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“Well,” said the disgusted Harman, “I reckon if Providence is our stand-by and if it made Chile same’s your map shows her, we’re done for. There ain’t no sense in it; no, sir, there ain’t no sense in a country all foreshore stringed out like that, with scarce room for a bathin’ machine, and them yellow-bellied Bolivians at one end of it and the Horn at the other. It ain’t playin’ it fair on a man, it ain’t more nor less than a trap, that’s what I call it, it ain’t more nor less than——”

“Oh, shut up,” said Davis, “wasting your wind. We’re in it and we’ve got to get out. Now I’ve just given you our position: we’re running near due west into open sea, with only ten days’ grub, nothing to strike but Easter Island and the mail line from ’Frisco to Montevideo. We’ve the chance to pick up grub from a ship; failing that, either we’ll eat the Kanakas or the Kanakas will eat us. I’m not being funny. How do you take it? Shall us hold on or push down to Valparaiso and take our gruel?”

“What did you say those mines were?” asked Harman.