He well knew that they
would not be deterred by a shotgun and a few revolvers, once they had
made up their minds to carry the ship by assault. To explain himself,
he was compelled to speak at some length, and his swarthy face flushed
under the unusual strain.
"We have dynamite aboard," he said. "Why not construct a couple of
infernal machines which could be fired by pulling a string, and let
them drift towards the canoes when the Indians are near enough?"
"It is worth trying," was Courtenay's brief comment, though he saw
later that Tollemache's suggestion was a very useful one.
Elsie's first task was to prepare a large-scale drawing of the southern
part of Hanover Island, as set forth in Admiralty Chart No. 1837 (Sheet
2, Patagonia), which is the only trustworthy record available for
shipmasters using the outer passage between the Gulf of Penas and the
Straits of Magellan. It was a simple matter to fill in the few
contours given. The neighboring small islands were shown in reasonable
detail, but the whole western coast of Hanover Island itself consisted
of a dotted line and a solitary peak, Stokes Mountain, the height of
which could be estimated and its position triangulated from the sea.
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