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Chapter XIX: THE BARONESS IS DISAPPOINTED 
HERR WrrrMER WENT DOWN TO BLACK 
get his skiff and row round to the Bay 
ihether mail had come, he would drop 
iedo and ask us if there was anything 
ed him to do for us. One day early in 
                  February he came by for this purpose and 
stopped awhile to tell us the neighborhood news. 
   Up at the caves, the social atmosphere was very sultry and it 
could not be long, he said, before he and his neighbors had a show- 
down. We believed him when he said that he was a man who would 
do almost anything for the sake of peace, and make a thousand 
compromises rather than fight; but too much was too much, he said, 
and he was almost at the end of nerves and patience. 
  It was no easy matter to raise the baby on Floreana, and they 
had waited in some anxiety for the arrival of forty tins of con- 
densed milk they had ordered. This indispensable supply had not 
arrived and his wife was very worried, for there was no chance 
whatever of obtaining milk otherwise. It was impossible to ask the 
Baroness to sell them milk from her cows even if she had been 
willing to do so for a high price, because the poor beasts were 
in the last stages of neglect, almost of starvation, and could prob- 
ably not have produced a cupful between them. While they were 
waiting for the tinned milk to arrive, he said, they often thought 
what an irony it was to have a herd of good strong cattle roaming 
on the pampa but quite impossible to domesticate. It was Captain 
Hancock who had been kind enough to say that, as he was return- 
ing so soon to the island, he would be glad to bring not only the 
milk but blankets also, and a bolt of cotton for clothes. Meanwhile 
the Captain had come and gone again, and Wittmer had not seen 
him. He had gone down to the Bay but the supplies had not been 
landed. He could not help suspecting that there was something 
very odd about this, as Captain Hancock would certainly not have 
left the baby in the lurch like that. 
  A day or two later the Baroness had sent Philippson over with a 
few blankets "which she hoped Frau Wittmer might care to make 
use of." There was no great friendliness in this action, for the things
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