Читать книгу The Lost Mine of the Amazon - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 7

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“He swore up and down that he wasn’t near this deck,” Hal declared vehemently, when he got back to his uncle’s cabin ten minutes later. “No one in the steerage saw him come up or come down. I was the only one who saw him slinking around up here—I know it was him this time, Unk! But the sailors below thought I was seeing things I guess, for when I got down there, friend Pizella had his shoes and trousers off and was stretched out in his bunk as nice as you please.”

“Strange, strange,” murmured Denis Keen, putting his book down on the night table beside his elbow.

“Sure it is. The way I figured it, he must have started peeling off on his way down. Undressing on the wing, huh?”

“It would seem so, Hal. Your very earnestness convinces me that it was no mere hunch you acted upon this time. The fellow is up to something—that’s a certainty. But he wasn’t anywhere near this cabin. I heard not a sound.”

“And the Brazil-nut was strutting his stuff in the saloon, so he’s out of the picture.”

“Well, that’s something to feel comfortable about.” Denis Keen laughed. “Surely you didn’t think....”

“Unk, when there’s sneaking business going around like this that you can’t explain or even lay one’s finger on, why, one is likely to suspect everybody. Anyway, I guess they’ll keep closer watch on him just to get rid of me.”

“No doubt they’re beginning to suspect that you have some reason for picking on Pizella. Either that or they’ll think you’re suffering from a Pizella complex. But in any case, Hal, I think it won’t do a bit of harm to have the man watched in Manaos.”

They forgot about Pizella for the rest of the voyage, however, mainly because Pizella did not again appear above decks. Hal quickly forgot his hasty suspicions and was lost in the charm of the country on either side of the river. The landscape changed two days after they entered the Amazon, and in place of the low-lying swamps, a series of hills, the Serra Jutahy, rose to their right.

After leaving the hills behind, they caught a brief glimpse of two settlements, larger and more important than most of those they had seen. The captain pointed out the first of these, Santarem, which lay near the junction of the Amazon and Tapajos, the latter an important southern tributary.

“Santarem,” the captain obligingly explained, “should interest the Señors.”

“Why?” Hal asked immediately.

“It is full of the romance of a lost cause,” said the captain. “After the Civil War in your great United States, a number of the slave-owning aristocracy, who refused to admit defeat and bow their heads to Yankee rule, came and settled in this far-away corner of the Amazon.”

“A tremendous venture,” said Denis Keen. “I dare say their task was too much for them.”

“For some, Señor. Some of them returned to your fair country broken in body and spirit, but others held on. Only a very few of the older generation live, but there are the sons and grandsons and great-grandsons to carry on—yes? A few of these families—they have scattered up this stream—down that stream. One of them that is perhaps interesting more than the others is the Pemberton family. Everyone familiar with the Amazon has heard their sad story. It began when Marcellus Pemberton, the first, settled in Santarem along with several other old families from Virginia.”

“Marcellus Pemberton, eh?” said Denis Keen. “That certainly smacks of Old Virginia.”

“He was a very bitter man, the first Marcellus Pemberton. A very young man when he went to fight against the North, he fled from his home after the War rather than bow to Yankee rule. He settled in Santarem with other Virginia families, took a wife from one of them, and had many children. All died but his youngest son—even his wife got the fever and died. Marcellus and his youngest son left the settlement then and went to live a little way up the Rio Pallida Mors. And so it is with that son that the story centers, even though he married an American señorita from Santarem.”

“And they had a son, huh?” Hal asked interested.

“Yes, Señor Hal. But of him I know little—the grandson. It is as I said Old Marcellus’ son who is interest—yes? Ten years ago he disappeared mysteriously. His wife died heartbroken a little later and left behind the girl Felice, a fair flower in the jungle wilderness, and the grandson who must now be twenty-five. Felice, like the good girl she is, stays with her grandfather who is now getting very old.”

“And I suppose they’re as poor as the dickens, huh?” Hal queried. “They’re starving to death I bet, and yet I suppose they’re keeping up the old tradition. Pride, and all that. They ought to know the war is forgotten. Peace and good will ought to be their motto and bring them back to the U. S.”

“Too true, Señor Hal,” the captain agreed, “but they do not stay for that, I do not think. They stay because of an uncertainty and that is the sad part of the story. I did not tell you how the Señor Marcellus, Junior, died ten years ago.”

“Ah, I thought this wouldn’t end without Hal getting the pièce de résistance out of the story,” Denis Keen chuckled.

“Well, I notice you’re listening intently yourself,” said Hal good-naturedly. “Go on, Captain.”

“To be sure,” said the captain amiably. “It takes but a moment to tell you that Señor Marcellus was looking for gold up the Rio Pallida Mors (Pale Death)—most people call it Dead River, Señors. One day he started out prepared for his long journey to his lode and he stopped a moment to tell his wife to promise him that, if some day he did not come back, they would not rest until they found his body. He had what you call a presentiment—no? But his wife she promised and the children promised, also his father. So he went and as he feared he did not return.”

“And they never found him?”

“No, Señor Hal. Neither did they find where his lode had gone. To this day they have found neither him nor the mine. And so they look always for his body. The Indians they say he has come back from death in the form of a jaguar and every moonlight night he shrieks along the banks of the river, crying for his children or his father to come and find his body in the rushing waters of Pallida Mors.”

“A tragic story, Captain,” said Denis Keen. “They must be an unhappy group up there, being reminded of their father’s sad ending every time there’s a moon.”

“Something spooky about him being reincarnated in jaguar form, huh? Gosh, they don’t believe that part of it, this Pemberton family, do they, Captain?” Hal asked.

“Ah, no. They cannot even believe he is really dead, Señors—they say they won’t believe it till they find his body. And so they wait and the jaguar shrieks on moonlight nights. But Santarem is long in the distance, Señors—the story is ended.”

“Not for the Pembertons, I guess,” said Hal sympathetically. “Gosh blame it, I’d like to help those poor people find that man so’s they could get away and live like civilized people.”

“I think,” said his uncle, after the captain had left them quite alone, “that you have enough on your hands right now. What with your worries about Pizella, my future worries about tracing these munitions to Renan, I think we have sufficient for two human minds.”

“Aw, we could tackle this Pemberton business afterward, couldn’t we, Unk? Even if we just stopped to pay them a friendly visit. Gol darn it, I should think they’d be tickled silly to talk to a couple of sympathetic Americans after living in the wilderness and surrounded by savages all their....”

“I take it this Pallida Mors will have you for a visit, come sunshine or storm, eh, Hal?”

“And how! A nice little surprise visit to the Pembertons,” Hal mused delightedly.

Destiny thought differently about it evidently, for Hal was the one to be surprised, not the Pembertons.