the
ship.

"My brain reels under the wildest guesses. At present we are chiefly
concerned in the fact that they are here. Yet people say that the age
of miracles has passed: obviously a foolish remark."

Those who have been plucked from the precipice by a sleeve, as it were,
are seldom able to concentrate their attention on the one thought which
should apparently swamp all others. They either yield to the strain,
and lapse into unconsciousness, or their minds become the arena of
minor emotions, wherein trivialities play battledore and shuttlecock
with the tremendous issues of the moment. When a more extended
knowledge of all that had happened, joined to a nicer adjustment of the
time-factor in events, enabled Elsie to realise the extraordinary
deliverance from death which she had been vouchsafed that night, she
began to appreciate the service which Christobal rendered her in
discussing matters with such nonchalance.

Barely a minute had elapsed since they were in the throes of a struggle
which promised to be the last act of a tragedy. The ship was then
over-run by a horde of howling savages, maddened by the desperate
resistance offered by the defenders, and ruthless as wolves in their
lust for destruction. Now, the _Kansas_ was clear of every bedaubed
Alaculof, save the many who cumbered the decks, either dead or so
seriously wounded that they could not move. These men were so near
akin to animals, that this condition implied ultimate collapse save in
a few instances of fractured skulls and broken limbs. From the final
stage of a hopeless butchery the survivors of the ship's company were
suddenly transferred to a position of reasonable security. It was not
that the arrival of the ship's boats meant such an accession of
fighting strength that the Alaculofs could not have made sure of
victory. Gray and his companions were badly armed. The Indians
remaining in the canoes could have pelted them to shreds in a few
minutes. Even those on the ship had the power to resist any attempt by
the newcomers to gain the decks. But the superstitious savages had
already screwed themselves up to an act of unusual daring in delivering
a night attack, and the appearance of boats filled with men of whose
fighting qualities they had already such a lively experience quite
demoralized them. They fled without attempting a counter assault.
Just as negroes conjure up white demons, so did these nude Alaculofs
regard with awe men