know what a man looks like, and as it was late in the afternoon,
with the ducks coming back for the night from the west'ard, the shooting
was good. Swooping along the shore they came, across the mouth of the
bay, flock after flock so close-set and low-lying that they didn't need
guns. They could have sat on the beach and hove up stones or drift-wood
and killed 'em as they went kiting by, sixty miles or more an hour to
the east'ard.

After twenty minutes or so they must have thought that kind of shooting
was too easy, for part of them went off into the brush and the others
came back to the spit of beach and, with some kindlings from their boat
and some drift-wood and brush, started a fire. It was a north wind, and
I could smell the ducks cooking and the coffee making, and I couldn't
hold off any longer. I rowed myself over in our second boat. The senior
line officer of the party, a lieutenant, invited me to join them, which
I did, and pretty soon I was eating broiled duck and drinking real
American coffee, with bacon and eggs, and forgetting my troubles.

After supper we sat around and talked, and they told me what had
happened to the lumber bark. She had been lured inshore by false lights
the night before and boarded by a gang under Red Dick, who had cleaned
her out of stores and what money they had, and had driven the crew off
in the morning after beating up most of them by way of diverting
himself. Then the bark's captain and his crew rowed across the Straits
of Punta Arenas in their quarter-boat, looking for satisfaction. Nobody
there could do anything for them, because nothing less than a war-ship
could have overcome Red Dick, and there was no Chilean war-ship nearer
than Valparaiso, and that was six days' steaming away.

"But how did that lumber captain know it was Red Dick?" I asked at this
point.

"He didn't know," answered the officer who'd been talking. "But when he
described him everybody in Punta Arenas said it was Red Dick. But aren't
you an American?"

I said I was and told them my experience, and they all said what a pity
my ship wasn't under the American flag so they could put it up to their
captain and be sure he would send a party after Red Dick. And they would
all like nothing better than to join that party, and an easy matter all
'round, as their ship was to be hanging around the straits for another
week.

By this time the others of the party, who'd gone into the brush for wild
geese, were com