Читать книгу In the Beginning - Alan Sullivan - Страница 7

Table of Contents

It was characteristic of Caxton to stipulate that Burden and Sylvester should travel to Buenos Aires in another ship. The stated reason was that he wished his party to avoid any publicity, but the real one was that he wanted these two to know each other better before embarking on the unknown.

And the meeting in Buenos Aires would have seemed to an observer quite accidental. They had sent their luggage to the arranged hotel, and were walking through the Plaza, when Sylvester saw Jean and her father at a small table busy over tall glasses and listening to very good music. At the same moment she saw him and waved her hand excitedly.

"How do you do, and where in the world do you come from?"

They all laughed, and Caxton, who seemed very happy, reported progress. He asked nothing about the voyage, that being unimportant, but noted contentedly that the two seemed excellent friends.

"You're a day ahead of time. We've been here since the seventeenth, and I've got that boat. She's much what I expected, and we can leave within a few hours' notice. Jean has filled the larder with things we'll never eat, and as I don't suppose there's anything to keep you in B.A., I suggest eight o'clock to-morrow morning. Burden, I expect you have a regular arsenal with you."

Burden stated his armament, and Caxton looked dubious.

"Well, I hope you may need it, but it's all a question of what we can transport."

"What have you arranged in that way?"

"Nothing. The plan is—and it's the safest for us—to get transport locally. I don't want anyone but ourselves to leave the ship. What I propose is to go down the coast to Punta San Sebastian, land in what Harrop maintains is a possible harbour in fine weather—though I don't see it on the chart—and get in touch with the nearest natives. Transport will be arranged with them. Then we unload our stuff, give Lopez his orders, and get lost."

The two nodded, and Jean listened with absorbed interest. The thing was coming true after all. Sometimes she had doubted it. Then her father beckoned to a man in a blue suit, who was strolling not far off.

"Jean's self-appointed watch-dog. Looks capable, doesn't he?"

Harrop came up with a sort of seafaring salute.

"Harrop, tell Lopez that we want to sail at eight sharp to-morrow morning. Do you suppose he'll be ready?"

"He will, sir. I'll sleep on board. I've just come up from the docks, and she's cleaner than since she was launched."

He went off, a dogged, British figure in the sunshine.

Burden gave a dinner that night, and, it being the last of its kind for some time, did it very well. But to Jean it was strangely unreal. In brain and body she experienced a tingle of exaltation that made the occurrences of to-day seem very transitory. She had been reading steadily, and felt for the first time the mysterious call of the past, which beckons with phantom hands to those who will but yield themselves to Nature. What was the world like when the giant sloth uprooted trees and the sabre tooth's deadly tusks mutilated its prey? Love? Yes, she wanted to love and be loved, but that was another part of herself. Now she was to share men's adventure and men's life. She would see them in action as few women ever saw them, and be tried by the same tests.

Of one thing she was sure. Whatever might come afterwards, it would inevitably take its colour from events immediately ahead. She glanced covertly at Burden, hazarding what he would find in the wilderness, and little dreaming of the amazing dénouement that awaited this strong-limbed, white-shirted, hospitable Nimrod.

Her father? He would pretend to laugh were Withers' theory not confirmed, and probably go off somewhere alone to bury his disappointment in work. She would not accompany him that time, but stay with one of these two in whose eyes she saw an occasional flicker of hidden fires. Sylvester? If nothing happened, he would feel it perhaps most of all, and say least. Herself? She seemed to be small and unimportant compared to what was in hand.

There crept over her an impending sense of tragedy that persisted, in spite of the cheerfulness of the evening. She was struggling with it when Burden raised his glass.

"To our chief," he said. "Our chief's daughter, to paleontology—if that's the way to pronounce it—botany, and big-game hunting. To success, good sport, and a happy return."

From Buenos Aires to Bahia Blanca is a matter of a little over five hundred miles. Lopez confidently expected to put in there, but to his surprise got orders to hold his course still further southward for the gulf of San Matias. From that he reckoned that Caxton would be going up the Rio Negro. Most travellers went up that river. Here again he was wrong, and the "La Plata" pointed her blunt bows in the general direction of the Falklands.

Caxton was really in two minds where to start. Withers' letter recommended investigation of a certain territory, but, judging from what he could learn, the area north of the Chubut was fairly well known as far west as the Andes. South of that river, however, was another large space of which the best maps he could get said nothing. It formed an immense triangle between the Chubut and Chico. Lakes were indicated. Lakes meant considerable vegetation. That meant a better prospect of animal life.

The coast as they saw it was uninspiring. League after league of low hills, opening here and there to vast plains rimmed on the horizon by rolling ridges that only suggested an infinity of land beyond. Harbours were few and far between, and, when they did occur, lay in the deltas of rivers, generally behind bars on which the long surges of the South Atlantic broke with a never-ending roar. Caxton had been leaning on the rail for days, examining all this, when one afternoon he heard Lopez say something to the wheelsman about Rio Perdidos. The name seemed to hit him between the eyes, and he turned quickly.

"Where is that?"

The master of the "La Plata" beckoned him into the chart-house, and unrolled a map of Argentina. It was old, indescribably dirty, and had, here and there, hieroglyphics in pen and pencil. Lopez put a brown forefinger on one of these.

"That's the Rio Perdidos—Lost River—somewhere about there. It lies north of the Chubut."

"You know it?"

Lopez rolled a cigarette against his thigh with a sliding sweep of a horny palm.

"Mother of heaven—no! Only fools go there. I heard of it from an old man, now dead. The river, he said, runs into a lake, out of which nothing runs. Nothing, I tell you. He also said that not more than two or three have seen it, but how was he to know that? And none know where the river takes its source. It is black water, very black and slow, with no fish in it, and sometimes, he said, it stank as of things long dead. I heard the old man tell this before he died. But doubtless he was a great liar. Most old men are."

Caxton was thinking very hard.

"Not that I want to go there, but how does one reach the Rio Perdidos?"

Lopez showed his teeth, which were very white and strong.

"One gets lost first. Who can tell?"

"Is it Gaucho country?"

"Per Dios, but it is the soul of the Gaucho country. Indubitably so. And they are bad Gauchos. Twice a year they drive their cattle to a place where the Chico runs into the Chubut, and go back whence they came. But no man is permitted to go with them."

"Thanks," said Caxton carelessly. "How far are we from Punta San Sebastian?"

Lopez measured it off with the width of his thumbnail, which was fairly accurate and good enough for him.

"We shall be off the point, if God wills, at noon to-morrow."

"Have you been into the harbour?"

"There is nothing that one can call a harbour. There is a bay with a swamp on one side, and, if God wills, a river, but the "La Plata" would scrape her keel in the mud to reach it."

Caxton grinned.

"Which, no doubt, has happened before. Let us see what that harbour is like."

There was a conclave in the cabin that night, maps on the table, and a ring of keenly interested faces. Caxton put the thing as he saw it, quoted Lopez in the matter of the Rio Perdidos, and went on very deliberately.

"You can see by this that there are two ways to get into the Perdidos country. One, the usual route up the Chubut from Rawson to its junction with the Chico, then follow the Gaucho trail westward. The other is to land somewhere near here, strike across country and intersect the Gaucho trail a long way beyond civilisation. It all turns on whether it is wise to attach any importance to the word perdidos. You know the reputation of our friend Lopez. We may be doing exactly the wrong thing. All we have to go on is what Withers saw in the water. That came down some river. But where did the river come from? You've never been in that part of the country, Harrop?"

"No, sir."

"Ever heard of it?"

"Not a word, sir."

"Any suggestions, Burden, or you, Sylvester?"

The two shook their heads. It was the kind of responsibility one hesitated about taking.

Caxton pondered a moment, then felt a throb of inspiration. Let Jean settle it! She knew the least of them all, but it was his experience that sometimes the young and ignorant came nearer hidden wisdom than the old and tried. Perhaps they had not moved so far away from the source of wisdom.

"Any suggestions, Harrop?"

"Whatever you say, sir."

"Jean, I'm going to ask you to decide. It's a toss-up either way. Either we go round and up—which is the easiest and would attract attention; or we strike straight across—which is more difficult, but would attract no attention."

She took a quick little breath, and her eyes became very bright.

"I know what I would do if it were my expedition."

"What?"

"Go straight for it."

Caxton rolled up his maps.

"That's good enough. We'll go."

At noon they were abreast of Punta San Sebastian. It was here that Withers saw what he saw, and the friend who now followed him pictured the amazing spectacle that had been vomited from the womb of the ocean, and hung on the bows of a tramp steamer like a sodden sponge, while the wind whistled and the seawater ran from the matted hair.

Behind the point was a low-shored, flat bay, ringed with swamp, where tall reeds fenced off the solid land. The "La Plata" just cleared the bar, and lay motionless three hundred yards out. The anchor chain clanked, and a flock of geese took to the air, ranging themselves into a long, tapering wedge with a whipping of strong grey wings.

"That will be the mouth of the river, sir," said Harrop contentedly; "them birds go there to feed."

It was, and it opened sluggishly landward, a twisting waterway through the swamp. Jean, beside her father in the stern of the small boat, felt her heart quicken. Harrop was in the bow, the other two with Lopez at the oars. A mile further on the swamp gave way to level shores. The river narrowed. One could see scattered clumps of small timber, but beyond this was nothing but grass and scrub, now green and lush in the southern springtime. At a gesture from Caxton, the oars rested, and the boat touched shore, broadside against a flat rock.

"You, Jean," said her father, with a little smile.

She hesitated for a moment, and, with a sudden breathlessness, stepped out. A cool, sweet wind came out of the unknown, pressing against her face with a fascinating and nameless invitation, and she knew vaguely that a multitude of tiny voices were calling—calling. She turned swiftly to the others with a brilliant smile, and held out her hands.

"Welcome to Patagonia!"