I told her all, and she held her breath over the audacity of our work.
“I—I shouldn’t have dared to suggest it,” she said with charming helplessness as she gave Christopher and me a look of wondering admiration. “It was splendid, Choseph!” Her dear leaning girlishness, so natural and unconscious, started a tumult in me, and it was hard for me to keep the deception of her sex at work. “Now,” she went on, “Mr. Vancouver is safe so long as the weather is bad; and when it clears, time will be needed to gather dry wood. We’ll do nothing for the present.”
“But we must be ready,” I firmly protested, sitting up. “This matter is in my hands and Christopher’s now, not yours, my lad, for this is work that only men can plan and do.”
The timidity in her look was new, but not less charming than her surrender.
“What are you going to do, Choseph?” she inquired with a mocking exaggeration of a helpless reliance that was quite genuine.
“We shall be ready to take Mr. Vancouver by stealth or force the moment that actual danger comes near him. We will bring him to this hut and hide him here. But a man from the colony will be needed to guard him. I am going immediately to bring one out for that purpose.”
Her eyes kindled with alarm. “No, no, Choseph! That would be impossible. You couldn’t find the way nor pass the guard. I will go.” Argument and persuasion were equally useless; she knew when to be firm. “I will go,” was her answer to everything, and she came to her feet. “You and Christopher come with me to the summit of the wall, and there you’ll hide near the guard, and wait. I’ll bring the man nearly to the place and send him ahead, and give you a signal. You must trick the guard out of the way, and meet him; I will follow. It would ruin everything for me to be seen.”
I agreed, and told her to bring Hobart.
“Beelo,” I said, “you understand that we have accomplished one of the tasks for which you brought us out of the valley, and in doing so have learned the fate awaiting our colony.”
Her face at once grew pinched. “Don’t speak of it, Choseph!” she cried. “I don’t know whether you have or not, and I don’t know what is in your mind. Simply think of saving Mr. Vancouver.”