In the evening the messenger returned; he had of course completely mistaken his instructions, and informed Don Luiz that the Englishman desired to proceed in the schooner to Buenos Ayres, and accordingly a boat arrived with the morning flood-tide to take me off. Mr. Clarke good naturedly undertook to go himself and explain matters; and returned with a kind message, offering me quarters and every hospitality if I chose to remain in the settlement for the next two months, at the end of which period the schooner might be expected to return. Lieut. Gallegos strongly urged me to accompany him back to Punta Arena, painting in strong colours the tedium and discomfort of a winter at Santa Cruz. But it was plain that the opportunity of cultivating the acquaintance and securing the confidence of Orkeke would thus be thrown away, and with it the prospect of traversing the country. Gallegos believed that this plan was fraught with danger, and indeed almost certain destruction; but as I was immovable, we took an affectionate farewell of each other. He and all his party had treated me, an utter stranger, with the greatest kindness, and I bade adieu to them as true comrades. They departed on their return journey, taking with them the four prisoners, who, however, are destined to appear again in these pages. These men had undergone much hardship to obtain the liberty of which they seemed again deprived; three of them had managed to secure a horse, and walking and riding in turns had found their way to the Indians. Two of them, Olate and Rosa, the latter, though a mere boy, with a thoroughly evil and murderous countenance, were incurably bad; but Meña, a youth of nineteen, attracted one's sympathy by his handsome frank face and cleanly smart appearance; the fourth, Arica, had made his way on foot from Punta Arena to Santa Cruz, without any knowledge of the country, and only guided by a vague notion of the existence of the settlement to the north. He had for twenty-seven days followed the line of the sea-coast, subsisting on shell fish and sea-birds' eggs; the toil and hardships thus undergone must have been indescribable, and his eventual safe arrival was a miracle of patient endurance. He brought in news of the loss of a tender to the schooner, a decked launch, in which Captain Warren and three men had sailed from Staten Land and been no more heard of; of their fate there was now little doubt, as he had found her dingy cast up on the beach, and a piece of the mainsail out of which he had supplied himself with clothes.