“Yes.”
“You are asking me, sir?”
“Yes. Are they going to kill us?”
“Not now, sir,” he firmly answered.
The glance which Captain Mason and I exchanged was one accepting Christopher’s opinion and groping for what lay beyond it.
With some accuracy of maneuvering, the leader aligned his soldiers, stepped out after halting them fifty yards away, and stood waiting, obviously for a parley. He was showing impatience as Captain Mason still stood motionless.
“Some one must meet him,” I said. “It will never do to show timidity. You are the fittest.”
“These people are strange to me,” he replied, “and I don’t know how to proceed. They have an appearance of ferocity that I have never seen in these seas. Many outside men must have drifted to this island, but I’ll warrant that none ever left it, for I’ve never heard of anything that looks just like this. I imagine it is the graveyard of the unreported wrecks that happen in this part of the Pacific.”
I was surprised at the grayness in his face and the glaze in his eyes. What could our two hundred and fifty men, women, and children, helpless as they were, do without his shrewdness and courage?
“Then we have all the more to do,” I urged.