastated the place. All the animals in cages had been killed or released. And in the blackened ruins and about the clearing, on the rocks, there lay the bodies of more than a dozen Patagonians. Tugg showed real feeling when he saw these dead men.
“Poor boys!” he muttered, standing leaning on his rifle and gazing upon one fellow who was really a giant. “They was square, jest the same. Ye see, they fought for the Professor and the traps. But them scoundrels was too many for them.”
It was a dreadful sight. I do not want to write about it. Nor do I wish to give the particulars of our search of the neighborhood for some trace of the single white man who had been in the vicinity—the man whom Tugg called the Professor, but who was the Man of Mystery to me. We found a place where a huge fire had been built beneath the trees. There was a green liana hanging from a high limb and the end of the liana had been tied around the ankles of a man. The feet shod in American made boots were all of that victim of the savages’ cruelty which had not been burned to ashes.
“It’s a way they have,” whispered Tugg. “They start the poor feller swinging like a pendulum, and every time he swings through the flames he’s burned a little more—and a little more——”
I turned sick with the horror of it. There was nothing more to do. Tugg recognized his partner’s boots. The savages had made their raid, burned the camp, destroyed all they could, and done their best to wreck the Sea Spell. There must have been one traitor among Tugg’s men at the encampment or the savages would not have known of the schooner’s approach. At least, I shall always believe so.
But when the balance of his Patagonians came in from the swamp where they had hidden after the attack, the captain seemed to believe all their stories, took them back into his confidence, and at once set to work to repair the damage done by the up-river Indians.