Page:Frank Stockton--Adventures of Captain Horn.djvu/175

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN HORN be long before the ship which I have engaged to take away the guano will touch here, and then we will all go north together."

Maka smiled, and tried to be satisfied. He and the other negroes had been greatly grieved that the captain had not seen fit to go north from Callao, and take them with him. Their one desire was to get away from this region, so full of horrors to them, as soon as possible. But they had come to the conclusion that, as the captain had lost his ship, he must be poor, and that it was necessary for him to make a little money before he returned to the land of his home.

Fortune was on the captain's side the next day, for the wind was favorable, and the captain of the schooner was very willing to start. If that crew, with nothing to do, had been compelled by adverse weather to remain in that little cove for a day or more, it might have been very difficult indeed for Captain Horn to prevent them from wandering into the surrounding country, and what might have happened had they chanced to wander into the cave made the captain shudder to conjecture.

He had carefully considered this danger, and on the voyage he had made several plans by which he could keep the men at work, in case they were obliged to remain in the cove after the cargo had been landed. Happily, however, none of these schemes was necessary, and the next day, with a western wind, and at the beginning of the ebb-tide, the schooner sailed away for another island where Captain Horn had purchased guano, leaving him alone upon the sandy beach, apparently as calm and cool as usual, but actually filled with turbulent delight at seeing them depart. 163