“I left my clothes strewed all over the floor,” she said, with a nervousness which Elsie attributed to the hardships she had undergone. “Why did you trouble to pack them away?” Then Elsie told her of her hunt for the poudrière, and was so obviously unconcerned about any incident other than the adventures they had both experienced since they parted, that Isobel questioned her no further. A bath and a change of clothing worked marvels. Though thin and weak for want of proper food, neither Isobel nor Mrs. Somerville had suffered in health from the exposure and short fare involved by life on the island. It was broad daylight ere they could be persuaded to retire to rest, there was so much to tell and to hear. Meanwhile, the meeting between Tollemache and Gray was full of racial subtleties. Tollemache, stepping forward to grasp Gray’s hand, felt it was incumbent on him to utter the first word. “Had a pretty rotten time of it, I expect?” said he. “Poisonous. And you?” “Oh, fair. Beastly close squeak when you turned up.” Gray became more explicit when Courtenay met him in the chart-room, where the table had to be cleared of debris before some glasses and a couple of bottles of champagne could be staged. “When those blackguards cast off from the ship,” he said, “we scudded away in a sort of ocean mill-race which threatened to upset us at any moment. In fact, we gave up hope for a time, but, as the boat kept afloat, Mr. Malcolm and I managed to stir up the Chileans, and we got them to steady her with the oars. Some time before daybreak we ran into smooth water, and made out land on the port bow. In a few minutes we were ashore on a pebbly beach, in a place alive with seals. When the sun rose we found we were on a barren island, and, what was more, that one of the ship’s life-boats had been upset on a reef which we just missed, and had lost all her stores, though the men had scrambled into safety. With the aid of our boat, and helped by fine weather, we raised the life-boat, and recovered some of her fittings. The water-casks and tins of food were hauled up by a chap who could dive well. We have been on that lump of rock until today, when I finally persuaded the others that unless we made for the land which we could see in the dim distance the weather would break and our food give out. The trouble with the Chileans was that they were afraid of the natives hereabouts, and preferred to wait on the off chance of a ship showing up. At last they saw that Malcolm and I were right, but we missed the full run of the tide, and were some miles from the mainland, or whatever it is, when night fell. We pushed along cautiously, found the entrance to the cove we had made out before the light failed, and were about to lay to until dawn, when we saw a rocket and heard the fog-horn. That woke us up, you bet. The Chileans pulled like mad, but when we came near enough to discover that the ship was being attacked by Indians, I had a fearful