"Let us receive them as friends." Dropping their spears, the lads advanced a pace or two, holding out their hands in token of amity.

Then slowly, step by step, the Indians advanced.
"They look almost frightened," Ned said.

"What can they be staring so fixedly at ?" "It is the fire!" Ned exclaimed.

"It is the fire! I do believe they have never seen a fire before." It was so, as Sir Francis Drake afterwards discovered when landing on the coast.

The Patagonian Indians, at that time, were wholly unacquainted with fire.
When the Indians came down, they looked from the fire to the boys, and perceived for the first time that they were creatures of another color from themselves.