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Updated: June 24, 2025
If the captain had not built the little fort with the guano-bags, he would have begged to be allowed to remain with him, but those defensive works had greatly alarmed him, for they made him believe that the captain feared that some of the Rackbirds might come back.
They had gone to the place where the Rackbirds had kept their stores, and had selected what Maka considered would be most desirable, including some oil for the lantern, and had brought away as much as they could carry. This was all.
Just look at him as he sits there with Maka by those embers. One might think he would shiver himself to pieces. Was he cast ashore from a wreck?" The captain stood silent for a moment, and then, briefly but plainly, and glossing over the horrors of the situation as much as he could, he told them about the Rackbirds.
Captain Horn had written before he sailed from Lima in the Chilian schooner for the guano islands and the Rackbirds' cove, and he had, to some extent, described his plans for carrying away treasure from the mound; but since that she had not heard from him until about ten days before, when he wrote from Acapulco, where he had arrived in safety with his bags of guano and their auriferous enrichments.
But at last she rounded Aguja Point, and the captain shaped his course toward the coast and the Rackbirds' cove, the exact position of which was now dotted on his chart. A little after noon on a quiet October day, they drew near enough to land to recognize the coast-line and the various landmarks of the locality.
When he reached the caves he found supper ready, and that evening he said nothing to his companions of the important discoveries he had made, contenting himself with a general statement of the proofs that the Rackbirds and their camp had been utterly destroyed by the flood.
He was terrified, not by anything real, but by the thought of what might happen if that lake cave should fill up with water, and if the ancient valves, perhaps weakened by his moving them backward and forward, should give way under the great pressure, and, for a second time, a torrent of water should come pouring down the Rackbirds' ravine!
But if Banker had been astonished by Mok, he was utterly amazed and confounded when, some five minutes later, the door of the brasserie was suddenly opened, and another of the slaves of the Rackbirds, with whose face he was also perfectly familiar, hurriedly entered. Cheditafa, who had been sent on an errand that evening, had missed Mok on his return.
"I have been talking to Maka about that," said the captain, "and he says that Cheditafa reports all sorts of necessary things in the Rackbirds' storehouse, and he proposes that he and the rest of the black fellows go down there and bring us some supplies. They are used to carrying these stores, and six of them can bring us enough to last a good while.
When the brig weighed anchor, she did not set out for the open sea, but proceeded back to the Rackbirds' cove, where she anchored again. Before setting out, the next day, on his voyage to France, the captain wished to take on board a supply of fresh water.
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