ust provide themselves with
food, and their opportunities have become narrowed--are almost gone.
They might have starved ere this, but for their prudent forethought in
having secreted a stock in the tent. They do not dare to have a meal
cooked during daylight, as some of the savages are always on the alert
to snatch at anything eatable with bold, open hand. Only in the
midnight hours, when the Fuegians are in their wigwams, has "the doctor"
a chance to give the cured fish a hurried broil over the fire.

It is needless to say that all work on the boat is suspended. In the
face of their great fear, with a future so dark and doubtful, the
builders have neither the courage nor heart to carry on their work. It
is too much a question whether it may ever be resumed.

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Note 1. The "sea-eggs" are a species of the family Echinids. Diving
for them by the Fuegian women is one of their most painful and dangerous
ways of procuring food, as they often have to follow it when the sea is
rough and in coldest weather.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

AN ODD RENEWAL OF ACQUAINTANCE.

For three days the castaways lead a wretched life, in never-ceasing
anxiety--for three nights, too, since all the savages are rarely asleep
at any one time. Some of them are certain to be awake, and making night
hideous with unearthly noises; and, having discovered this to be the
time when the whites do their cooking, there are always one or two
skulking about the camp fire, on the lookout for a morsel. The dogs are
never away from it.

When will this horrid existence end? and how? Some change is sure to
come when the absent members of the tribe return. Should they prove to
be those encountered in Whale-Boat Sound, the question would be too
easily answered. But it is now known that, although Ailikoleeps, they
cannot be the same. The cause of their absence has also been discovered
by the ever alert ears of Seagriff. The savages had heard of a stranded
whale in some sound or channel only to be reached overland, and thither
are they gone to secure the grand booty of blubber.

The distance is no doubt considerable, and the path difficult, for the
morning of a fourth day has dawned, and still they are not back. Nor
can anything be seen of them upon the shore of the inlet, which is
constantly watched by one or more of the women, stationed upon the
cranberry ridge.

On this morni