Swift and Sure Part 1

SWIFT AND SURE.

by Herbert Strang.

PREFACE

Exactly a century has pa.s.sed since the French invasion of Spain gave the signal for a general revolt of the Spanish-American Colonies. In the twenty years' struggle that ensued, Spain paid in kind for more than three centuries of Colonial misrule. Her garrisons, again and again reinforced from the mother country, fought a losing fight, with the old-time Spanish gallantry that had won for Ferdinand the Empire of the West. But the tide of freedom swept them remorselessly from one province after another, and with them went the swarms of corrupt officials who since the days of Cortes and Pizarro had plundered the colonies for the benefit of the Spanish treasury.

In the northern provinces the leading spirit of revolt was Simon Bolivar, a man whose many faults of character were obscured by an extraordinary energy and enthusiasm. He is said to have fought four hundred battles; his victories were sullied by inhuman barbarities; his defeats were retrieved by unconquerable perseverance. Bolivar was instrumental in founding five republics, among them that of his native province of Venezuela, of which he was the first President.

Ten years of one of the grimmest struggles known to history gave freedom to Venezuela and her sister republics; but in the north, as in many other parts of the Continent, freedom has for the past century spelt, not liberty, but licence. Centuries of slavery, in fact if not in name, had rendered the mixed races of South America unfit for self-government.

The ma.s.s of the people merely exchanged one set of corrupt rulers for another; the history of the South American Republics has been for the most part a chronicle of incessant civil war between the partisans of rival dictators. Venezuela has in this respect one of the saddest records. Since Bolivar, her first liberator, died in exile eighty years ago, she has enjoyed scarcely five consecutive years of peace. Although blessed with boundless natural resources, the country is probably the most backward of all states that can claim a place among civilized nations. The population of Venezuela is believed to be less at the present time than during the Spanish domination; and it is doubtful whether the condition of the people has been sensibly bettered by a hundred years of self-government.

The best hope for this and other South American republics seems to be in the gradual opening up of the Continent by the capital and enterprise of more progressive communities. This movement has. .h.i.therto been checked by the insecurity of life and property due to constantly recurring revolutions. But sooner or later trade and commerce, one of the greatest of civilizing agencies, must bring the nations of South America into such close relationship with Europe and the United States that they cannot fail to recognize the value of stable political inst.i.tutions.

This recognition will be the first step towards what the wars of independence should have given, but did not give them--liberty.

HERBERT STRANG.

CHAPTER I--JAGUAR AND HYDROPLANE

The level rays of the early sun were struggling with the mist that lingered upon a broad full river, like a sluggard loth to quit his bed.

As yet the contest was unequal, for the banks of the stream were covered with trees and shrubs, crowding upon one another as if in compet.i.tion for elbow-room, through whose thick ravelled foliage the sunbeams could not clear a way. Here and there, however, the dense screen was parted by little alleys or open s.p.a.ces carpeted with gra.s.s or moss, and through these a golden radiance shone, dispersing the mist, and throwing a glistening pathway across the river.

At one such glade, withdrawn a little from the brink, stood a jaguar, which, from moment to moment, lifted its head and gave utterance to a roar. It faced the stream: its tail lashed its flanks, to the annoyance of countless flies which would fain have found a temporary lodgment in its sleek and glossy coat. It roared, and roared again, with curious persistence, for the mere pleasure of roaring, an observer might have thought. And yet such a person, had he been worthy of the name observer, would have detected a reason for this strange behaviour. Had he watched the surface of the water opposite to where the jaguar stood, he would have marked a gradual a.s.sembling of greenish-yellow objects, scaly and hard; and, set in each, two gla.s.sy leering eyes. They were in fact the snouts of alligators, or caymans as they are known in Venezuela.

Moment by moment the a.s.semblage increased, the hideous creatures gaping at the jaguar like an enraptured audience at a popular baritone. The quadruped, indeed, was executing his solo for their amus.e.m.e.nt, though hardly for their benefit. One could have fancied, as the audience grew, that he derived encouragement from their presence, and exerted himself with ever greater abandon. The performance, however, came to an end surprisingly abrupt. Suddenly the roarer turned his head up-stream and set off with lolloping gait along a winding track that led among the trees. The observer, following him, would have seen him force his way through the undergrowth, now leaping a fallen trunk that lay across his path, now pressing his body through a tangle that might have seemed impenetrable.

Meanwhile the caymans also had turned upstream, and swam after the jaguar, like an idle crowd following at the heels of a street singer.

But though their movements were rapid, they had to stem the current, and the object of their solicitation drew away from them. Nor did he stop to practise his vocal powers again. Steadily he pursued his way until he had left them a mile or more behind. Then, compelled to strike off to the left by a peculiarly dense ma.s.s of thorn, he quitted the brink of the stream for a few yards. Coming upon it again through a glade, he looked warily about him, advancing with slow and stealthy tread. It was at this spot that he purposed to cross the river. All at once he stopped short, and sinking to the ground, lay motionless, scarcely distinguishable from the jungle around him, so closely did his colouring harmonize with it. In a few moments, with the silent undulating movement of a cat stalking a bird, he crept forward. No caymans were near; having attracted them by his vocalization he had left them in the lurch, and was content. But on a branch of a tree overhanging the river he had spied the form of a dark-skinned man stretched at full length.

The hunted was now the hunter. The reptiles had lost their victim; he in his turn was intent on seizing his prey.

The man lay close upon the branch, his eyes fixed upon some object on the farther bank, a little distance up-stream. The tree being rooted in the base of the bank, which here rose a few yards above the river, the jaguar was somewhat higher than the man, stretched all unsuspecting upon a lower bough. Noiselessly, without so much as a rustle, the animal glided down the face of the bank, and coming to the tree, began to climb up the slanting trunk behind his destined victim. No ear could have detected his furtive movements; the man's attention was absorbed by the object of his gaze; yet, when the beast was only a few feet from him, some instinct warned him of impending danger. He turned his head, and beheld the savage creature crouching for a spring. Quick as thought, the man rolled himself round the branch, and dropped with a heavy splash into the river. The jaguar was already launched in air when the man let go his hold, but instead of striking his prey, he lighted on the vacant branch. The force of his spring was too great to be checked by the grip of his claws upon the bark. He lost his footing, and fell plump into the water where it still eddied from the plunge of the man.

A hundred yards up the river, moored to a tree-stump in the further bank, lay a motor-boat of unusual shape. Its only occupant, a young white man, in the act of casting off, had looked up when he heard the first splash. Before he could see what had caused it, the jaguar tumbled headlong from the branch. With the instinct of a sportsman, the young man instantly stretched his hand towards the rifle that lay at his side, only to draw it back as he remembered that the charge was small shot. The head of the jaguar appeared above the surface; the white man wondered what had caused the first splash, but seeing the animal swimming downstream he was not specially interested, and was on the point of lifting his mooring-rope on board when he suddenly caught sight of a black head on the surface, a little beyond the jaguar. It was the head of a man swimming desperately towards the nearer bank.

Will Pentelow was interested enough now. The jaguar also had seen the swimming man, and with a low snarl started in pursuit. There was little chance of the swimmer gaining the bank before the beast. Even if he did, it would merely be to fall a prey. Flinging the rope into the bottom of the boat, Will pressed the lever. The little vessel started, and, a.s.sisted by a four-knot current, rapidly gathered way. But the man and the jaguar were also helped by the current, though they were swimming diagonally across the stream. They were so near to each other now that Will doubted whether, at the full speed of the engine, he could overtake them in time to intervene. If he fired, the spreading of the shot would injure the man as well as the beast. Our observer would certainly have concluded that the swimmer was doomed.

Suddenly, however, the boat shot forward with marvellous velocity. The bow, or rather the platform at the forepart, rose clean out of the water, and the vessel seemed to skim along the surface. Fast as the jaguar was overhauling the man, the vessel was still faster closing in upon the jaguar. Will steered straight upon the tawny head. The boat appeared to fly along.

Hitherto the jaguar had been so intent upon his victim as to be oblivious of all else. Even the whirring of the propeller had not struck upon his senses. But when no more than three yards separated him from the man, he became suddenly aware that he in his turn was pursued.

He turned half round, to see a rushing monster almost upon him. In another instant there was a heavy thud; the boat quivered from stem to stern, but with no perceptible slackening of speed pa.s.sed clean over the spot where the animal had been.

A few moments more, and the hydroplane was floating on the water like an ordinary boat. Looking back, Will saw the swimmer scramble up the bank.

Almost opposite him was the jaguar's head, bobbing up and down on the surface. The impact of the vessel had broken the creature's back.

Immediately the Indian caught sight of it, he rushed along the bank in pursuit. The animal disappeared, but emerged again a few yards lower down. Then the man drew a knife from his belt, and plunged into the river. A few strokes brought him level with the carcase, and catching it by the ear, he drew it after him to the bank.

Meanwhile Will Pentelow had turned his vessel round, and, driving her against the current, came opposite to the Indian just as he reached the bank. The ground was steep and slippery, and the man was unable to drag the huge body out of the water. Will glanced all round with a caution born of familiarity with this haunt of caymans; but reflecting that the hydroplane would have scared away any of the dread reptiles that might have been lurking near, he threw out an anchor, and waded to the a.s.sistance of the Indian. Together they heaved the carcase out of the water and threw it on the bank. Then they looked at each other.

CHAPTER II--THE HACIENDA

William Pentelow was one of those boys who make up their mind early what they are going to be, and work steadily towards this settled aim. The son of a professional man of moderate income, he was sent to a well-known London day-school, showed no special promise for a year or two, but after his first lesson in mechanics declared that he must be an engineer, and from that time made rapid progress in science. His father recognized his bent, and sent him to the Heriot Watt College, where he was thrown among young fellows of many different nationalities, a circ.u.mstance that had two results: it caused him to think for the first time of going abroad, and it gave him opportunities of picking up a certain knowledge of foreign tongues. With French and Spanish he was soon at home; German bothered him; he was making strides in Hindostani when a sudden offer launched him on his career.

A friend of his father was superintending the building of a railway in Venezuela, for a British company engaged in working asphalt mines.

Originally they had sent their products by barge along a tributary of the Orinoco, down that great river itself, and thus to sea. But after the company had been in existence for some years, the Jefe of the province of Guayana, by indirect means in which the South American official is an adept, secured a monopoly of the navigation of the tributary in question, and at once levied exorbitant transit dues on the only people who used it as a commercial waterway--the asphalt company.

The directors put up with this extortion for a time. Then the accession of a new president drove matters to a climax. This President, unlike almost every other ruler of Venezuela from the time of Bolivar, aimed, not at enriching himself and his clique, but at purifying the public life of the country. One of his first administrative acts was to dismiss the Jefe of Guayana, a notoriously corrupt official, who immediately set about making good his loss of income by doubling his fees to the asphalt company. This was more than the Company could stand. The directors made a vigorous protest to Government, but the Jefe was acting strictly within his legal rights, and there was no redress. The upshot was that the Company obtained a concession for a branch railway line, to run from their mines, along the right bank of the Jefe's river, to a junction with the trunk line about fifty miles distant. The work was immediately put in hand; the services of Mr.

Pentelow's friend, Mr. George Jackson, were engaged as chief of the construction staff; and just before sailing, Mr. Jackson bethought himself of young Pentelow, now near the end of his pupilage, and offered him his first job. Will accepted with alacrity. The opportunity of gaining experience and at the same time seeing a foreign country was too good to be neglected. He sailed with Mr. Jackson, and had been several months in Venezuela when our story opens. Forty miles of the railway had already been completed, and was in use for the carriage of asphalt, this being conveyed to railhead from the mines on mules. The Company had ceased to pay dues to the ex-Jefe of Guayana, whose monopoly was now not worth an old song.

Will's only regret in leaving England was the interruption of his hobby.

He had been for some time enthusiastically interested in motor-boats, and when Mr. Jackson's sudden offer came, was in the midst of experimenting with a hydroplane. This he had to leave behind. But he had not been long in Venezuela before he found an opportunity of taking up his hobby again. The labourers on the railway, a strangely a.s.sorted crowd of Spaniards, Spanish-Indians, Indo-negroes and other mongrels, were scrupulous in one matter: the observance of holidays. Saints' days and festivals were numerous, and on these all work stopped. Finding himself thus with plenty of spare time on his hands, Will turned it to account. In Caracas one day he picked up a petrol engine, very light and at the same time of considerable horse-power. It was part of a motor-car which a wealthy Venezuelan had imported from New York. One break-down after another, imperfectly repaired--for the Venezuelans are notoriously bad mechanicians--had disgusted the owner of the car, who was glad to sell it for a mere trifle. Since the car was useless outside Caracas--and indeed inside the city, for the matter of that, the paving of the streets being remarkably primitive--Will removed the engine, conveyed it to the head-quarters of the branch railway, and with the a.s.sistance of a handy man on the staff, by name Joe Ruggles, adapted it to a hydroplane which he built himself. The basin of the Orinoco is so much intersected by rivers and streams of all sizes that the new railway was at no point very far from a watercourse deep enough to float the vessel. The constantly recurring fete days gave Will many opportunities of indulging his hobby, on which he was the object of much good-humoured banter among his colleagues.

The boat, as Will had to confess, was a somewhat rough and ready affair.

It was not the kind of thing that would be turned out at Thorneycroft's, and it would no doubt have been regarded with a sniff of contempt by a professional boat-builder. In its essentials it was a kind of punt, the flat bottom being fitted with planes inclined at an angle, so that when the propelling force was sufficient, the forward part of the boat was raised out of the water, skimming along the surface instead of cutting through it like an ordinary boat. The crew and engines were accommodated aft, this disposition of the weight facilitating the skimming action on which the speed of the vessel depended. Although some twenty-four feet long and eight feet in beam, her draft at rest was only a few inches. As Ruggles was accustomed to say, she could go anywhere if the dew was heavy enough. For the hull Will used a light steel framework covered with very thin planking. A boat-shaped windscreen, pierced for two ventilators intended to cool the engines, gave shelter to the crew, a very necessary precaution when the boat was moving at high speed.

Will's princ.i.p.al difficulty lay in converting his engine to this new use. The driving shaft he found answered admirably as a propeller shaft, the bevel wheels he melted in a crucible to form a propeller. The latter he had to cast himself, making a pattern, moulding it in sand, and pouring the melted bra.s.s into the mould.

The petrol was stored in a tank accommodated under the back seat. Will found that some twelve gallons gave him a speed of about forty knots for a four hours' run, which was quite enough for any ordinary expedition.

For a hundred and fifty miles above Ciudad Bolivar, Will soon knew most of the princ.i.p.al tributaries of the Orinoco. In fact the only limit to his expeditions lay in the capacity of his petrol tank, but even this he could supplement on occasion by taking with him a number of extra cans.

He had of course one or two exciting experiences; these were inevitable in navigating tropical rivers at a speed of forty knots. More than once the blades of his propeller were injured by half-submerged logs. After tinkering at them some hours on the bank of a creek or river, he would return at four knots to the place from which he had started at forty.

These, however, were merely exhilarating incidents; they lent just that spice of risk that made the sport thoroughly enjoyable.

Such risks were due to great speed, but there were occasions when in this very speed lay safety from disaster. One day, having a longer holiday than usual, Will ran down nearly to the mouth of the Orinoco.

While going easy at some twenty knots he saw what looked like a bank of water stretching right across the river ahead of him. It did not need a second glance for him to recognize that a tidal wave was sweeping up the river, and threatening to engulf him within a few moments. Before he could bring the hydroplane round, the ma.s.s of water, moving at tremendous speed, was almost upon him. He had perhaps five seconds to spare, and drove the hydroplane at its hardest. For a moment it seemed to him that the issue hung in doubt, a very unpleasant moment, as he afterwards confessed. Then the vessel began to draw away, and the immediate danger was over. But for ten or fifteen miles he thought it wise to keep a respectful distance between himself and the tidal wave, which followed him, although at a gradually diminishing speed. Since then he had avoided the Orinoco itself, and limited his excursions to the tributaries within easy distance of the advancing railway.

We left Will on the bank of the river, the Indian before him, the dead jaguar at his feet. The Indian glanced at his rescuer with a timid, hunted look; then, as if rea.s.sured, began to thank him in harsh imperfect Spanish. Will had perceived at once that the man was not one of the workers on the railway.

"Where do you come from?" he asked.

The hunted look returned to the man's eyes. He glanced nervously up and down the river, and towards the opposite bank. Lifting his hand, he described a half-circle with it in the air.

"But where is your home?" Will asked again.

"I have no home, senor," muttered the Indian. "It was burnt with fire."

"How was that?"