sheathbills, cormorants and Cape pigeons. The rocks were white with them in parts, and to the experienced eyes of Anatole and MacBride, who were both sailors and had been shipwrecked before, these, at anyrate, promised them occupation bird-nesting, for a time they need not actually starve while eggs were to be obtained for the climbing.
As far as their eyes could follow it, this ocean estuary ran open and wide inland, but what pleased them most was to see, floating on the surface of this natural harbour, a number of articles from the wreck—cases and barrels, which looked like provisions, with other objects drawn to this sheltered haven by the tides, and prevented from floating out again by the rocks. The doctor's knowledge of tides had proved correct. They were there, and would probably drift shoreward with the next incoming tide, but to get hold of some of them now was a vital point with all.
Anatole and Dennis settled the question by throwing aside their upper garments; stripping, in fact, to their under drawers without troubling to ask permission from the ladies, who looked on apathetically as they crouched down on the sand close together and shivered under their skirt mantles. At a time like this the civilised and the savage approach one another very nearly.
Dr Fernandez was a fatal shot with the pistol, but he could not swim, therefore he was forced to stand beside the females and watch these two dauntless ruffians prepare to face cramp in those icy waters for the sake of the common weal. He did not soften towards the unlucky Anatole for all he was doing, yet he would send in his report without bias when he reached Europe, and let Anatole have
