Kitabı oku: «Real Gold: A Story of Adventure», sayfa 5
Chapter Eight
Signs of Suspicion
Half an hour later, the little caravan was in motion, and, for the first time the preparations were delightfully easy. Eager to be of some service, and to try to make up for what he had done, Cyril began to help to load the mules, and above all, helped the colonel.
For the latter was trying hard to make the guide understand that he would like to pass through the patch of forest below them, before they ascended the mountain path visible away to their left; and the man stared at him in the most blank way possible, and then kept on pointing to a couple of great fagots which lay tightly bound upon one of the mules’ backs.
“It’s all right, sir; let me speak to him,” cried Cyril eagerly. “He thinks you keep on telling him you want wood for the next fire we make, and he says he has got plenty.” Then, turning to the guide, he rapidly said a few words in the rough dialect of Indian and Spanish, with the result that the man gave the colonel a sharp look, and then nodded his head, and went off with the leading mule.
Perry gave his father an eager look, and the colonel, who was smiling with satisfaction at the ease with which a difficulty had been smoothed away, frowned.
“Oh yes, it’s very nice,” he said; “but I cannot afford to have an intelligent interpreter on such terms as these, Master Perry. There, get on; I said I would not refer to the trouble any more. – Hi! Cyril, my lad, you’d better ride that black mule.”
“Ride – the mule, sir?” said the boy hesitatingly.
“Yes; your feet are cut and sore. Rest till they are better.”
“Hurrah!” whispered Perry. “Jump up, old chap. Here, I’ll give you a leg. I shall ride, too, to-day.”
The next minute, both boys were mounted, and following the last mule with the second Indian.
That patch of scrubby forest looked to be close at hand, but it took them nearly an hour to reach it, everything being on so grand a scale among the mountains; but at last they began to thread their way through, with the colonel eagerly examining the different trees, the Indians noting his actions curiously, but always hanging their heads again if they thought that they were observed.
The colonel kept up his examination, but did not seem very well satisfied; and soon after, the bushy trees with their shining green leaves were left behind, and they journeyed on through what had looked at a distance like fields of buttercups, but which proved to be a large tract covered with golden calceolaria, whose rounded turban-like flowers glistened in the sun. This looked the more beautiful from the abundance of grass, at which the mules sniffed carelessly, for they had passed the night eating.
Then before starting upward, there was the rapid stream to cross at a spot where the rocks had fallen in a perfect chaos from the mountain-side, completely filling up the chasm along which the water ran; and here they could hear it rushing, gurgling, and trickling down a hundred channels far below, in and out amongst the rugged masses of rock which dammed it back.
The mules made no difficulty about going over here, merely lowering their muzzles, and sniffing at the cracks and holes as they felt about with their forefeet, and climbed more than walked across to the solid rock and the bare, very faintly marked, stony track, which led up and up to a narrow gap in the mountains, evidently a pass.
Steeper and steeper grew the way, now zigzagging along a stiff slope, now making a bold dash at the mountain-side, over loose stones which went rolling down, setting others in motion till regular avalanches rolled down into the valley hundreds of feet beneath.
“Have you ever been here before, Cil?” said Perry, who now rode close behind his friend.
“No. Never any farther than the place where I overtook you.”
“Isn’t this very dangerous?” continued Perry, as the mules climbed up, sending the loose stones rattling down to their right.
“Eh? Dangerous? I don’t know. I was wondering what they are thinking at home. Yes, I suppose it is dangerous.”
“Then hadn’t we better get down and walk?”
“What for? We couldn’t walk up so well as the mules. They’ve got four legs to our two. They’re a deal more clever and sure-footed than we should be.”
Perry kept his seat, fully expecting to have the mule make a slip, and then for them to go rolling down hundreds of feet into the valley; but in due time the gap-like opening was reached, and through this place, with the walls on either side so steep that they looked an if they had been cut, they passed into a narrow valley, or rather chasm, looking as if the mountains had been split down to their roots by some earthquake; and a chill of horror ran through Perry, as he checked his mule where the rest were panting and recovering their breath.
“Not a very cheerful-looking place, boys,” said the colonel, as he surveyed the great chasm, running apparently for miles through the mountains, zigzagging, returning upon itself, and always dark and profound in its lower part; so deep, in fact, that from where they stood it might have gone right down to the centre of the earth, while upward the sides rose, wall-like, toward three huge peaks, which looked dazzlingly white.
All at once Perry started, and it seemed as if an electric shock had passed through the mules. For there was a tremendous booming roar some distance away, followed by peal after peal, as if of thunder running for miles amongst the mountains, and not dying away till quite a couple of minutes had elapsed.
“Thunder,” whispered Perry.
“No, I think not,” said Cyril below his breath. – “What was that, Diego?” he said in the man’s tongue.
The answer was laconic, and accompanied by a smile.
“He says some of the snow fell over yonder, out of sight.”
Crash!
There was another roar, followed by its echoes.
“Look! look!” cried Cyril excitedly. “There, just below that place where the sun shines on the ice.”
“Yes, I see it,” said Perry; “a waterfall.” And he shaded his eyes to gaze at the glittering appearance of a cascade pouring over a shelf of ice into the depths below.
“Waterfall!” said the colonel, smiling. “There is no water up there to fall. It is a cataract of pieces of ice and solidified snow, thousands of tons of it broken away through the weight and the mass being loosened by the heat of the sun.”
“Gone!” cried Cyril.
“To appear again, lower down,” said the colonel, and they watched the glittering curve of dazzling ice as it reappeared and made another leap, and again another and another, lower down, till it finally disappeared by falling into some chasm behind a fold of the mountain. But the roar of the ice was continued like distant thunder, telling how enormous the fall must have been, though dwarfed by the distance into a size that appeared trifling.
Then the boys sat gazing at the black gulf before them, with its huge walls, which were nearly perpendicular in places.
“I say, of course, we’re not going along that way?” said Perry nervously.
“I don’t know,” replied Cyril; “the tracks generally do go along the worst-looking places.”
“But how can they have been so stupid as to pick those?” said Perry petulantly.
“They don’t pick them,” replied Cyril. “Only they are obliged to go along any places there are. Yes, we shall have to go along yonder.”
“Impossible.”
“How would you go, then?” said Cyril. “We’re not flies; we can’t climb up those walls; and you couldn’t go over the mountains if you wished, because of the ice and snow. You must go in and out round them where the valleys are open, and this is open enough. There is no other way.”
“But, I say, shan’t you be – er – just a little afraid to go down there?”
“No,” said Cyril quietly. “I don’t feel afraid a bit. There’s only one thing I feel afraid of now.”
“What’s that? Falling off one of the precipices?”
“No,” said Cyril sadly. “Meeting my father.”
Perry was silent, and his friend turned to Diego, who was going from mule to mule, examining the knots in the hide ropes by which the baggage was secured to the pack-saddles.
“Which way does the road go now?” he asked.
The man pointed straight along the black chasm running from below them away into the distance.
“Along there?” whispered Perry, as he comprehended the gesture.
“Yes, I thought so,” said Cyril coolly. “There can be no other way.”
“But what else did he say?” asked Perry breathlessly.
“He said, did your father want to go on any more.”
“What’s that?” cried the colonel.
Cyril repeated the man’s remark.
“Tell him of course, till I wish him to stop.”
Cyril delivered the message, and the man spoke again, gesticulating and pointing along the deep valley.
“He says, sir, that there is no place farther on where you will get a bigger valley, and that there are plenty of snow-mountains farther back.”
The colonel made a gesture full of impatience.
“What does he mean, Cyril? Doesn’t he want to go any farther?”
“I think that’s it, sir. I’ll ask him what he means.”
Cyril turned to the guide again, and there was a short, eager conversation, carried on for a minute or so.
“He says, sir, that the way along the track is very dangerous. It goes along that side, to the left, and the path is very narrow. If any one slipped, he would fall right to the bottom.”
“It must be the regular way across the mountains, where mules are accustomed to go, and he undertook to guide me; so tell him I go on.”
Cyril conveyed the colonel’s words to the man, who looked annoyed, and glanced suspiciously at the colonel as he said a few words, to which the boy replied angrily.
“What’s that? what’s that?” cried the colonel.
Cyril hesitated.
“Speak out, sir; what is it? Why don’t you speak?”
“He said he wanted to know where you wanted to go, and what for?” said Cyril, watching the colonel rather anxiously.
“Tell him as far as I please, and where I please,” said the colonel sternly. “Now then, at once; and tell him I should advise him not to ask me any more questions. Forward!”
Cyril interpreted the words, and the Indian looked sharply at his employer, to see in his eyes the glances of a man accustomed to command, and without a word he took the rein of the leading mule, and went away to the left, seeming to Perry as if he were passing over the edge of a precipice, so suddenly the descent began, a dozen yards away.
But, as is often the case among the mountains, that which had looked so terrible at a little distance, last its dangerous aspect when boldly approached, for, following closely upon the luggage mules, Perry reached the edge of that which he had supposed to be a precipice, and found that it was only a slope, going downward; but it was quite steep enough to require great care in crossing it, and the mules showed their comprehension of the fact that it must not be attacked lightly, by the way in which they walked, slowly and carefully, making sure of every step they took, till they were well across the green slope, and on to solid rock once more.
And now it was plain that the man had not exaggerated, for their path lay along what is known to geologists as a fault in the rock of which the side of the valley was composed – that is to say, the upper part of the huge mass appeared to have slipped sidewise, leaving four or five feet of the lower part of the valley wall like a shelf, and along this the mules began to walk cautiously, taking the greatest care that their loads did not touch the side of the rock, and consequently walking as close to the edge as possible.
The man had not exaggerated in the least. The shelf-like paths they had previously traversed were in places perilous enough, but here the bottom of the chasm-like valley was quite hidden from the travellers, and imagination added largely to the depth whenever either of the boys stole a glance downward.
No one spoke, but they rode on in single line, feeling appalled by the awful nature of the place, hour after hour, for the path wound and zigzagged, and seemed without end. At every slip of a mule’s hoof, at every kick against a loose stone, Cyril felt his pulses leap, and Perry turned cold with apprehension; while, whenever Cyril turned to look round at his friend, each saw in the other’s face a hard set look, and a strange, almost despairing stare in his eyes.
They were conscious of there being a rushing torrent somewhere far below, but it was down in the region of gloom, and they went on for hours without once catching even a gleam of the water, which at times sent up a dull thunderous roar, at others died away into a faint murmuring vibration, as if it were making for itself a subterranean channel through the bottom of the chasm. But little attention was paid to that, each of the travellers keeping his eyes fixed upon the narrow path in front, and rarely glancing up at the rocky wall on their left, or down into the profound gulf upon their right.
It was well on in the afternoon when, in turning an angle where the path shot off suddenly to their left, they came upon a wide opening lit up by the sun; but, saving that it was light, it was more repellent to the eye than the path along which they had come. For it was one wild chaos of tumbled-together rocks, looking as if, by some convulsion of nature, the whole of that portion of the valley side had been shattered and tumbled down from the shoulder of a huge mountain, destroying the pathway, and leaving in its place a broad stretch of masses of rocks, from pieces hundreds of tons in weight, to fragments not larger than a man’s head.
Progress across this appeared impossible, but the guide went on for a few minutes and then stopped; for rugged as the place was, it possessed the quality of being level enough to enable them to make a halt for refreshments, without being on a narrow shelf where there was not room for a mule to be turned.
Hideous as the place was, every face brightened, for the strain of feeling in great peril was for the time removed, and even the mules showed their satisfaction by whinnying to each other, and giving themselves a shake, as they began to sniff about and browse upon the dry vegetation which grew amongst the fallen stones.
“Hah!” ejaculated the colonel, as he got off his mule, and looked round and above at the pure blue sky. “One feels as if one could breathe and move now.”
“Yes,” said Perry, with a shudder; “it was horrible.”
“Nonsense, boy,” cried the colonel. “It was not a place one would select for a nice walk, but I should not have liked to miss such a journey. People at home do not know there are such wildly-grand places in the world – eh, Cyril?”
“No, sir,” replied the latter eagerly, for a pleasant word or two from the colonel was like a gleam of sunshine in his breast; “but it was dangerous. I should not have liked to get off my mule on that shelf.”
“Not on the precipice side, certainly,” said the colonel.
“Why, there wasn’t any room on the other,” cried Perry; “and if one had turned giddy, one would have gone down, down – ugh!”
“Yes, the place did look deep,” said the colonel, “but no one did turn giddy, and the mules went along as steadily as if they had been on a turnpike road. – Well, Manning, what’s the matter?”
“I was thinking about our having to go back along that there path, sir.”
“Well, I daresay we shall,” replied the colonel, “but you don’t mind.”
“Not mind, sir?” cried the old soldier gloomily.
“Not you, my man. I grant it is a little dangerous, but not so bad as walking along a shelf in the Nagari pass, with a Belooch behind every stone, taking aim at one with his long matchlock.”
John Manning grinned, took off his hat, and scratched his head.
“You did not complain about the danger then,” continued the colonel.
“No, sir, I didn’t, did I!” said the man, wrinkling up his face a little more; “and I ain’t going to grumble about this neither. I’ll go wherever you lead, colonel, like a soldier should.”
“Yes; I knew that when I chose you to come with us, Manning,” said the colonel quietly. “Well, what about dinner? We had better have it upon that flat-topped stone.”
“I shan’t be five minutes, sir; but I was hesitating about that stone. It’s just in the hot sunshine, and if there are any snakes about here, that seems a likely place.”
“Any snakes about here, Diego?” asked Cyril, and the man shook his head, and replied that it was too cold.
A few minutes later they were enjoying a hearty meal, and the mules were revelling in their freedom from their loads, while the two Indians sat munching their sun-dried strips of meat, and talking together in a low voice.
“All these stones and rocks tumbled down from above, I suppose, sir?” said Cyril, after a prolonged look upward at the peak which rose high above them, with its smooth sides glittering with snow, and a thin, white, gauzy cloud just hiding the extreme point.
“Yes, my lad,” said the colonel, shading his eyes, and looking up. “The snow hides the old scar, but I should say that during some eruption the whole side of the crater fell outward, and crumbled down to here, as you say.”
“Crater?” cried Cyril.
“Yes; don’t you see that it is a volcano?”
“I did not, sir. Then those clouds up there are smoke?”
“More likely steam.”
“Steam? Those clouds?” cried Perry, gazing up. “And is this a burning mountain?”
“Yes. You will be able to say you have been on the side of a volcano,” said the colonel quietly. “Look at all this broken stone about; how glistening a great deal is, as if it had been molten. That piece, too, looks like scoria.”
“Then hadn’t we better go on at once?” cried Perry, getting up from the stone on which he was seated.
“What for? Are you afraid of an eruption?” said the colonel, with a shade of contempt in his voice. – “Feel that stone where he was sitting, Cyril; perhaps it is warm.”
“Yes, it was quite warm when I sat down upon it,” said Perry hastily. “All the stones about here are nearly hot.”
“Of course they are, sir,” cried his father. “Have they not been baking in this hot sunshine? There, sit down and finish your dinner. Mountains don’t break out into eruption without giving some warning.”
“But this must have been quite lately, sir,” said Cyril, to turn the colonel’s fire.
“Geologically lately, my lad,” he said, picking up and examining a stone, “but not in our time, nor our grandfathers’. In all probability these stones came crumbling down some hundreds of years ago.”
“Then you think there is no fear of another eruption, father?”
“If I did think there was, do you think I should be sitting here so calmly?” replied the colonel.
Perry had nothing to say to this, and he soon after became interested in a conversation which took place between Cyril and the guide, waiting impatiently until it was at an end.
“What does he say?” asked Perry, as Cyril turned away.
“That as soon as we’ve passed this rough place there’s another path, like the one we’ve come by, and he wants to know if your father means to risk it.”
Perry felt a shrinking sensation, but he said nothing, knowing how determined his father was when he had set his mind upon a thing.
“I told him we were going, of course. But, I say, Perry,” whispered Cyril, “how far does he mean to go?”
Perry shook his head.
“Is it any use to ask him where he means to stop?” whispered Cyril.
“No; not a bit.”
“Hallo! Look here!” cried Cyril, and Perry snatched up his piece from where it lay.
“Look out, father!” he cried, as one by one, with solemn, slow stride, some half-dozen peculiar-looking, flat-backed, long-necked animals came into sight round an angle of the valley at the far side of the chaos of stones amongst which they had made their halt.
“Put down that gun. Don’t be stupid,” cried Cyril. “Can’t you see they are llamas?”
“What if they are? I suppose they are good to eat.”
“I shouldn’t like to try one,” cried Cyril, laughing.
The colonel had now caught sight of the animals, which kept on coming round the corner in regular file, with their long necks held up stiffly.
“Quite a caravan,” the colonel said. “Ask Diego what they are carrying.”
“I know, without asking, sir,” said Cyril eagerly. “They’re bringing down Quinquina – kina, as they call it. You know, sir – bark.”
“Hah!” ejaculated the colonel eagerly, and he took out the little double glass he carried to examine the train of animals, which had evidently come from the track that they were to pursue after their halt.
“You’re wrong, I think, my lad,” said the colonel, after a long examination through his glass. “They have all got bales of something on their backs, and, judging from the outside, I think they are skins or hides.”
“Yes, sir, that’s right,” cried Cyril, “but it is bark inside. They make the bark up into bales, and cover them with hides before binding them up. I know; I’ve seen them before.”
The colonel continued his inspection, and Cyril hurriedly questioned the guide before speaking to the former again.
“He says they are taking the kina down to the port, and that they will halt here to rest.”
“Then we’ll stay a little longer and see them,” said the colonel, closing his glass after seeing several armed men turn the corner and begin to climb beside the llamas over the rugged stones.
