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And at sight of the one now sweeping toward them the savages instantly drop sling and spear, cease shouting, and cower down in their canoes in dread silence. "Now's our chance, boys!" sings out Seagriff. "Wi' a dozen more strokes we'll be cl'ar o' them out o' the track o' the williwaw, too." The dozen strokes are given with a will.
And the devout skipper uplifts his hands in prayer, the rest reverently listening. After the simple thanksgiving, he fervently kisses, first his wife, then Leoline. Kisses of mutual congratulation, and who can wonder at their being fervent? For they all have been very near to their last embrace on earth! Seagriff does not exaggerate. Their skill with this weapon is something remarkable.
The proposal is accepted by Seagriff, who is about to set out with the two youths, when, looking inquiringly round, he says, "As thar ain't anything in the shape of a stick about, we had best take the boat-hook an' a couple of oars." "What for?" ask the others, in some surprise. "You'll larn, by-an'-bye," answers the old salt, who, like most of his kind, is somewhat given to mystification.
This bird, instead of laying its eggs, like the penguin, on the surface of the ground, deposits them, like the sand-martin and burrowing owl, at the bottom of a burrow. Part of the ground over which the climbers have to pass is honeycombed with these holes, and they see the petrels passing in and out; Seagriff, meanwhile, imparting a curious item of information about them.
All this they are enabled to do without being seen by the savages, a fringe of evergreens between the camp-ground and the water effectually masking their movements. "But shouldn't we go farther up?" says the skipper, interrogating Seagriff. "Why not keep on over the hill?" "No, Captin'; we mustn't move from hyar. We couldn't, 'ithout makin' sech a racket ez they'd be sure to hear.
We want armfuls; an' there's plenty o' the plants growin' all about, you see." They do see, and at once begin tearing at them, breaking off the branches of some, and plucking up others by the roots, till Seagriff cries, "Enough!" Then, with arms full, they return to the beach in high spirits and with joyful faces.
It occupies the entire attention of Seagriff, who, looking along it toward the east, at length says, "Thet's the Beagle Channel; the way we were to hev gone but fur the swampin' of our boat. An' to think we'd 'a' been runnin' 'long it now, 'nstead o' stannin' helpless hyar! Jest our luck!" To his bitter reflection no one makes response.
From the information they have gained about the Yapoos, which shows them to be ferocious and treacherous, and hostile to white men, Captain Gancy decides upon running out to seaward through the Murray Narrow a resolve in harmony with the advice given him by his Fuegian host and the trusted Seagriff as well.
So, too, is Seagriff, who, an inveterate smoker, is never without igniting apparatus, carried in a pocket of his pilot-coat. But where are they to find firewood? There is none on the islet not a stick, as no trees grow there; while the tussac and other plants are soaking wet, the very ground being a sodden spongy peat.
A sign from Seagriff, however, and a word or two spoken in their own tongue, brings about a lull and an understanding, and the traffic commences. Sea-otter and fox-skins are exchanged for such useless trifles as chance to be in the gig's lockers, the savage hucksters not proving exorbitant in their demands.
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