Peter and Jane Part 16

'I believe,' said Toffy, 'that with luck one could make a lot of money in Argentine. I have got a scheme in my head now, which, if it comes off, should place me beyond the reach of want.'

Dunbar referred to the boom time, and gave an exhaustive statement of the fortunes which had been made in that glorious epoch and had been lost afterwards. 'I have known men without capital make a hundred thousand pounds in a few years,' he said; 'and when they lost it you simply could not find them.'

'People do seem to disappear in Argentine in a queer way,' said Peter with intention, and with a glance at Toffy. 'I know we had a gardener--one of the under-men--and he had a brother who disappeared altogether out there, so our man went to find him, and he, also, was never heard of again.'

'The reason for that is not very far to seek,' said Dunbar. 'The first thing you do when you come to Argentine is to leave off writing letters--at least if you are a camp man. You simply can't abide the sight of pen and ink.'

'But there must be some means of tracing a man who gets lost,' said Toffy. 'He can't disappear into s.p.a.ce.'

'You'd wonder!' said the Scot laconically.

'Still, you know,' persisted Peter, 'if a man's alive at all, some one must know his whereabouts.'

'Obsairve,' said Dunbar, 'it doesn't require much imagination for a man to change his name as often as he likes; and I should like to know what police supervision there is over the Italian settlers, for instance, in some of the remoter estancias? Murderers are hardly ever caught out here, and murders used to be as common as a fight in a pulperia. Every man carries a knife, and if you go up-country you will find that half the peons are nearly covered with scars; and if once in a way the knife goes too deep it's just one of those things which cannot be helped, and the less said about it the better. Again,' he went on, 'suppose a man is murdered on his own estancia--a thing that used to be common enough--the peons are all in league, and they generally have had a hand in it. Their master has been giving them _carne flacca_ (lean meat) to eat, and that is enough to upset the whole rickmatick of them.'

'I suppose they are not likely to turn on a revolution for our benefit,'

said Toffy, in a tone of disappointment.

'I haven't got the fighting instinct in me,' said Dunbar literally.

'Whenever there has been fighting where I have been, I have always sat indoors until it was over.'

Peter, with a desire to lead the subject back to the case of men who disappeared, turned in the deck-chair where he was sitting enjoying a light breeze which had sprung up after dark, and said tentatively: 'I can't quite understand, you know, a man disappearing altogether and leaving no traces behind him.'

'I shall never,' said Dunbar, 'believe in the final disappearance or even in the death of any one until I have seen the doctor's certificate or the man's corpse. Men have got a queer way of turning up, and even the sea may give up secrets when you least expect it. Take the case of the _Rosana_,' he went on, 'and allow me to put the facts of the case before you. The _Rosana_ was a ship that used to do good a bit of trading on the coast, and there was a man on board of her whom I used to know, and who had been once a little too well known in Argentine. Well, this ship foundered with all hands on board, and was never heard of again, although two of her life-belts were picked up, and one or two pieces of her deck-gear.'

'Any ship might founder at sea,' said Peter, 'and not be heard of again.

Go on with your story, Dunbar.'

The electric lights on deck went out suddenly overhead, leaving only one burning; the breeze blew soft and cool, and six bells sounded sharply and emphatically in the quiet of the night.

'I wouldn't,' said Dunbar, 'give you the benefit of my speculations on the subject of the _Rosana_ were it not that E. W. Smith was on board.

E. W. Smith couldn't die; he wasn't fit for it. But it's a long story.

I 'll not bother you with it.'

Dunbar looked doubtfully at his tobacco pouch, pinched it, and then contemplated his pipe. Peter handed him a cigar-case, and Dunbar accepted a cigar, and slipping it into an old envelope, he deposited it in his pocket. 'I don't believe I should have time to smoke it through now,' he said, and he continued filling his pipe.

'I suppose you come across a good many queer tales, travelling about as much as you do,' said Toffy.

Dunbar nodded without speaking. 'You'd wonder,' he said at last. He finished his pipe, knocked out its ashes, and put it into a little case lined with red velvet, and stowed it in his pocket; he looked at his watch and announced that there was still another half-hour before he intended turning in.

'We might have the end of your story,' said Peter.

'A story is as good a way as any other of wiling away the evening, and you are welcome to hear the rest of this one,' admitted Dunbar. He was a grand talker, according to his compatriots, and he chiefly loved the engineers' mess-room, where he could sit by a table covered in oil-cloth, and sip a little weak whisky and water, and revert to his broadest Doric in company with some engineers from the Clyde. 'The _Rosana_,' continued Dunbar, clearing his throat, 'only carried one boat on her last journey.

I happen to know that for a fact, but the Lord only knows the reason for it! Now, this boat was found, half-burnt, lying on a lonely bit of coast a few weeks after the _Rosana_ foundered. This is a thing which I may remark is not generally known; but I happen to have had ocular demonstration of it. The boat was a smart built one, with her name in gold leaf on the bows. Tranter was the captain of the _Rosana_, and he liked to have things nice. Now, why should this boat have been found half-burnt on the coast, but with a piece of her name in gold leaf still partially visible?'

'The boat probably drifted ash.o.r.e,' said Peter, as if he were answering a question in a history cla.s.s.

Dunbar hardly seemed to hear him, and went on with hardly a moment's interruption. 'I am a student,' he said, 'of the deductive method of reasoning, and I begin with the _a priori_ a.s.sumption that E. W. Smith could not die. I should hold the same belief even if I believed in Purgatory.' (Dunbar p.r.o.nounced the word with an incalculable number of r's in it, and it came from his throat like the rattle of musketry.) 'Presuming,' he went on, 'that the _Rosana_ foundered, was E. W. Smith the man to go down in her, or was he not?'

'I suppose some of them took to the boat,' said Toffy. 'In an affair of that sort it is a case of _sauve qui peut_.'

'The whole crew would have swamped the boat,' said Dunbar, who liked giving small pieces of information at a time.

'Consequently----' said Peter.

'Consequently,' said Dunbar, 'I 'm just biding my time, and I 'll tell you more when there 's more to tell.'

'It's a queer story!' said Peter.

'It's queerer than you think!' said Dunbar.

'You can't believe,' said the other, 'that this man Smith went off in the boat by himself?'

'I don't,' said Dunbar, 'for E. W. Smith couldn't row, and with all his sea-going he was a landsman to his finger-tips.'

'So then,' said Peter, 'he must have had accomplices, and accomplices always tell tales.'

'There 's one very certain way of silencing men,' said the Scot.

Peter rose abruptly from his chair and threw his cigar end out over the water. 'It's a beastly suggestion,' he said briefly. His face was white, and he found himself hoping to G.o.d that this tale of Dunbar's would not bring back to him those horrible nights he had had at the beginning of the voyage.

'Tranter was the captain of the boat,' said Dunbar, 'and Tranter was about the worst sort of coward you are likely to meet on this side of Jordan. E. W. Smith, on the other hand, never lost his head.'

The story seemed finished, and Toffy got up and stretched himself lazily, and said he was going to turn in; but Peter still sat where he was in his deck-chair.

'There might be a hundred different endings to your tale, Dunbar,' he said, 'each one as likely as the other. The boat, for instance, might have capsized, with too many men crowded into her, and have drifted ash.o.r.e and been burned accidentally or otherwise by the people who found her. Or the crew and captain of the _Rosana_ may never have taken to the boat at all, and she may have foundered with all hands (as you say the newspaper reports had it at the time); or the _Rosana_ may be sailing in another part of the world with her villainous captain and E. W. Smith and no end of swag on board. Or both men, again, may be sleeping very peacefully at the bottom of the sea at this moment; that, after all, seems to me the most likely ending to them. Of course,' he finished, 'I don't know what grounds you may have for making another suggestion about their probable fate.'

Dunbar looked at him keenly for a moment. 'I would not have made the suggestion,' he said quietly, 'only, you see, since the wreck of the _Rosana_ I have seen E. W. Smith or his ghost, and that is why I do not believe in the final disappearance of a man till I have set eyes upon his corpse.'

CHAPTER XII

Peter sat on a cow's skull, bleached and white, at the Estancia Las Lomas, reading a letter from Jane Erskine. He had begun to think that the Royal Mail Steam Packet Service was run for the sole purpose of carrying correspondence between himself and her, and he felt pleased with its punctuality in delivering his letters.

'It feels a bit queer being here,' he said to himself, gazing round him as he spoke. It was the evening of a hot day, and there was a flame of crimson over to westward, where a few minutes ago the sun had sunk through great bars of flame. All round him was a vast, solitary land, but nearer the estancia were pleasant homely sights and sounds. A cart yoked with five horses abreast stood by the galpon; a flock of geese walked with disdainful, important gait across the potrero; and the viscashos popped in and out of their holes with busy importance, like children keeping house. The farm horses, turned out for the night, cropped the short gra.s.s near where he stood. Peons, their day's work over, loitered in the patio, and the major-domo's children rode by, all three of them on one horse, their arms round each other's waists. The little estancia house stood, red-roofed and homelike, with green paraiso trees about it. In the veranda Toffy was stretched in a hammock, a pile of letters and newspapers from home beside him; Hopwood appeared round the corner carrying cans of water for baths; while Ross, their host, in a dress as nearly as possible resembling that of a gaucho, was that moment disappearing indoors to make the evening c.o.c.ktail. He came to the door presently and shouted to the two men to come in, and pointed out to them--as he had pointed out every evening since they had arrived--his own skill in swizzling.

It was a curious coincidence that had led Peter and Christopherson to Las Lomas. When they reached Buenos Ayres a very pleasant and unexpected meeting occurred, for Peter met Chance, a man who had been with him at Eton, on his way down to the river to go home. Chance had lost his young wife a little while before, and was returning to England to see what the voyage and a change would do to cure him of an almost overwhelming grief, and his partner Ross was left behind to look after the estancia. Ross was at the hotel also, and proved an excellent fellow. And Chance suggested that Ogilvie and Christopherson should return to Las Lomas with him and see something of the life in Argentine, staying as long as they could, to keep Ross company until he himself should return.

The invitation was accepted without hesitation, and it seemed that the two travellers were in luck's way. The estancia was a snug little place, amply watered by a river lying some miles above the last port where the small river-steamer called. This port was nearer the estancia than the railway station at Taco, and the last stage of the journey, therefore, was made by steamer. The river was a wide, shallow stream, very difficult of navigation. Nearly ten miles broad in some parts, at its deepest it never gave soundings of more than five fathoms of water. In dry weather it was possible in some places to drive a cart across it, while in others the current was quick and dangerous.

It was full of shallows and sand-banks, and for some miles the course of the little steamer was marked out by boughs of trees stuck into its muddy bottom.

The steamer was a well-found craft compared with any others that had navigated the river before, and was a new venture on the part of one Purvis by name, who had lately acquired considerable property on the river-bank. He was a gentle-mannered, nervous-looking individual, with weak, pale eyes that watered incessantly, and he had a curious habit unknown except to town dwellers in Argentine of dressing like a City clerk. All the men in camp wore breeches and wide felt hats and polo boots, but Purvis was habitually dressed in dark tweed clothes and a bowler hat. Even on the steamer, and in the heat of the midday sun, he wore the same kit, and walked up and down the deck with an umbrella held over his head. He spoke half a dozen languages, but seemed to think in Spanish, for whenever he spoke quickly or impulsively that was the tongue which he used.

The crew of the steamer was composed of a queer mixture of elements; and, whatever their moral qualities may have been, their appearance would not have been altogether rea.s.suring to a man, for instance, travelling with a good many valuables about him. There was Grant the engineer, who never spoke at all, and who loved his engines with a personal love; Pedro, a man with big, melancholy eyes, half Basque and half Italian; an old Belgian stoker and a n.i.g.g.e.r from South Carolina; and, lastly, John Lewis (or Black John, as he was always called), who came from a Danish West Indian island, and who said he was an Irishman and had been a cabinetmaker.

The little steamer was not uncomfortable. She was a flat-bottomed river-boat, and carried cargoes of hides and other Saladero produce.

There were some live pigs with immense tusks, and some tasajo in the hold, and a raft of pipes of tallow which a hawser towed behind. The boat was supposed to draw only two feet of water, but in her present overloaded state she dragged heavily against the mud in the shallower parts of the river.