George Fenn - Real Gold - A Story of Adventure

“Bother the old fish!”

“Yes; they won’t bite.”

“It’s no good, Perry; they are having their siesta. Let’s get in the shade and have one too.”

“What! in the middle of the day – go to sleep? No, thank you. I’m not a foreigner.”

“More am I; but you come and live out here for a bit, and you’ll be ready enough to do as the Romans – I mean the Spaniards – do.”

“Not I, Cyril, and I don’t believe fish do go to sleep.”

“What? Why, I’ve seen them lie in shoals here, perfectly still; basking in the hot sunshine, fast asleep.”

“With their eyes shut?”

“Gammon! Fish can’t shut their eyes.”

“Then they can’t go to sleep. – My! it is hot. I shan’t fish any more.”

Two boys sitting in a boat half a mile from the shore, and sheltered by a ridge of rocks from the tremendous swell of the vast Pacific Ocean, which to north and south curled over in great glistening billows upon the sand – in the former instance, to scoop it out, carry it back, and then throw it up farther away; in the latter, to strike upon sheer rocks and fly up in silver spray with a low deep sound as of muttered thunder. Away to the west there was the great plain of smooth damasked silver, lost at last in a faint haze, and all so bright that the eyes ached and were dazzled by its sheen. To the east, the bright-looking port of San Geronimo, with a few ships, and half-a-dozen long, black, red-funnelled screw-steamers at anchor; beyond them wharves and warehouses, and again beyond these the houses of the little town, with a few scattered white villas rising high on terrace and shelf of the steep cliffs. The place looked bright and attractive seen from the distance, but dry and barren. Nothing green rested and refreshed the eye. No trees, no verdant slope of lawn or field; nothing but sand in front, glittering rock behind. Everything suggested its being a region where no rain fell.

But, all the same, it had its beauty. More, its grandeur, for apparently close at hand, though miles away in the clear distance, rose the great Sierra – the mighty range of mountains, next to the Himalayas the highest in the world – and seeming to rise suddenly like a gigantic wall right up into the deep blue sky, cloudless, and dazzling with the ice and snow.

The two boys, both of them, though fair by nature, tanned now of a warm reddish brown, were of about the same age, and nearly the same physique; and as now they twisted the stout lines they had been holding round the thole pins of the boat, which softly rose and fell with a pleasant lulling motion, the first who had spoken unfastened the neck-button of his shirt.

“Hullo! Going to bathe?”

“Bathe! No, thankye. I should wake up the sharks: they’d bite then.”

“Ugh!”

“Yes, you may shudder. They grow fine about here. Why, before I’d made a dozen strokes, you’d hear me squeak, and see me go down and never come up again.”

“How horrid! You don’t mean it, though, do you?”

“Yes, it’s true enough. I’m going to have a nap.”

As the boy spoke, he lay back in the stern of the boat, and placed his broad Panama hat over his face.

“I say, Perry, old chap!” he continued, with his voice sounding whistly through the closely-woven hat.

“What?”

“If you smell me burning, wake me up.”

“All right,” said the lad addressed as Perry; and resting his elbows on his knees, he sat gazing up at the huge towering mountain nearest at hand for a few minutes, then:

“Cil!”

“Hullo!” drowsily.

“Don’t go to sleep, old chap; I want to talk to you.”

“I can’t go to sleep if you talk. What is it?”

“I say, how rum it seems for it to be boiling hot down here, and all that ice and snow to be up there. Look.”

“Yes,” said Cyril, “’tis its nature to. I don’t want to look. Seen it before.”

“But how far is it up to where the snow is – a thousand feet?”

“What?” cried Cyril, starting up into a sitting position, with his hat falling off.

“I said how far is it up to where the snow is?”

“I know you did,” cried the boy, laughing, “and you said, was it a thousand feet?”

“Yes, and it was stupid of me. It must be twice as high.”

“Perry Campion, you are a greenhorn. I say: no offence meant; but my dear, fresh, innocent, young friend, that snow is three miles high.”

“Well, I know that, of course. It must be much more to where it is.”

“Sixty or seventy,” said Cyril, whose drowsiness had departed, and who was now all life and eagerness. “The air’s so clear here that it’s horribly deceiving. But I didn’t mean that: I meant that the snow’s quite three miles straight up perpendicular in the air.”

“Nonsense!”

“But I tell you it is. If you were to rise straight up in a balloon from here, you’d have to go up three miles to get on a level with the snow.”

Perry Campion looked fixedly at his companion, but there was no flinching.

“I’m not gammoning you,” said Cyril earnestly. “Things are so much bigger out here than they look.”

“Then how big – how high is that mountain?” said Perry.

“Nearly four miles.”

“But it seems to be impossible.”

“It isn’t, though,” said Cyril. “That one’s over twenty thousand feet high, and father has seen much bigger ones up to the north. I say, squire, you’ve got some climbing to do. You won’t hop over those hills very easily.”

“No,” said Perry thoughtfully. “It will be a climb.”

“I say: whereabouts are you going?”

“I don’t know. Right up in the mountains somewhere.”

“But what are you going for?”

“I don’t know that either. To travel, I suppose.”

“Oh, but the colonel must be going for something,” cried Cyril. “I believe I know.”

“Do you? What?”

“Well, you don’t want me to tell you. I suppose the colonel has told you not to tell anybody.”

“No,” said Perry quickly. “He has not told me. Why do you think he’s going?”

“Prospecting. To search out a good place for a mine.”

Perry looked at him eagerly.

“The Andes are full of places where there might be mines. There’s gold, and silver, and quicksilver, and precious stones. Lots of treasures never been found yet.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that there are plenty of minerals,” said Perry thoughtfully.

“And besides,” said Cyril, grinning, “there’s all the gold and silver that belonged to the Incas. The Indians buried it, and they have handed down the secret of the different places to their children.”

“Who have dug it up and spent it,” said Perry.

“No. They’re too religious. They dare not. They keep the secret of the places till the Incas come again to claim their country, and then it will all be dug up, golden wheels, and suns, and flowers, and cups, and things that the Spaniards never found. That’s it; your father’s going after the treasures. But if he is, you’d better look out.”

“Why?”

“Because if the Indians thought you were after that, they’d kill you in no time.”

Perry looked at him searchingly.

“Oh, I mean it,” said Cyril. “Father has often talked about it, and he says that the Indians consider it a religious duty to protect the hiding-places of these treasures. There was a man took a party with him up into the mountains on purpose to search for them.”

“Well? Did he find anything?”

“Don’t know. Nobody ever did know.”

“How was that?”

“He never came back. Nor any of his people.”