When day followed day without any sign of hostility, not a man on board, save Suarez and Tollemache, paid much real heed to the shoreward peril. Walker, with his hammers and cold chisels, his screw-jacks and wrenches, was the center of interest. And Walker’s swarthy visage wore a permanent grin, which presaged well for the fulfilment of his promise. Elsie devoted herself to the hospital. She was thus brought more in contact with Christobal than with any of the others. Nor did he make this close acquaintance irksome to her. Always suave and charming in manner, he exerted himself to be entertaining. Though she knew full well that if the _Kansas_ reached the open sea again he would ask her to marry him, he was evidently content to deny himself the privileges of courtship until a proper time and season. She was far too wise to appear to avoid Courtenay. Indeed, she was studiously agreeable to him when they met. She adopted the safe role of good-fellowship, flattering herself that her own folly would shrink to nothingness under the hourly castigation thus inflicted. During this period, Mr. Boyle’s changeable characteristics puzzled and amused her. As he grew stronger, and took part in the active life of the ship, so did his sudden excess of talkativeness disappear. Once she happened to overhear his remarks to a couple of Chileans who were told to swab off the decks. Obviously, they had scamped their work, and Boyle expostulated. Then she grasped the essential element in Boyle’s composition. He was capable only of a single idea. When he was chief officer he ceased to be an ordinary man; the corollary was, of course, that he ceased to use ordinary language. She was in her cabin, and dared not come out while the tornado raged. She did not know that Tollemache was listening, too, until she heard him ask: “Did you ever meet any fellow who could swear harder than you, Boyle?” “Yes, once,” was the curt answer. “He must have been a rotter. What did he say?” “Huh! just the regulation patter, but he used a megaphone, so I gave him best. . . .” But, so far as Elsie was concerned, Boyle’s fund of reminiscence had dried up. After the midday meal on Christmas day—a sumptuous repast, for the due preparation of which Elsie had come to the Chilean cook’s assistance in the matter of the plum-pudding—Suarez suddenly reported that a new column of smoke was rising from Guanaco Hill, a crag dominating the eastern side of the bay. The hill owed its name, he explained, to a large cave, in which a legendary herd of llama was said to have its abode. Probably there had never been any llama on the island, but the Indians were frightened of the cave, with its galloping ghosts, and would not enter it. He was unable to attribute any special significance to the signal on that particular place. During the five years with the Alaculof tribe he had never seen a fire lit there before. That, in itself, was a fact sinister and alarming.