Читать книгу Clipped Wings - Percy Francis Westerman - Страница 4

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Three months later, Peter Corbold saw Rioguayan territory for the first time. Acting upon a laconic cablegram from his uncle, Brian Strong, he had taken a passage in a Royal Mail steamer as far as Barbadoes, transferring at that point to one of the fleet of small vessels plying between the West Indies and the numerous ports on the Rio Guaya.

After a voyage lasting nearly a week, the steamer entered the wide estuary of the Rio Guaya, which, for more than a hundred miles, averages forty miles in width, and is tidal for a distance of nearly four hundred and fifty miles. On the right bank is the Republic of San Valodar; on the left that of San Benito. Rioguayan territory does not begin until Sambrombon Island, where the river is divided into two deep-water channels barely five miles in width.

Sambrombon Island made the position of the Republic of Rioguay unique. It was in the territory of San Valodar, consequently San Valodar claimed control of the Corda Channel on the north-east side, and one-half of El Porto Channel on the south-west side, sharing the jurisdiction of that waterway with the Republic of San Benito. Thus, whatever shipping Rioguay possessed could not pass to the open sea without entering the territorial waters of either San Benito or San Valodar; but, by mutual arrangement among the three republics, Rioguayan ships were allowed the right of using El Porto Channel, without payment of dues.

This much Peter learnt from a fellow-countryman, the only British subject on the ship, and Mackenzie by name.

“The Rioguayans are frightfully proud of this concession,” continued Mackenzie. “They are top-dog out here and pretty go-ahead, I can assure you. Too go-ahead for my liking.”

“How’s that?” asked Peter.

His companion smiled enigmatically.

“You’ll find out quick enough,” he replied. “The country used to be all right, but of recent years there’s been a growing anti-British feeling. Why, I don’t know, but the fact remains. So much so, that I’m selling out. I’ve taken up a piece of land at Barbuda, and I’m returning to Rioguay only to arrange for the disposal of a small mine that I’ve been working here. Where are you bound for?”

“El Toro; that’s about five miles from Tepecicoa,” announced Peter. “An uncle of mine is an engineer there.”

“Not Strong—Brian Strong—by any chance?”

“Yes,” replied Peter. “Do you know him?”

“Do you?” asked Mackenzie.

“I was only five or six when I last saw him,” said Peter.

“You’ll find him a weird old bird, chock-a-block with comic notions and strange gadgets,” declared Mackenzie, with a burst of British candour. “Not a bad sort, though,” he added.

Just then Peter heard the distinctive drone of an aeroplane engine. It was some time before even his trained eye could detect the on-coming machine, but presently he could see the misty outlines of a huge flying-boat travelling at high speed at a great altitude. Even as he looked, the flying-boat shut off her engine and dived at such a steep angle that it appeared to be out of control.

At less than two hundred feet above the water the headlong plunge was arrested. The flying-boat seemed to hang irresolute, her momentum neutralized by the action of gravity.

She was a craft of nearly a hundred feet in length, propelled by four powerful engines. For her length, her wing-span was ridiculously small, the planes, three en échelon on either side, being short and with a decided horizontal camber. The absence of struts and tension wires gave Corbold the impression that the planes were of steel.

This much he took in before the flying-boat restarted her motors and was quickly lost to sight in the dazzling sunlight.

“Those chaps are pretty smart,” commented Mackenzie. “It’s only since 1918 that they took up flying seriously, and for Dagoes they’ve done wonders. But I wouldn’t say too much about it to any Rioguayan, if I were you; it isn’t exactly healthy. There’s San Antonio just showing up. It’s the port nearest to the Atlantic that Rioguay possesses, and like a good many South American towns, it is going ahead like steam. Keep your eyes open and don’t say too much, or we may both find ourselves in gaol.”

Viewed from the broad estuary, San Antonio looked like a huge marble town, standing out against the lofty, tree-clad hills that enclosed it on three sides. But it was not the appearance of the place that attracted Peter’s attention so much as the shipping.

To his surprise, he saw three large battleships lying at moorings off the town—leviathans that, in spite of the Rioguay ensign, looked unmistakably British.

“Ay, two of them hailed from the Clyde and the third from Barrow,” declared Mackenzie. “They were originally built for the Brazilian and Chilian Governments, but for some reason those republics agreed to sell them to Rioguay. I expect they had been studying the ‘Is the Capital Ship Doomed?’ controversy and come to the conclusion that they’d best sell while they had the chance.”

“But what good are they to Rioguay?” asked Peter.

“Ask me another, my boy,” rejoined his companion. “They gave out that they were for maintaining friendly relations with the Republics of San Benito and San Valodar; or, in other words, those battleships are guarantees for a free passage between Rioguay and the open sea. They’re building others like them over there. A couple of thousand skilled Japanese artisans were brought over eighteen months ago. I did hear that they can turn out a fully equipped battleship for three million dollars.... There’s the submarine base.”

Peter looked in the direction indicated. All he could detect was a solitary submarine, bearing a strong resemblance to the late unlamented Unterseebooten that played such an important part in the downfall of the German Empire.

“There are others,” continued his mentor. “About twenty, I believe; but where their base is actually, I don’t know. It’s somewhere about here, but where exactly I’ve never been able to find out.”

Slowing down, the little steamer entered one of the creeks comprising San Antonio harbour. It was not the largest, but its shores were occupied by at least half a dozen building slips on which were craft in all stages of construction.

“For passenger and cargo traffic between Rioguay and the West Indies and Brazil,” explained Mackenzie. “A sort of national enterprise. The capital was issued in five-dollar shares, giving each holder the chance of winning a big prize. That sort of thing, anything of the nature of a lottery, appeals to the Rioguayans. The required capital was over-subscribed in less than a week.”

As soon as the steamer berthed alongside the wharf, Mackenzie bade Peter “au revoir” and went ashore together with half a dozen other passengers, mostly Brazilians.

Five hours later Peter Corbold set foot on Rioguayan soil at the busy little port of Tepecicoa, being in the awkward position of knowing no word of Spanish and having no one to act as an interpreter.

But that troubled him very little. His previous experience of foreign ports stood him in good stead; while having previously provided himself with a large-scale map of the district on which El Toro, his uncle’s abode, was plainly marked, he had no great difficulty in finding himself upon the right road. He travelled light, his baggage having been detained at the Custom House for examination.

Peter had cabled out to his uncle from England, stating that he was sailing in the Royal Mail steamer Tagus, but the date of his arrival at El Toro was a matter for speculation. Nor was the ex-naval officer aware that there was direct telephonic communication between Tepecicoa and his destination, and that electric cars passed within two hundred yards of the place.

It was undoubtedly a day of surprises. Peter had expected to find a tenth-rate South American republic, peopled, for the most part, by swarthy ruffians, with long knives conspicuously carried in bright-coloured sashes. He had imagined the town of Tepecicoa to be dirty, squalid, swarming with beggars. Instead, he found broad, tree-planted streets and spacious plazas, lighted by electricity and provided with broad, shady, and remarkably clean pavements. There were Indians and half-castes in profusion, looking certainly far from being poverty-stricken. In fact, he did not see a single beggar. There were plenty of people on horseback, and quite a number of motor-cars that obviously had been imported from the United States.

Being afoot and dressed in clothes of English cut, Peter was the object of a great deal of attention, especially as he was walking. Almost everyone, even the poorest, rode either in a car or carriage, or on horseback.

Presently, Peter arrived at a long and open space, out of which seven broad thoroughfares radiated. Here he stood irresolute, unable to decide as to which of these roads he should take.

“Wish I had Mackenzie with me,” he soliloquized.

Suddenly a hand slapped him heavily upon the shoulder. Surprised, Peter wheeled, to find a tall, lean-faced man, whose gold-filled teeth proclaimed him to be a citizen of the United States.

“Say, stranger,” exclaimed the man, “you’se the guy Boss Strong’s expectin’?”

“I am,” admitted Peter.

“Sure thing,” continued the other. “I’m right dead on it every time. What are you hoofing it for? Didn’t Old Man Strong send along his automobile?”

“He didn’t know when to expect me,” replied Peter. “I suppose I ought to have telegraphed.”

“There’s a cable-car at twenty centavos or an automobile at a dollar,” announced the man.

Peter expressed his preference for the latter.

“Come along right now, and I’ll get you up,” said his benefactor, and grasping Peter by the arm, he led him to a kiosk-like structure similar to those he had noticed at almost every street corner.

The rest was a simple matter. Young Corbold’s companion said something in Spanish to the polite uniformed person in charge of the Kiosk. Peter put down a dollar and was given a ticket, which he was informed he was to place in his hatband. An electrically-operated syren on the roof of the Kiosk gave a clear but not aggressive note, and almost before Peter could be escorted to the edge of the pavement, a motor-car had arrived and was awaiting him.

The mulatto driver gave a glance at the words on the ticket in Peter’s hat. That was all that was necessary. That piece of pasteboard was an order given by the Republic of Rioguay that, in consideration of the sum of one dollar having been paid, the driver of the state-licensed vehicle was to take his fare to El Toro by the shortest possible route.

Without that ticket, Peter might have sought and sought in vain for a conveyance.

He had expected, somewhat naturally, that his Yankee benefactor was going to El Toro with him. But he was mistaken. The man raised his hat and disappeared.

“Might have asked him his name, any old way,” thought Peter. “P’r’aps Uncle Brian will know who he is. My word! Rioguay is quite a go-ahead show!”

It did not take the motor long to get clear of the town. Soon the tree-lined streets gave place to a broad, dusty road that ran almost in a straight line for miles between fields of maize and open expanses of sun-baked grass, dotted here and there with adobe huts. Nearer and nearer drew the rugged, saw-like mountains, until Peter began to wonder whether El Toro lay on the far side of the formidable sierras.

But at length the car turned abruptly to the right, plunging into a defile through a far-flung spur of the main chain of mountains. For the next mile nothing of the work of man’s hands was visible, except the well-kept road and the inevitable telephone wires supported by substantial poles of ferro-concrete, until, swinging round a sharp corner, the car emerged into more open country, and gave Peter his first sight of El Toro.

Had Peter found his relative living in a shack, or even a timbered house, he would not have been surprised, for according to what he had previously heard, Brian Strong was not in affluent circumstances.

Again the lad had a surprise. El Toro was quite a substantial affair of white stone, standing amidst picturesque surroundings in extensive grounds, surrounded by a high stone wall much after the style of an English country seat. The house itself was neither high nor impressive, being of only one story on account of the danger from earthquakes; but it was well built and the grounds were in splendid order. There was a lodge by the entrance gate, whence a sweeping drive, bordered with dwarf palm trees, led up to the porticoed house. At one side of the main building was a range of stables, while farther away, and with their rounded roofs only just visible over a slight ridge, were numerous sheds that looked as if they might be workshops.

The motor drew up. Peter alighted and offered the driver a half-dollar piece, which the mulatto refused with a superb gesture worthy of a real Spanish grandee.

Before Peter had recovered from his rebuff, the double doors of the house were flung open by a pair of negro servants. Even as he was ascending the steps of the portico, Peter heard the clatter of heavy boots upon the tiled floor of the hall.

The next instant, his hand was grasped by his Uncle Brian.

“Glad you’ve got here, Peter!” he exclaimed. “Say, ever been up in an aeroplane? Ever flown at all?”

“No,” replied his nephew, too taken aback with the unusual and eccentric greeting to reply except in a monosyllable.

“That’s a pity,” rejoined Uncle Brian, “a great pity. I wanted a chance to bring you down.”