Читать книгу Zero the Slaver - Lawrence Fletcher - Страница 7

No serious mishap befell our pair of adventurers until they neared the Katonga River, but just here they dropped in for a streak of ill-luck, which was like to have brought the expedition to a premature and utterly disastrous termination.

Leaving their men in camp one morning, Leigh and Kenyon had set out to thoroughly and carefully explore a mighty kloof, or gorge, in the adjacent hills, expecting to complete their investigations easily in a couple of hours or thereabouts.

As the pair entered this natural mountain fastness, however, it rapidly developed into a deep gorge, along which trickled a stream of water so tiny that it frequently lost itself altogether amongst the stones which served it for a bed.

On either hand great grey barren walls shot up like precipices, whilst mighty scarped-out rocks seemed to hang over the very heads of the explorers, the giant walls elsewhere being thickly fringed towards the skyline with trees and bushes, many of the former absolutely hanging head-downwards, and appearing to maintain their precarious tenure of existence solely by the aid of magnificent festoons of creepers, which hung from tree to rock, and from rock to tree, these gigantic parasites absolutely sustaining the decayed trunks of many a long-dead monarch of the woods, which they had enfolded in their tenacious and eventually fatal embrace; higher still the foliage upon the very summit of the cliffs looked like narrow gleaming threads of green and gold against the dull background of soft sandstone rock. Within the kloof it was unquestionably more or less dark at the best of times, but just now darker than usual, for a vast white cloud, which the pair had noticed in the distance when they entered the pass some hours before, had gradually and ominously settled down, until it seemed to hang like a veritable curtain of rich, fleecy wool directly over the chasm; and as our friends were in the act of discussing the advisability of taking the back track to camp, and returning to complete their investigations on the morrow, this cloud suddenly burst over their very heads, and in one short moment transformed their rocky road into an angry, swelling torrent of leaden-coloured water, alive with branches, trees, and stones, and this now rushed foaming and roaring down the awful pass, sweeping everything before it, and threatening each instant to engulf the two wretched men, who had saved themselves for the nonce by hanging on to a tree trunk which was jammed cross-wise in the narrow gully of rock.

Suddenly Leigh gave a gasp, turned white as death, and relaxed his hold, but ere the water could sweep him away he was in the iron grasp of the American; many an enemy had known to his bitter cost what it was to feel the clutch of the detective, but never had that grip of steel stood a friend in so good a stead as now.

A floating log had struck Leigh violently on the side, dislocating a rib and causing him to swoon away. For several anxious moments it seemed to Kenyon that one or both of them must go, but to his intense relief he suddenly noticed that the rush of the water was becoming less swift, and Leigh at the same time pulling round again to some extent, the twain were soon in comparative safety from the water, which vanished almost as rapidly as it had appeared.

By this time, however, evening was coming on, and this, in the depths tenanted by our friends, quickly meant the darkness of Erebus, and unpleasant though it was, they had no alternative but to sit patiently on their friendly log and wish for daylight. The unfortunates had not even the consolation of a smoke, for both tobacco and matches had been reduced to a mere pulp by the water, nor had they aught in the shape of food or drink save a handful of unpleasantly damp peppermints owned by the American, and a pint of good brown brandy in Leigh’s flask.

Now most people will concede that under such circumstances the consumption of the brandy was not only permissible but distinctly advisable, though very few, perhaps, would care to tackle the peppermints.

Not so, however, our friends, for not once nor twice had they been indebted at a pinch entirely to these simple “sweets” for keeping body and soul together during long days and anxious nights, when, with savage foes following keen-eyed and red-handed on their tracks, any stoppage for food or fire would have meant certain sudden death.

All that Kingsley has said regarding the use of the “divine weed” may be re-written, and with much more truth, in favour of the harmless and not more odorously objectionable peppermint. “A lone man’s companion, a hungry man’s food, a sad man’s cordial, a chilly man’s fire;” all this, and more, did the despised peppermint prove to our friends that awful night, and needless to say they appreciated their oft-tried food at its honest value. Under the coldest conditions it was acceptable to a degree, and almost equally so under a blazing sun, with the thermometer registering 80 degrees in the shade, for whilst it comforted the inside of the body, it cooled the fevered palate by causing every breath of burning tropic air to rush into the mouth like draughts of nectar, laden with a welcome icy message from the far unlovely north.

Slowly the hours passed away, so slowly that the American thought his companion would die of exposure, for he was still suffering keenly from the blow his side had received, and never was dawn more welcome to man than when those two miserable mortals at last saw it blushing golden upon the trees far above them, followed by the glorious sun glinting upon the damp metallic-looking rocks, till the whole angry chasm was bathed in a tremulous reddening glow of lovely light and shade.

A weary way it seemed back to camp; indeed, it is doubtful in the extreme if Leigh would ever have reached it, had the pair not been met half-way by their anxious sable retainers, who did not in the least degree appreciate the honour of being left in unsupported possession of this great lone land; these men very soon had their masters under canvas, and after a steaming cup of coffee, stowed them away inside their blankets and left them to the undisturbed enjoyment of their well-earned repose.

For several days Leigh was in a high fever, consequent upon the dislocated rib, but this having been carefully put to rights by the skilful Kenyon, he rapidly mended, and their camp being fortunately placed in a healthy position, he was completely recovered at the end of a few weeks, and again ready and eager to betake himself to the search for his cousin.

With returning health, Leigh had betrayed an increased desire to extract precise information from Kenyon as to the why and wherefore of their present position, but all the satisfaction he could obtain from that worthy was a laconic assurance that so far they had made no mistakes, and that at that moment they were either very near their destination, or else were on the tail-end of a trail which had been blinded with consummate skill Kenyon had, he himself said, been very far from idle during Leigh’s illness, and had thoroughly exploited the district, and taken a number of photographs in the immediate vicinity; but he had come to the conclusion that nothing of practical utility could be accomplished until Leigh was fit to return with him to the pass and again take up the thread of search where they had dropped it, and he added that if naught of Richard Grenville was written on its silent walls, he would then be completely nonplussed.

Kenyon, as Leigh had long since learned, was no ordinary police detective; he was a shrewd and skilful tracker, a man born and brought up on the frontier of the Far West, and his experience had been dearly bought in many an Indian fight and foray before he gravitated to New York to try his hand at journalism as favoured by the New World.

A crack shot with the revolver, and no mean exponent of the beauties of the Winchester repeater, he was at all times a man to be feared by his foes, and to be looked up to by his friends, as a veritable tower of strength.

Of Leigh we need say little, beyond remarking that he was in the prime of manhood, was as strong as a bull, and had lost none of his skill with the rifle, whilst he had derived a new, and to his enemies a doubly dangerous energy, begotten of his loves and of his hates; to him it seemed that, could they but find his cousin Dick, nothing would be impossible with such heads and hearts as Grenville and Kenyon possessed, especially if he were himself there to take a third hand at the game.