Walker, though eager to return to his lathe, was no exception to the rule. He looked a trifle discontented when the captain found him unscrewing the engine-room hatch. “That was a pwetty poo-aw scwap, sir,” said he. “I did expect to have a smack at some of those magpies, if only for the sake of washin’ the paint an’ feath-ahs off ’em with a jet of steam.” “They came quite near enough to be pleasant, Walker. Their flank march was almost a surprise; if a swarm of vicious savages had succeeded in reaching the decks—well, we might have beaten them off, but it would have been touch and go.” “Mebbe you-aw wight, cap’n. ‘Best look at a bull ov-ah a fence,’ as they say in the Canny Toon. Eh, but I’ll have a fine tale to tell when next I meet my butties on the Quay-side. Did ye ev-ah see such faces as yon, all daubed wi’ black an’ white! Talk about Chirgwin—” Courtenay smiled and passed on. He was in no mood for jesting: the death of the Chilean fireman had damped his high spirits. The _Kansas_ bore tokens in plenty of the battle. Many bullets and arrows had struck the ship; the canvas was torn in several places; a number of port lights were broken, and the open decks fore and aft, as well as the spar deck, were littered with stones. He picked up some of these missiles, man’s earliest and latest projectile. They were round and heavy; a few bore the red streaks of oxidized iron; some appeared to be veritable lumps of ore, though the action of water had made them “smooth stones out of the brook.” He showed one to Tollemache, who seemed to possess a good deal of out-of-the-way knowledge, and the latter instantly pronounced the specimen to be almost pure copper veined with silver. “Queer thing!” he commented. “You find the worst rotters in any country squatted over the richest minerals.” At the time, Courtenay gave slight heed to this bit of crude philosophy. It was not until he called to mind the Kaffir, the Australian black, the Alaskan Indian, the primeval nomads of California, Colorado, and Northern Siberia, that he saw how extraordinarily true was his friend’s dictum. Then he looked on the shores of Good Hope Inlet with a new interest. Would a city ever spring up in that desolate land, a city builded of those pebbles which had clattered against the solid walls of the _Kansas_? Who could tell? The long romance of gold contained stranger chapters.