“The Kawésqar had provided Cheap with a lifeline. But after only a few days, the carpenter’s mate Mitchell and other sailors began to run amok again. Defying Cheap’s orders, they were stealing liquor and carousing and absconding with weapons from the wreck, rather than depositing them in the store tent. Byron noted that these men—“now subject to little or no control”—tried to “seduce” the Kawésqar women, which “gave the Indians such offense.” Word spread throughout the encampment that Mitchell and his marauders were conspiring to steal the Kawésqar’s canoes and flee the island. Cheap dispatched Byron and other allies to foil the plot by guarding the canoes. But the Kawésqar had witnessed the insidious tensions mounting among the castaways—these men who allowed their hair to grow on their faces, who had no clue how to hunt or fish, who wore constrictive clothing that prevented a fire’s heat from warming their skin, and who seemed on the brink of mayhem. One morning when Cheap awoke, he discovered that all the Kawésqar had gone. They’d stripped the bark from their shelters and slipped away in their canoes, taking with them the secrets of their civilization. “Could we have entertained them as we ought,” Byron lamented, “they would have been of great assistance to us.” Given that the castaways’ behavior had prompted this abrupt departure, he added, they did not expect to ever see the Kawésqar again.”