g to the pitch of the voice."

"They captured you on the Smyth Channel side of the island. Have they
deserted it? Why are they on this side now?" asked Courtenay.

"I believe they brought me here at first because they wished to keep me
on account of my magic, and they knew I would endeavor to escape to a
passing ship. We came over the mountains by a terrible road. I have
been told that landslips and avalanches have closed the pass ever
since. I do not know whether that is true or not, but if I had tried
to get away in that direction they would have caught me in a few hours.
No man can elude them. They can see twice as far as any European, and
they are wonderful trackers."

Suddenly his voice failed him. Though the words came fluently, his
long-disused vocal chords were unequal to the strain of measured
speech. He asked hoarsely for some hot water. When Courtenay next
came across him in the saloon he was asleep, and changed so greatly by
the removal of pigments from his face that it was difficult to regard
him as the same being.

His story was unquestionably true. Tollemache, who had fought an
offshoot tribe of these same Indians, Christobal, who vouched for the
Argentine accent, and Elsie, who seemed to have read such rare books of
travel as dealt with that little known part of the world, bore out the
reasonableness of his statements. The only individual on board who
regarded him with suspicion was Joey, and even Joey was satisfied when
Suarez had washed himself.

It was daylight again, a dawn of dense mist, without wind or hail, ere
any member of the ship's company thought of sleep. Then Elsie went to
her cabin and dreamed of a river of molten gold, down which she was
compelled to sail in a cockle-shell boat, while fantastic monsters swam
round, and eyed her suspiciously.

When, at last, she awoke after a few hours of less exciting slumber,
she came out on deck to find the sun shining on a fairy-land of green
and blue and diamond white, with gaunt gray rocks and groves of copper
beeches to frame the picture. There was no pillar of smoke on the
lower hills to bear silent testimony to the presence of the Indians;
but the canoe lying alongside told her that the previous night's events
were no part of her dreams, and a man whom she did not recognize--a man
with closely cropped gray hair and a deeply lined, weather-tanned face,
from which a pair of sunken, flashing eyes looked kindly at her--said
in Span