and species that had come all
the way from Boston--a very civil little chap, too, but mighty spry.
Well, the Fuegian threw up its antennae for a fight; but my little
Bostonian downed it at once, then broke its legs, and pulled them off,
one by one, so dexterously that in less than three minutes from the
time the battle began the Fuegian spider didn't know itself from a
fly.

I made haste the following morning to be under way after a night of
wakefulness on the weird shore. Before weighing anchor, however, I
prepared a cup of warm coffee over a smart wood fire in my great
Montevideo stove. In the same fire was cremated the Fuegian spider,
slain the day before by the little warrior from Boston, which a Scots
lady at Cape Town long after named "Bruce" upon hearing of its prowess
at Echo Mountain. The _Spray_ now reached away for Coffee Island,
which I sighted on my birthday, February 20,1896.

[Illustration: "Yammerschooner"]

There she encountered another gale, that brought her in the lee of
great Charles Island for shelter. On a bluff point on Charles were
signal-fires, and a tribe of savages, mustered here since my first
trip through the strait, manned their canoes to put off for the sloop.
It was not prudent to come to, the anchorage being within bow-shot of
the shore, which was thickly wooded; but I made signs that one canoe
might come alongside, while the sloop ranged about under sail in the
lee of the land. The others I motioned to keep off, and incidentally
laid a smart Martini-Henry rifle in sight, close at hand, on the top
of the cabin. In the canoe that came alongside, crying their
never-ending begging word "yammerschooner," were two squaws and one
Indian, the hardest specimens of humanity I had ever seen in any of my
travels. "Yammerschooner" was their plaint when they pushed off from
the shore, and "yammerschooner" it was when they got alongside. The
squaws beckoned for food, while the Indian, a black-visaged savage,
stood sulkily as if he took no interest at all in the matter, but on
my turning my back for some biscuits and jerked beef for the squaws,
the "buck" sprang on deck and confronted me, saying in Spanish jargon
that we had met before. I thought I recognized the tone of his
"yammerschooner," and his full beard identified him as the Black Pedro
whom, it was true, I had met before. "Where are the rest of the crew?"
he asked, as he looked uneasily around, expecting hands, maybe, to
come out of the fo