ere
squirming uneasily, and the Hindu attendant told him that they had been
bitten by mosquitoes!

He laughed quietly, but his mirth had a curious ring in it which boded
ill for certain unknown members of the Alaculof tribe when the
threatened tussle came to close quarters. Elsie heard him. Leaning
over the rails of the spar deck, she asked cheerfully:

"What is the joke, Captain Courtenay? And why don't the Indians come
nearer? Are they timid? They don't look it."

He glanced up at her. If aught were needed to complete the contrast
between civilization and savagery it was given by the comparison which
the girl offered to the women in the canoe. The hot sun and the
absence of wind had changed the temperature from winter to summer.
After breakfast, Elsie had donned a muslin dress, and a broad-brimmed
straw hat. Exposure to the weather had bronzed her skin to a
delightful tint. Her nut-brown hair framed a sweetly pretty face, and
her clear blue eyes and red lips, slightly parted, smiled bewitchingly
at the men beneath. The camera in her hands added a holiday aspect to
her appearance, an aspect which was unutterably disquieting in its
relation to the muttered forebodings she had broken in on.

But Courtenay's voice gave no hint of the tumult in his breast, though
some malign spirit seemed to whisper the agonizing question: "Will you
permit her to fall into the hands of the ghouls waiting without?"

"I find the get-up of our visitors distinctly humorous," he said, "and
I hope they are a bit scared of us. We would prefer their room to
their company."

"I thought that Senor Suarez would hail them, as he can speak their
language. Perhaps he does not wish them to know he is on board?"

Now, Elsie had heard the man's impassioned appeal when the Indians were
first sighted, so Courtenay felt that she, too, was acting.

"You look nice and cool up there," he answered, "and your words do not
belie your looks."

"Please, what does that mean exactly?"

"Need I tell you? You treat our troubles airily."

"Shall one 'wear a rough garment to deceive'?" she quoted with a laugh.
"Don't you remember the next verse? You ought to retort: 'I am no
prophet, I am an husbandman!' But that would not be quite right, for
you are a sailor."

She blushed a little at the chance turn of the phrase. Neither the
girl nor her hearers recalled the succeeding verses, wherein the
destruction of Jerusalem is foretold: "And I will b