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Updated: June 24, 2025
After he left the Rackbirds' cove, until he had sailed into the South Atlantic, his manner had been quiet, alert, generally anxious, and sometimes stern. But now, day by day, he appeared to be growing into a different man. He was not nervous, nor apparently impatient, but it was easy to see that within him there burned a steady purpose to get on as fast as the wind would blow them northward.
Almost unarmed, these sailors must have fallen easy victims to the Rackbirds.
In answer to a question from Edna, he said that the captain of the band was named Raminez, and that he had known him by that name when he first saw him in Panama, though in the Rackbirds' camp he was called nothing but "the captain." "And you only told him I was the captain's wife?" asked Edna. "You didn't say I was Captain Horn's wife?"
It was two months since the brig had dropped anchor in the Rackbirds' cove when the contents of the mound got so low that the captain could not hand up the bags without the assistance of a ladder, which he made from some stuff on board the brig.
"Yes," said the captain, "there is a chance. Rynders may come back before the Rackbirds discover us, and even if two or three of them find out our retreat, I may be able to dispose of them, and thus give us a little more time. That is our only ground of hope. Those men are bound to come here sooner or later, and everything depends upon the return of Rynders."
These and other bits of news about the Rackbirds had been told by one of the band who had escaped to Panama after the murder of the captain, fearing that his own talents for baseness did not reach the average necessary for a Rackbird. When he had made his landing from the wreck, Captain Horn never gave a thought to the existence of this band of scoundrels.
He believed that the reason they had been left without food was that the Rackbirds were too proud to wait on black men, and had concluded to let them suffer until they had returned from their expedition, and the negroes could be let down to attend to their own wants.
In about a month the schooner was to be expected with another load of guano, and the captain felt that he must, if possible, finish his task before she came back. In a few days he found that, by practice and improvements in his system of work, he was able to make four trips a day between the cove of the Rackbirds and the caves. He rose very early in the morning, and made two trips before dinner.
He had had a slight fear, when Cardatas began, that these men might have been sent out by the Peruvian government, but now he saw they were a set of thieves, whether Rackbirds or not, doing business on their own account. "The Californian government has nothing to do with me," cried Captain Horn, "and it never had anything to do with you, either. When you say that, you lie!
He had made a start a good deal like that when I told him how the Rackbirds had been swept out of existence when I had opened the flood-gate that let out the waters of the lake, and I had heard the chair crack then.
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