Читать книгу A Thousand Miles an Hour - Herbert Strang - Страница 3

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DERRICK MOORE turned up his shirt sleeves, at every twist wringing drops of water from the thin material.

"A Turkish bath every day and all day is rather excessive, Pedro," he said.

His cousin smiled.

"You will get used to it," he said. "And the heat won't be so bad when we have left the river. Come and look at the map."

He lay flat on his face near a small tent, just capacious enough for two, and a canvas-backed map was outspread before him. Derrick flung himself down beside his cousin.

"We should be about here," said Pedro, placing his finger at a spot upon a wriggly black line-one of innumerable similar lines that formed a sort of network across the paper. There were few names printed on this part of the map; it showed little except the black lines indicating rivers and the conventional marks representing forests.

"Don't you think we ought to have taken this branch that comes in on the south?" said Derrick, pointing to a tributary a little east of their present position.

"Juan ought to know," Pedro replied. "He says he has been here before."

"Well, I hope he is right. The men are getting very sullen."

"It's their own fault we had to halve the rations."

"That doesn't make it any better. But it's rotten bad luck that we haven't shot anything for three days but a single peccary. Which reminds me: it's time we had something to eat, though I confess I've no appetite. It's too hot for anything."

Derrick got up, stretched himself, wrung more water from his shirt, and sat down on a rock at the door of the tent. Silently folding up the map, Pedro also rose to his feet, and called sharply, "Juan."

A small, thick-set, swarthy man appeared from among the bushes at the farther end of the clearing in which the tent stood. To him Pedro addressed a few words in Spanish. The man listened with a somewhat sullen air, then, without speaking, returned to the place he had come from.

"I don't like the fellow," said Derrick.

"I neither like him nor dislike him," responded Pedro. "He's useful; that's all."

The two lads sat in silence side by side, waiting for Juan to provide their evening meal. They were cousins, but there was no likeness between them except in their age. Both about eighteen, Derrick Moore was tall, lithe, of the fair Saxon type; Pedro Alvarez was several inches shorter, of a larger frame, and dark like his Bolivian father. His mother, Bertha Moore, had married the owner of a large mining property in the foothills of the Andes. The father was now dead, but the Señora Alvarez continued to live in the country of her adoption, and the mine was worked as in her husband's lifetime. Pedro had been educated in England, and had just completed a year's studies in a college of agriculture, that being the subject in which his main interest lay. A few months before the opening of our story it happened that some machine parts were needed at the mine which could only be obtained from England. Derrick Moore had had some training in engineering, and being an orphan without ties, he had welcomed an opportunity of visiting his Bolivian relatives, and had come out on the same vessel that brought his cousin and the new machinery. This had been transhipped at Para, and conveyed up the Amazon and its tributary the Madeira to San Antonio, beyond which steam navigation was impossible. There the boys had been met by Juan, a half-caste guide, and a crew of eight native Indians with four canoes. The journey up the winding tributaries of the Amazon had already occupied several weeks-weeks of monotonous paddling up the broad sluggish streams, diversified by frequent portages where the streams narrowed to rapids and cataracts.

It was at one of these rapids that an accident occurred. By what appeared to be mere clumsiness on the part of the crew of the canoe containing the machine parts and a considerable proportion of the provisions, that canoe had been drawn into the whirlpool at the foot of the rapids, swamped and broken to matchwood. Its cargo was lost, its crew barely escaped with their lives.

To Derrick the journey at first had had all the interest of novelty. Accustomed to boating on the upper reaches of the Thames, he was impressed by the contrast presented by this mighty Amazon, sometimes miles wide, its banks lined by huge forest trees, shrubs and creeping plants; the strange brilliant flowers, the bright-hued butterflies as large as birds, the tropical animals which hitherto he had known only in the pages of books or the cages of the Zoo. But for some days he had been feeling oppressed by the unvarying scenery, the constant steamy heat, the wearisome marches over sludge and slime when portages were necessary, the pestilent attentions of innumerable fierce insects which buzzed and stung from sunrise to sunset. Recent torrential rains had been the climax of discomfort. A new-born suspicion that Juan the guide was not so well acquainted with the country as he professed to be, together with signs of discontent and mutiny among the Indians, had bred in him a keen uneasy longing to reach his journey's end.

The little tent in which he spent the nights with Pedro had been pitched on a rocky bluff a few yards above the level of the river. Juan and the Indian crews were camped a short distance away. Below them the three canoes were moored to trees on the bank. On both sides stretched the forest-not such immense trees as Derrick had admired lower down, but trees which, though smaller, grew more closely together, and were thickly festooned with creepers and climbing plants. At this point the stream was about two hundred yards broad. The opposite bank also was densely wooded; whichever way he looked Derrick's eyes met nothing but sluggish muddy water, green vegetation dotted with bright spots of colour, and the heavy grey sky above.

While he and Pedro waited for their supper, a sudden jabbering broke out among the Indians beyond the bluff. Presently they came running up, their leader holding something in his outstretched hand. He halted in front of the two young men and began to pour out a torrent of shrill discordant cries, to Derrick incomprehensible.

"What does he say?" he asked.

Pedro sternly signed to the man to be silent.

"He says he and the rest are going no farther," said Pedro. "Juan has given him for supper no more than a handful of grain. He says they will starve if they go on."

"They will certainly starve if they go back," said Derrick. "Surely we are not very far from your hacienda now?"

"Unless Juan is quite at fault. I will tell them so."

He addressed the Indian in his own tongue. The response was another outburst.

"According to him," said Pedro, "Juan himself says that they ought to return. That's hardly credible. Where is the fellow?"

He called for Juan, and the man came up slowly.

The Indians grouped themselves about him, clamouring, gesticulating.

"Peace!" cried Pedro. "What is this I hear, Juan? The men say you advise them to go no farther."

The guide looked embarrassed. His eyes would not meet his employer's.

"They are hungry," he said. "I have little food to give them. How can I feed them? How can I prevent their grumbling?"

"We are all short of food," said Pedro, "through their carelessness in losing the fourth canoe. But we have not much farther to go. You engaged them for the journey; you must keep them in order. We have had bad luck in not sighting any animals or birds lately, but—"

He was interrupted by a sudden exclamation from one of the Indians, who stretched out his hand and began to dance up and down excitedly. Turning, Pedro saw an animal swimming from the opposite bank of the river, about a hundred yards away, its strange elongated snout just showing above the water.

"A tapir!" he cried. "Good meat, Derrick. Come along."

They dashed back into the tent and emerged with their sporting rifles.

By this time the tapir was already among the roots of the overhanging trees. Derrick took a shot at it. A violent splashing followed, but the animal disappeared.

"Follow us, Juan," said Pedro.

Making what haste they could, the three pushed along the bank of the river, stumbling over roots, forcing their way through the matted vegetation, sinking ankle-deep into the swampy soil, wrenching themselves from the clutches of creepers and thorns. The spot where the tapir had landed was indicated by the crushed plants and the water that had poured from its body; and Pedro, who had some experience in forest hunting, marked signs of the course it had taken.

"You hit it, Derrick," he exclaimed. "I see spots of blood."

They followed up the trail for some minutes, until even Pedro had to own that he had lost it.

"It's a pity," he said, stopping. "The tapir's flesh is very good, and it would have kept the men quiet for at least a day."

"Don't give it up," Derrick pleaded. "Listen! Isn't that—"

"You're right," cried Pedro. "That's the beast in the undergrowth."

Following the direction of the sounds they presently caught sight of the animal's hindquarters; but before either could fire it had disappeared.

"We have lost it," said Pedro. "A hunted tapir always makes for water, and swims under the surface."

"But if I hit it—There it is again," cried Derrick, as a crash sounded just ahead.

Once more they went on. It seemed that the tapir was making short plunging dashes through the jungle, stopping when it had outdistanced its pursuers, then bolting on as soon as it heard them getting near. Pedro led the chase, Derrick keeping close on his heels. The foliage overhead was not so dense as to exclude the daylight, and now and then Derrick caught sight of a squirrel or a monkey in the branches, and was tempted to try a shot at them. But Pedro said they were not worth wasting shot on while there was still a chance of securing the tapir.

Guided always by the sound of the heavy animal's movements through the undergrowth they pushed on, regardless of time or their increasing distance from the camp. Suddenly they spied the black form loping across a space where the vegetation was thin. Derrick again raised his rifle and fired, but his hand after the long chase was unsteady; he feared he must have missed, for the animal swerved to the left and disappeared. Its movements could still be heard, but its rushes were apparently becoming shorter, and the two lads, now filled with the ardour of the hunt, kept up the pursuit relentlessly.

At last they were brought up by a tangle of impenetrable thorn. They walked this way and that, trying in vain to find a gap.

"We can't get through this without a machete," said Pedro. "Perhaps Juan has his in his belt. Juan!" he called.

There was no answer.

"Didn't he follow us?" said Pedro.

"He certainly did at first," replied Derrick. "I was so keen on following you that I didn't miss him."

"He could have kept up without difficulty. Juan!" he called again. "The wretch is lazy, I suppose; or he was afraid he'd have to carry the tapir. We shall overtake him on the way back. And it's time we returned. It's getting late, and we shall soon have darkness upon us."

They waited for a few moments, listening. Juan had not answered Pedro's shout: they no longer heard any sound of the tapir's progress. Bathed in sweat, they mopped their dripping brows and turned to retrace their steps. And then Pedro stood stock still.

"What's the matter?" asked Derrick.

"I'm not sure of our direction," replied his cousin.

"But we can find our trail," said Derrick.

"Perhaps. But we've been moving round about since we were stopped by the thorns, and there's very little light. You had better stay where you are until I have had a look round. Undergrowth as thick as this shows very little trace of passage through it."

He went off alone. Derrick felt uneasy. He remembered having lost his way once on a moor in Sussex, and how impossible it had been to discover in the yielding bracken the track he had made only a few minutes before. Here in the subdued light of a tropical forest the difficulty was tenfold. Every now and then Pedro called, and he answered. Presently his cousin returned.

"Well?" said Derrick, looking at him anxiously.

"I can't find any track," said Pedro. "I was afraid to go very far, in case I got out of touch with you. Sound doesn't travel well in the forest."

"Don't you think we came that way?" asked Derrick, pointing.

"I should have said more to the right."

"Shall we try that way, then?"

"And what if it is the wrong direction?"

They were silent, and in their eyes as they looked at each other there spoke a terrible dread. It was the shock of realisation that they were lost in the forest.