# The Bridegrooms of the Orisquibo

Extracted from Popular Magazine, v61 1921 July 10, pp. 179-190.
The Bridegrooms of the Orisquibo
By Theodore Goodridge Roberts
Author of “Musket House,” “No Chances,” Etc.
Marlow found something much finer in the Orisquibo jungle country than he had set out after
TUCKER, secretary of the Planters' Club, introduced Marlow to Laval. A genial soul was Tucker and, at the same time, the flower of discretion. He knew nothing of the visitors beyond the facts that they looked bored and lonely, that one was from the North and the other from the South and that both had been put up at the Planters' by members notoriously indiscreet in their chance acquaintanceships and offhand hospitalities.
Marlow's sponsor had once introduced an international spy to the club, and Laval's had once extended the club's privileges for a period of three weeks to a professional card sharp. Naturally one had to be careful; and so, neither of the sponsors being present, Tucker introduced the guests to each other in his happiest manner, thus safeguarding resident members, fellow islanders, from the possible risk of social or financial damage and at the same time maintaining his reputation as a genial official.
Marlow and Laval were grateful for the introduction. Laval ceased yawning and Marlow laid aside a month-old number of Punch. They sat before a window overlooking the harbor, with a low table between them.
“Beautiful island,” said Laval. “Salubrious climate.”
“Exactly—but devilish dull,” returned Marlow.
“Oh, deadly!” exclaimed the other, with a gesture of shoulders and hands. “Deadly dull! Health without life! Good for the constitution, like porridge—but of no zest.”
“You have put your finger on it,” said Marlow, with a slow and engaging smile. “What will you drink?”
“Ah! a question not to be lightly answered. The zest of life in this island lies in the drinks. A swizzle, my friend—of the green variety.”
Marlow signaled a waiter and gave an order.
“Excitement is a thing I adore,” continued Laval. “But I do not seek it here. Ah, no! For I have been here before. I travel for rest, for soothing change. I stop off here and there at my sweet whim, perhaps for no more than a swizzle or two, perhaps for a week, perhaps for a month. I look on at life as at pictures in a book. I travel to turn the pages.”
“You are lucky,” said Marlow. “I am not so fortunately circumstanced. Fact is, I am looking for an opportunity to take part in the business of life—and a business part, at that. I seek a commercial opportunity.”
“Commercial? You, sir? Your aspect does not suggest it! A soldier, a rider after the fox, an explorer of the jungle—any or all of these I see in you—but nothing of commerce. The desk, the great ledger, the ink, the closed door—I do not see you in that connection. But success to you, my friend, whatever your path in life!”
“Thanks. The same to you. You're sharp, Mr. Laval. I'm not yet a business man. I know nothing of the game.”
“Ah! Now I understand.”
They dined together a few hours later. They became very good friends. They rode and bathed together next day; and after their sport in the surf, while they lay on their backs in the warm sand and smoked cigarettes, Marlow told Laval all about his commercial aspirations.
W. L. B. Marlow had gone to a good school and distinguished himself as an athlete. He had gone to Sandhurst, where he had displayed dexterity as a swordsman and bayonet fighter, skill and understanding in horsemanship, keenness of eye and steadiness of hand generally and soundness of heart and temper in every situation. But, alas! he had also displayed a lack of comprehension of the intricacies of the science of mathematics which had queered his military ambitions for several years. For a time he had lived at home, playing cricket for his county, hunting, and sitting often with his widowed mother and an uncle in consultation over his moribund career.
Then had come the Great War, into which he had leaped enthusiastically and from which he had emerged, five years later, with a few scars, a complete grasp of the practical branches of the science of holding and hammering hostile forces, and a profounder ignorance than ever of the productive branches of the business of peace. He had emerged in time for his mother's funeral. Things had gone badly with the modest Marlow fortune during the war. The uncle had given Marlow what was left of it—two thousand one hundred and ten pounds, sixteen shillings and sevenpence—and a great deal of advice. Marlow had very wisely decided that the first thing to be done was to get himself and his money out of England.
“I want a living with a bit of excitement in it, physical adventures, don't you know; and I'm afraid this island hasn't what I want,” he concluded.
“You have nailed it on the head, my heroic friend,” said Laval, sitting up and brushing dry sand from his elbows. “There is no business here for so modest an investment or so adventurous an investor. The Orisquibo is the place for your romantic heart and pounds, shillings, and pences. This is so, undoubtedly, Orisquibo! A happy thought!”
“Sounds interesting, like books I read when I was a kid—'The Orchid Hunters' and that sort of thing. Is it a river?”
“Yes, a river—but more than that. It is a country, a wilderness, a jungle, a land of romance!”
“Romance? And you spoke of my romantic heart a moment ago. I'm no monk, Laval, but if there's a bunch of girls in that Orisquibo country—well, it won't do for me, at this particular stage of my career. But perhaps that's not what you mean, old son.”
“Girls?” laughed Laval. “Girls in a jungle! No, my Marlow. A fine country, the Orisquibo, but not so damn fine as that! By the word romance, I mean what you mean, not what you think I mean. Romance of action: The high adventure with nature; the new visions; the chance; the spice of peril, and the lure of mystery. Romance, I bow to her! Had I but the constitution and energy to woo her on the Orisquibo, not now should I be reclining here beside the ocean, but there upon one of her bars of golden sand.”
Marlow sat up.
“That's all very well for a gentleman of leisure like yourself,” he said; “but what about me? Where's the business on the golden sands of the Orisquibo? What's the investment?”
“The investment is in those golden sands,” replied Laval.
“Gold?” asked Marlow.
The other nodded. “Do not fear that I contemplate the sale of a lemon,” said Laval, smiling. “I do not offer you the Orisquibo, for she is not mine to give or to sell. Nor do I tell you a tale of the cock-and-bull variety. I only tell you some things well known to me, in the spirit of friendship.”
“That's very good of you. Both my ears are up. Fire away!”
“It is a country I am familiar with, the Orisquibo country, for it is my native land. My father had interests there. He built a house twenty miles up the river, on a hill; and in that house I was born. He took some gold from the river; he owned much land, also; but he was not a worker, my poor father, nor yet expert at business; and now all belongs to Madame DeSalberry. She is a friend of mine, this madame, and charming—though no longer in any stage of youth. She is a grandmamma. And she holds the key to the Orisquibo country. She is the warder at the gate. He who would dig for gold in the sands of the upper reaches of that river must first pass madame.”
“Well, why not? One has to pass somebody to get anywhere.”
“True. But the gold seeker who seeks on the Orisquibo must have Madame DeSalberry's approval.”
“Does she own the whole river, then?”
“No, only a few miles of it immediately below and above her house. But she is the only rancher in that country, the only navigator of the river, and the sole employer of labor. She is the one source of supply in that region. There is no other trader on the river. There is no town even at the river's mouth. All the boats and skilled boatmen of the Orisquibo are hers. More than this, all the people are under her thumb—the hunters and fishermen of the lower river, who are Indians and blacks and breeds, the coolies and negroes and Indians on her ranch, the rubber hunters, the jungle folk and hillmen of the upper river—all honor and obey every wish of that lady. She is the Queen of the Orisquibo.
“He who would seek for gold on that river must obtain his outfit from Madame DeSalberry or else from the nearest trader on the coast, who is more than one hundred miles away from the golden sands; in which case he must also take in boatmen from the coast; and they do not know the river. And perhaps they would not ascend the river very far—would not, even if they could. For the wild people of the upper waters are not polite to strangers who come without the sanction of Madame DeSalberry.”
“So this precious old lady charges what she pleases, I suppose?”
“What she pleases, yes—but she is honest, even generous, my friend. When the adventurer pleases madame, then it is her pleasure to outfit him at a cost far below the charges of any trader on the coast or on any other river.”
“You have had dealings with her yourself, I take it?”
“Yes—but, like my father, I am not a consistent worker. To live by the sweat of my face is against my nature and beyond my physical ability. However, I am as you see me, neither rich nor poor, looking comfortably on at life.”
“Do you know anything about the other Johnnies who have gone up the Orisquibo with madame's permission?”
“They are few—only six in all. Three are my friends, from whom I occasionally receive letters. Of the other three I have lost the track. Maltby lives in England, where I visited him last year. He is a baronet now and very rich—but I do not say that he found either his title or his riches on the Orisquibo. And Henry Knolton Dodds, of New York. But I do not say that he commenced his great banking business with gold washed from the sands. And there was poor Dick Robinson, who became an earl when his brother died. He lost one leg in the war. There have not been many adventurers on that river of late—six only in twelve years. Madame is very particular.”
“So it seems. Sir John Maltby, Dodds, the international banker, and the Earl of Ribsdale! I have met Maltby and his wife in London. Lady Maltby is even more renowned for her beauty than Maltby is for his pelf. And I have run across Ribsdale in Flanders. Not rich, Ribsdale—for an earl, that is. What is Madame DeSalberry's game? It sounds snobbish to me—if nothing worse.”
Laval shook his head, smiling.
“Is she crazy?” asked Marlow.
Again Laval shook his head, still smiling,
“Does she personally conduct the operations of her chosen gold diggers?”
“No. She supplies you with provisions and laborers and gives you her protection and her blessing—if you are of the right sort.”
“Yes, the right sort—her sort! Then where do I come in? I am not the heir to an earldom, a baronetcy, or a bank. I have already inherited all that's coming to me in that way, and the sum of it now is less than two thousand pounds. My father was a soldier, colonel of an infantry regiment. Both my grandfathers were soldiers and one of my great-grandfathers became a major general and married the youngest granddaughter of a duke. An uncle of mine copped a V. C. in the South African war and died of wounds, and a cousin repeated the trick in the last war. I am proud of my family, Laval—but I don't pretend to qualify for the Orisquibo.”
“But you do qualify, my brave Marlow! The Orisquibo will receive you like a friend; and I cannot think of any other land of promise, of romance, of adventure in the whole world where you and your capital will be so safe as in Madame DeSalberry's country.”
“Safe!” exclaimed Marlow. “Do you think I'm afraid to take chances—or that I am asking for protection—or that I'll consent to being tied to the apron strings of a meddlesome old snob?”
Marlow took ship for the south three days later. His friend, Laval, was with him to the last, and the two parted on the best of terms.
“I hope we'll meet again, old son,” said Marlow. “Don't hold it up against me—my refusal to take along your recommendations and introduction to that lady. I don't object to accepting favors from you, but I do object very strongly to placing myself under obligations to that tuft-hunting dame. I'll try the Orisquibo—a dozen meddlesome madames couldn't stop me—but as my own master! Frankly, I think that you have exaggerated Madame DeSalberry's importance and power.”
“However that may be, I wish you all the luck in the world and all the gold on the Orisquibo, my friend! Adieu.”
Three weeks later, Marlow found himself in a steaming town on the coast of the mainland one hundred and sixty miles to the north of the Orisquibo. There he outfitted. He guarded his tongue against mention of the Orisquibo. Laval's talk of Madame DeSalberry had made so powerful and sinister an impression on his mind that he half suspected every man he met of being an agent of hers. At first he had thought of her as a meddlesome and grasping old woman who had somehow or other blinded that decent little chap Laval to her real character and game. But as the weeks passed the picture of the Queen of the Orisquibo took on startling colors and lines in his mind, and his distaste for her sharpened and darkened to hate.
He coasted southward in a native fishing boat. That was a voyage to kill the zest for tropical adventure in a less heroic breast than Marlow's. The stench and motion of the boat and the glare of the sun were sickening. They played havoc with Marlow's stomach, but they left his heart and nerve undismayed. He went ashore every night with his outfit and all his stores. He carried such money as he had brought with him next his skin. He had two pistols on him day and night, inconspicuously placed—but he knew where to find them quick.
Marlow was within forty miles of the Orisquibo's mouth when one of his three boatmen informed him in villainous English that it was pay day.
“Are we there?” asked Marlow.
“Seexty dollar,” said the boatman, grinning.
Marlow looked at a map with which he had furnished himself in the town. In drawing the map from his pocket he had drawn something else with it, concealed in its untidy folds. From the map he looked at the boatmen, one at a time, then all together.
“We are not at the mouth of the Orisquibo,” he said. “We have still more than thirty miles to go. When there, you shall be paid as arranged—fifty American dollars.”
“Seexty dollar!” cried the skipper of the boat. “You pay heem now, damnation!”
“Damnation is right,” returned the adventurer calmly.
He sat alone in the stern sheets, with one hand in the folds of the map on his knee and the other on the tiller.
“Drop that knife overboard, you, there,” he continued. “And the same with that rusty revolver. Drop it, or you're all meat for the sharks! I have you cold! Mind the sheet there, or I'll hole you! You would, would you!”
The hidden pistol spoke, and a bullet punctured the map and the patched sail. The three boatmen flopped like one man.
“Get up out of that!” commanded Marlow. “Attend to the sheet, you sixty-dollar fellow. Now be good, all three of you, or I'll really shoot at something.”
He shook the map clear of his hand and sat with the blue automatic in open sight. He watched the sail, the men forward, the fellow at the sheet, the coast and the open sea.
“I make leetle joke dat time,” said the skipper.
“Don't do it again,” replied Marlow. “Your next joke will be your last.”
The hours and the coast crawled past and slipped astern. At noon the little sail cast no shade. The boatmen sagged on the bottom boards and the fishy bilge stank to heaven. Marlow sat hunched forward, the tiller under his arm, his deadly right hand on his knee. He looked steadily forward from under his big helmet. Twice he laid the pistol beside him for a few seconds while he picked up and examined the damaged map. Thrice he lit cigarettes. Now and again he drank from his water bottle. Again the sail made a shadow which lengthened gradually. The men sat up and whispered together. They smoked and ate bananas and cassava cakes and a mess of cold salt fish. The skipper offered food to Marlow, but it was refused sharply. And so the glaring day wore on and out.
The sun went down, the wind fell, and Marlow headed in for the surf by the shine of sudden stars. He ordered the sail down and oars out to steady the boat across the sliding hurdles of foam. The men sprang over the bows as the keel touched the sand.
“Run her up!” cried Marlow, standing and lifting his right hand; and the fellows laid hold for fear of their lives and pulled her up beyond the drag of the backwash.
Then Marlow stepped ashore, dry-shod, the damaged map in one fist and the blue pistol in the other, and ordered and superintended the unloading and landing of his bags, boxes, and tent. He had everything carried up to the edge of a thin grove of coconut trees. He rushed the operation with a few telling words and an occasional gesture of the hand, standing motionless himself, halfway between the trees and the thin froth of the tide. The starlight shone on the blue iron in his hand.
When the last package was up, he told the skipper to approach, halted him four yards off and with his left hand tossed a gold coin on the sand at the fellow's feet.
“Five dollars, American gold,” he said.
The skipper picked it up, examined it, pocketed it. Marlow tossed another coin and another, and so on up to ten.
“Ten five-dollar pieces,” he said. “Fifty dollars. Now, clear out of this, you blackguards, or you'll be getting quite a different variety of metal from me.”
“Make sleep here,” said the skipper.
“It'll be your last, long, everlasting sleep, if you try it,” returned Marlow. “Launch your boat and beat it! Get out! Push off!”
“No good wind to-night,” said the other.
“I'll raise the wind for you!” cried the Englishman; and instantly the small weapon in his hand spat fire and a spurt of sand went up at the skipper's feet.
Then the boat was launched at the double and rowed vigorously over the three low, white barriers of surf. There it lay rocking for ten minutes: but at another spit of flame and a skipping bullet, the mast was stepped and the sail hoisted and sheeted home. The small boat sailed well on a beam wind. The wind was off shore, and she ran northward just beyond the outer line of surf.
“A bit more offing would suit me better,” thought Marlow, following her course along the sand; and with two more twitches of his finger he conveyed the idea to the boatmen, who accepted it in a hurry. Marlow returned to his stores, slept for an hour, then took another scout along the shore to make sure that the boat was not working back to his encampment, then went to his blankets again and slept until dawn.
Morning is as sudden as nightfall in those latitudes—a quick flame along the east, an upwelling of green and saffron, wide washes of rose and gold, the paling and vanishing of stars and then the sun on the sea's rim like an open porthole into everlasting glory.
Marlow made a fire of dry twigs gathered from a thicket of whitewood trees and breakfasted on quinine, hard-tack, jerked beef and tea. He took his time over the meal, sitting with his back against the brown stem of a coconut tree and glancing seaward and to right and left in a glow of adventurous anticipation, without misgivings. By his reckoning, he was within five or six miles of the mouth of the Orisquibo; and he congratulated himself on having come so far without accident, realizing that he would already have lost his money, and doubtless his life into the bargain, had he weakened for a moment before the impudent demand of the boatmen. He thought of Laval's warning against the fishermen of the coast and against all the people of the country except those supplied by Madame DeSalberry.
“The little man was right,” he said, lighting a green cigar. “He knows these people and he wishes me well; but the personally conducted tourist adventure isn't my line. I'm this far, safe and hearty; and if I can't make the rest of the trip on my own, I'm a duffer!”
The level sunshine was cool despite its radiance. The wind, which had faltered for a little while just after sunrise, now blew in fresh and steady from glittering sea spaces. Gleaming lines of surf slid shoreward, burst in thin froth on the sand, spread and vanished in bubbles; and ever three new white lines blossomed from the deep to flash and run and vanish. Marlow inhaled the brisk, salty breeze and gazed at the singing surf, planning that he would soon get to his feet and go southward thereon along the sand to the little village of fishermen marked on his map and there hire canoes and canoemen for the ascent of the Orisquibo.
It was all very simple. Should the canoemen show any signs of dishonesty then he would teach them better. A firm hand and a watchful eye were required and both were his, already proved. He would pass the house on the hill without so much as “by your leave.” If the river did not belong to that old woman, then what right had she to police it?
His eyes closed. The green cigar slipped from his fingers and smoldered on the sand. His head nodded, heavy with the gusty music of the surf and the palms. His chin nestled on his chest. He slept.
Marlow awoke suddenly and sprang to his feet at the moment of opening his eyes. His right hand went to his pocket as he made a swift and apprehensive survey of his surroundings—but he did not produce the gun. Instead, he stared in abashed astonishment at the men before him, realizing that he had been entirely at their mercy for minutes, for an hour perhaps. But a minute would have been long enough—a second, even.
The men, six in number, sat on the sand in front of him. They were of the color of roasted coffee beans. They wore hats and scanty cotton drawers. Their noses were high and thin. One wore a shirt; and that was the one who smiled faintly and fleetingly and got lightly to his feet.
“Canoe?” he queried.
Three long dugout canoes lay beached behind him.
“But who sent you here?” asked Marlow. “Whose men are you?”
The spokesman of the six shook his head, placed a finger on his own breast, and said “Poppy,” then turned slightly, pointed southward along the coast, and said “Orisquibo.”
“Orisquibo,” Marlow repeated after him. “Right you are! But how did you know I was here? Who sent you—you and your canoes?”
“Canoes!” exclaimed Poppy, smiling and nodding and holding up his right hand with the thumb and little finger palmed. “Orisquibo,” he added, making motions with both arms as if paddling with desperate energy. Then he said a great deal more, but in a language unknown to the adventurer.
“Can't you talk English?' asked Marlow.
“Inglis?” asked the other, evidently in a haze, but anxious to oblige.
Marlow walked forward to the canoes. Poppy followed him and the five shirtless ones followed Poppy. Marlow pointed to the canoes, one by one, then to Poppy and each of his followers.
“How much?” he asked.
Poppy gazed at him hopefully and anxiously, but finally shook his head. Marlow produced a coin, from his pocket, a silver half dollar, and exposed it between thumb and finger.
“How much?” he asked again, again indicating the canoes and the assembled canoemen. “Orisquibo,” he cried, as an afterthought, waving a hand inland.
Poppy's face lightened with intelligence. He nodded his head, eyed the half dollar intently for a second, pointed at the sun, then at the eastern horizon and then, sweeping a wide arc with his hand, leveled it at the western hills showing low and blue above sultry jungle. All this clearly indicated a day. Marlow nodded. Poppy pointed at the coin, then raised both his hands with all the fingers extended.
“Ten,” said Marlow. “Ten half dollars. Five dollars a day for six men and three canoes; and I had to pay those blackguardly fishermen fifty dollars! This sounds too good to be true—but it's worth a try.”
He nodded to Poppy and pointed to his boxes, bags, and bundles.
Poppy and his five were expert and willing canoemen and efficient servants despite their ignorance of Marlow's mother tongue. They asserted their utter ignorance of English with shaking heads and despairing gestures and yards of gibberish. Marlow pretended to believe them—but he suspected them strongly of being clever liars. More than this, he suspected them of being allies or servants of the mysterious Madame DeSalberry and so robbers as well as humbugs, as likely as not. In his opinion, they were the Queen of the Orisquibo's outer guard. The chances were that they had paddled and cooked and carried for all six of the adventurers mentioned by Laval and could talk English as easily as smoke cigarettes. But those six had adventured on the river with madame's consent! They had doubtless bought their complete equipments and stores from the old woman and paid toll to her in many more ways besides. Marlow wondered what Poppy's instructions were concerning uninvited adventurers.
The mouth of the Orisquibo was wide and its lower reaches were deep and sluggish. Mangroves bordered it; and behind those dismal trees, along both shores, ran savannas of varying depth and interminable length backed by tangled jungles. The village at the river's mouth, the home of the canoemen, was a poor affair.
Noon rests were long; and it was not until close upon sunset of the second day on the river that Marlow sighted the house on the hill from the hindmost of the three canoes. His canoe, Poppy's canoe, was more than a mile below the house when he first made it out. The hill was less of a hill than he had pictured, a wooded mound rising abruptly from the savanna at a distance of half a mile or more from the river. White walls and a red roof gleamed through the trees on the summit.
Marlow sat amidships, facing forward, with his most highly valued possessions stowed in his immediate front and rear. He pointed a hand at the distant house and at the same time looked over his shoulder at Poppy who paddled in the stern.
“Who lives there?” he asked, raising his eyebrows to point the question.
Poppy looked, shook his head, raised his paddle from the water, and struck the haft sharply on the gunwale three times. The steersmen of the other canoes glanced back at the sound. Poppy motioned toward the far side of the river, then dipped his paddle again and swung the bow toward the northern shore. The others followed his example. Poppy put his weight into his work and the bowman did the same. The others also mended their speed. The three long canoes raced for the farther shore nearly half a mile away.
This was not what Marlow had expected. Now if ever was the time for the canoemen to show themselves in their true colors, and yet here they were paddling away from the vicinity of Madame DeSalberry's house as if in fear for their lives. Again Marlow glanced over a shoulder at the headman. He saw that Poppy's face was somewhat distorted by the earnest efforts of the muscular arms; and then, as their eyes met, he read mental as well as physical distress in the coppery visage.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked.
The other did not answer, but continued to dig desperately at the water with his broad blade.
“Here's a queer thing,” reflected Marlow, “This fellow seems to be as anxious as I am to avoid that old woman. This must be an independent lot of rivermen. Looks as if I had fooled the Queen of the Orisquibo this far, at least. First trick to me. Little Laval rather overdrew her importance and vigilance, I fancy.”
Once in the shade of the mangroves on the northern shore, the sweating canoemen again turned their prows upstream—but, taking the pace from Poppy, they continued to ply their paddles as if for a wager. The three canoes slid along in file within a few feet of the brown roots, in a screen of drooping, trailing vegetation.
“The old girl must be a hummer,” said Marlow to himself.
The sun dipped, the brief twilight faded swiftly after it, and the stars appeared. Then Poppy struck on the gunwale again and the canoes slid out clear of the forest screen. The strokes of the paddles slowed as if immediate danger were passed—but it was not until two hours later that Poppy ran his prow ashore with the air of one who has completed a day's work. A fire was lighted and Marlow's hammock and mosquito bar were slung in ten minutes. Odors of coffee and strange cookery soon gave a tang to the stagnant air.
Marlow stretched his legs by walking around the fire a dozen times. After that, he retired to his hammock, and there his dinner was served to him by Poppy's own hands. He ate with relish, took quinine with his coffee, and then lit a green cigar. He felt a sense of security, a thing to which he had been a stranger ever since his departure from the town on the coast. This was due to the sudden change in the attitude of his mind toward his six canoemen. He had seen with his own eyes that they were as anxious as he was to avoid and outwit Madame DeSalberry and her people. Good! He and they were not only in the same canoes but in the same boat so far as the Queen of the Orisquibo was concerned.
They were good canoemen and good cooks, and now he believed them to be honest. So sharp was his distaste for Madame DeSalberry by this time—for his own conception of her—that the fact that Poppy and his fellows were not in league with her was in itself quite sufficient to warm his heart toward them.
Marlow and his party encountered swift water for the first time three days after passing the house on the hill. There was strenuous paddling, a certain amount of towing with ropes, and at one point they were forced to unload the canoes and make a portage. Between the house on the hill and the place of the portage they had met only one small party of river folk and one solitary fisherman. Poppy had talked to these with an air of one confiding secrets of state. They had passed two villages under cover of night, seen the red waverings of fires through the mangroves and heard the barking of dogs.
They came upon the first sand bar five or six miles above that first reach of white water. Marlow, all agog for the life, wanted to unpack there and commence operations immediately. Poppy knew better than that and shook his head and pointed forward. So they passed that bar, and another and yet another. They fought their way into the lower hills, up roaring reaches of swift water. They made five portages in one sweating day. At last Marlow refused to go a yard higher, without first testing the quality of the sand.
Two days of hard work on that bar failed to produce even a glint of gold. Poppy pointed upstream—but Marlow shook his head and went at it again. Next day he got the color—a pinch of coarse gold. He drove himself and the canoemen; and after five days of sweltering toil on that bar he had an ounce of gold.
“It's here, right enough,” said Marlow, “but not in sufficient quantities to constitute a practical business.”
Poppy pointed upriver and Marlow nodded. Camp was struck, and the battle against the swift river was resumed.
There was gold in the sands of the Orisquibo, as Laval had said. The trick was to find enough of it. On the morning after leaving the bar of the laborious and inadequate ounce of gold, they came to the foot of a long reach of black and white water. It was heavier than any rapid through which the canoes had been towed, and yet to carry around it would mean a portage of more than half a mile. For a few minutes the canoes swung in the deep pool where great clots of foam circled slowly, while they considered the way. Then Poppy herded them all ashore, rigged a line to the bow of one, manned the stern himself and set the five to the towing. Marlow followed close behind the towmen, fending the bow of the canoe off the rocky shore with a pole. Poppy kept the narrow craft steady with his weight and broadest paddle—but even so, water was shipped by the tubful. The passage was accomplished at last, however; and after a short rest the second canoe was likewise worked up to comparatively calm water. After another brief rest, the line was fixed to the third and last of the loaded canoes.
For fifty yards all went well with the third canoe. Poppy crouched like a great ape in the wriggling stern, stroking and steadying with his wide blade and shouting directions at the fellows ashore; the five pulled like plow horses; and Marlow jumped along the spray-wet bowlders and fended off the lurching craft as if his whole future depended upon his present agility. And then the unexpected happened, as it so often does on the best regulated expeditions.
The line broke with a crack like a rifle shot. The five fell to earth in a kicking heap; the canoe slid back and swung outward and turned over in the sloshing rapids; and Marlow, suddenly relieved of all resistance to his fending pole, lost his balance and plunged head and shoulders and arms into the river. Marlow pulled back and scrambled to his feet. He saw the canoe plunging sluggishly like a log, articles of his equipment now wallowing on the surface and now smothered in foam, Poppy's great paddle riding the 'ripples,' but neither hair nor hide of Poppy. He turned and followed the course of the canoe for twenty jumps; and then he glimpsed something for a second—a hand and arm suddenly elevated, suddenly immersed again. He tore off his boots and plunged into the river.
Marlow was a powerful swimmer. But now he felt more like a wrestler struggling with snakes and wild cats than a swimmer. His legs were flung one way and his shoulders another. He was pulled down, heaved up, rolled over. But he kept his mouth shut, his wits clear and his eyes open. He caught glimpses of the five on the bank following him down and waving their arms. Again he saw something of Poppy, this time his head of straight, black hair awash for an instant.
He raced straight for it down the twisting currents and dived where he had seen it. He gripped something—hair for a certainty! He held on to it with his left hand and clawed the surrounding smother with his right. He arose through churning depths of brown, green, amber, and white, maintaining his grip all the while on that heavy hair. He reached sunshine for a moment, filled his tortured lungs, renewed his hold on Poppy, and sank again.
After that it was like a fight in an age-long nightmare. He was conscious of the depths and the surface of the deep pool below the rapids. He was conscious of being relieved of his burden and then dragged and lifted ashore; and then all the world went purple and black.
Marlow was absolutely sure of the loyalty of his six canoemen after his daring rescue of Poppy from the river. Every man of them showed it in his manner, his looks and his works—in everything except his speech. They operated again in a place of flashing movement and resounding clamor, in a mist of flying spray, between rocky banks overhung by twisted jungle. Marlow had lost one third of his outfit in the accident in which he had come so near to losing his headman, but he neither drooped nor wavered on that account. He had still enough to go on with for three weeks or more. His tent and the canoe had been salvaged. The loss of the medicine chest was the thing that hit him hardest, for there was all his blessed quinine.
Marlow found gold up there among the waterfalls, specks and grains and tiny nuggets of the fascinating stuff in quantities sufficient to place the venture on a commercial basis. Close upon an ounce was washed one day and something a little better than half an ounce day after day.
Marlow often explored beyond the operations of his faithful six, making his way from jutting rock to rocky ledge, between and around the ripped and plunging channels, testing every rift and pocket of sand among the clamoring menaces.
One day, while working at the edge of a green arc of water, with the steep and jungle-crowned bank looming above his left shoulder, he felt suddenly that he was being observed. He started, glanced up and beheld a face regarding him from the jungle greens and browns. For the time of six amazed heartbeats he beheld it, gazing upward at it eye to eye, and then he lost it. It was gone as though it had never been; and yet he stood staring, wide-eyed, for a full minute.
“It couldn't have been,” he said. “Impossible! My eyes played me a trick.”
But he climbed the bank and blundered around in the dense and snarled growths for half an hour. He returned to the spot from which he had seen the face, bathed his eyes, and set to work again. Here he was using one of the simplest contrivances for the washing of gold-bearing sands, an iron pan. Poppy had taught him the trick of it, and now he was an expert. Squatted at the edge of the swift water, washing the fine brown sand gradually away, the tireless motion of his hands suddenly ceased. He stared at the reduced contents of the pan.
Were his eyes playing tricks with him again? He slid the stuff from side to side slowly, felt it with his fingers, then fell to washing it again with breathless intentness. At last all the sand was washed away and only the gold was left. He poured the precious stuff from the pan to the palm of his left hand. It filled the palm of his hand. From his hand he transferred it with infinite care to a little bag of stout canvas. He weighed the bag in one hand, then in the other. He opened it and peered in at the coarse, irregular gold. It was there, beyond a shadow of doubt. It was real, this gold of the Orisquibo—three ounces of reality, if a grain. And all from one pan!
Poppy found his master still at work four hours later. The circumscribed pocket of sand was almost all washed away, and the little bag contained eight or nine ounces of gold. The sun beat straight down into that narrow place of rocks and torn waters—but despite the heat and Poppy's protests, Marlow continued at his work for another hour. He stumbled several times on his way back to camp.
Marlow emptied the pocket that day, taking sixteen ounces of gold from it in all. Next day he struggled higher, searching every crevice he came to in which there was any deposit of sand or soil. The apprehensive sensation of being observed came to him twice during the morning, and though he looked up swiftly each time at the nearest point in the screen of jungle, he failed to detect either face or eyes of any observer. He wanted to see that face again, and at the same time he was relieved at not seeing it. He feared it because he knew it to be a creation of his own eyes and he longed for it because of its beauty. Again Poppy urged him, with gestures and grimaces, to remain in camp throughout the afternoon—but he refused absolutely; and when the devoted fellow tried to follow him upstream, he drove him back with threats of his dire displeasure.
The sunshine was level from the west and the rocky gorge was flooded with amber twilight when Marlow looked up suddenly and saw the face for the second time. As before, only the face was visible. It shone from the sun-burnished greens and browns of the jungle wall, red-lipped, dark-eyed, alive—as alive as a bird or a flame of fire. Its expression was mutable—abashed, anxious, questioning.
Marlow knew it to be the creature of his own sun-dazzled vision or disordered imagination, and yet it fascinated him like witchery. Its fascination was stronger than that of the river gold—so strong that the pan fell from his hands and lay unheeded at his feet. He knew that he needed quinine, he even suspected that he needed something for his liver; and yet he stood and gazed at the face which he knew to be no face, with unveiled eagerness and delight in his eyes. He moved a pace toward the bank—and the vision was gone!
He sprang forward, leaping blindly but in safety from bowlder to bowlder, clambered up the bank in hot haste and broke violently into the jungle. He laughed derisively at himself as he smashed his way here and there in pursuit of that which he knew did not exist. He felt strangely, crazily exhilarated! But suddenly a sobering dizziness assailed him, the coppery twilight of the jungle changed and darkened to purple against his eyes and he sank to the ground.
Marlow got slowly to his feet ten minutes later, made his way slowly out of the tangle of trees and vines and down the rocky bank, knelt and bathed his face and head and arms in the swift water. He was thus employed when discovered by the trusty Poppy.
No gold had been found that day, either down on the big bar or up among the waterfalls. But Marlow did not care. He tried to, but he couldn't manage it. And he tried to worry about the evident ill condition of his eyes and liver—but that, too, in vain. He felt entirely too hazy and comfortable and airily exhilarated to take such things as health and business seriously. Poppy gave him quinine that night—a biting dose of it in a glass of rum and water. He recognized the bite and he wondered vaguely where Poppy had obtained the drug; but he did not worry. Poppy was a clever fellow and he, Marlow, was a clever fellow. Poppy could find quinine in the wilderness, and he could find beauty where no such beauty existed. He was cleverer than Poppy!
Marlow spent the greater part of that night in a state between sleep and waking, in a haze of visions that were half dreams, half conscious thoughts: But he was up betimes in the morning, clear of head though somewhat tremulous of hand and eager to be alone among the little waterfalls and darting chutes. He remembered the face, but now as a thing unreal, as a dream. All his thoughts now were on the gold.
He got away from camp, shook Poppy off his trail—so he thought—and climbed and scrambled toward the place where his practical labors had ended so suddenly on the previous evening. Within an hour and thirty minutes of leaving camp he was again in the exact spot from which he had last seen the vision of the face. He found his pan as he had left it, overturned on the sand. He rested for ten minutes, then knelt above the overturned pan and lifted it—and there, in the sand that had spilled from it the night before, was gold!
Marlow stared at the color, then he set to work at washing the stuff with feverish haste. Yes, it was here! In this panful, at least. He thrilled with the greedy joy and wonder of it; and then, suddenly, he felt that other thrill. He raised his head and looked up. There it was again, that observant face of witchery! And now there was a light of recognition in the eyes and a suggestion of smiling about the lips.
Again Marlow forgot his mission on the Orisquibo and the vanity of pursuing figments of a fevered imagination; again he dropped the pan, leaped from rock to rock, climbed the bank, and tore his way into the jungle. There sudden weakness and dizziness overcame him again. He retraced his steps painfully, with a weight of weariness across his neck and shoulders, staggered out of the tangle and fell. He clutched at vines, at soil, at knobs of rock—but all in vain.
Poppy carried his master back to camp.
Fever, a touch of sun and a broken head, constitute a combination of physical distresses not to be ignored by even the most robust of adventurers. Marlow made no attempt to ignore or combat the fate which had overthrown him. For the space of several days and nights he failed even to realize it. He lay in his hammock, only dimly conscious.
Nights and days passed uncounted by him. He lived in a world of unreflective, uncontrolled mental activities into which the anxious and vaguely recognized visage of the faithful Poppy swam at intervals. Here were neither doubts nor fears. He delved light-heartedly in golden sands, dived and played in pools of amber water without effort, and ran through endless jungles without fatigue in the pursuit of a face forever appearing and forever vanishing. Once when he was in the borderland, hazily conscious of the hammock and the mosquito bar and the canvas roof, he saw the face above him, gazing down at him. He raised his hand to touch it—and it was gone!
The fever passed, leaving Marlow as weak as a baby and indifferent to everything except his memories of the playtime world from which he had emerged; and in this state he was carried a day's journey down the valley in his hammock. Next morning he was transferred from the hammock to a mattress in Poppy's canoe and the journey was continued. An awning of woven grasses was rigged above him. The canoe was run ashore frequently so that Poppy might feed him with fresh milk and limewater, eggnogs and quinine. He accepted all this as a matter of course for two days—even the fresh milk and the fresh eggs.
On the third day after his transfer from the hammock to the canoe, Marlow began to ask questions and protest at Poppy's highhanded procedure. But for all the effect it had on Poppy, he might better have saved his breath to smoke cigars with.
“What's all this about? Where are you taking me? Where d'you think you're going to? Who the devil told you to come down-river? Take me back, d'ye hear! Wait until I get onto my feet again and I'll teach you a lesson, you wooden dummy! I'll teach you English with a stick, confound you!—and obedience, too, damn your eyes!—and manners into the bargain!
“Where are you bound for? What's your little game? I've got business upriver, d'ye hear? Oh, Lord! if I had my pistols, I'd show you what I mean! Where are my pistols?”
And so on, only more so, every half hour. But Poppy did not so much as bat an eye and the indignant invalid did not once refuse to take his nourishment. An eggnog is an eggnog, especially so if laced with rum aged ten years in a sherry cask and ten years in a jug, whether you are being taken up country or down.
Marlow slept heavily that night.
Marlow awoke in a bed. It was a real bed in a real room. Sheets of fine linen lay beneath him and lightly over him. A door opened and a person in white entered with a tray and came swiftly to the bedside.
“Laval!” exclaimed Marlow.
“Drink this, my dear friend,” said Laval, stooping over him with a long glass.
Marlow obeyed. Then, “Where am I?” he asked.
“In my mother's house,” replied Laval. “My name is Laval DeSalberry—John O'Malley Laval DeSalberry at your service.”
His smile was affectionate, but embarrassed and conciliatory.
“So that's your sort, is it?” returned Marlow. “A liar and a trickster! I don't quite see your game, but I see that I've lost my venture. A safe investment for two thousand pounds! But I didn't bring much of it in with me, you'll be sorry to hear! However, I'm in your power.”
“Not so fast,” begged the other. “Listen to me, my friend; and after that, when you are strong enough, go your own way, up river or down. But now give me your attention. My mother was born on the Orisquibo, but not in this house. Her father's house was in the hills and was shaken down by an earthquake many years ago. Vast wealth of lands and cattle and slaves was his. My mother had brothers and sisters, all older than herself, all born to misfortune. The girls were educated in the cities and married to grandees, with consideration of nothing save family pride. It was the custom of our class and country in those days—but the results were tragic in the cases of my mother's sisters.
“One soon died by her own hand, one fled into shameful oblivion with a lover, and the third retired from the world, took the veil, when her husband was slain in a mad revel by one of her own brothers. Both brothers came to violent deaths. The wrath of Heaven had descended upon the proud and heartless race of DeSalberry. Then came young O'Malley to the Orisquibo country, in search of gold. He saw my mother on the river—a young girl whom her parents had hidden from the world in fear and remorse—the only remaining child of that house.
“There was romance, my friend. There was love without thought of blood pride or worldly place. They were married by a country priest. Fear and grief had humbled my grandparents. Happiness followed, though lands and worldly power dwindled year by year. When the old house was shaken down, burying my grandparents in its ruins, this house was built.
“My mother vowed that no daughter of hers should ever risk such miseries as her sisters had known. She vowed that no daughter of hers should leave home until love had found her on this river. Fate brought Maltby into the country. You have met Lady Maltby. My mother repeated her vows to my father on his deathbed. Governesses and tutors, accomplished and elderly ladies and worthy priests, educated my sisters under this roof. Then came Dodds and Dick Robinson; and in their cases Fate enjoyed my humble assistance. But they passed the tests. Others came, only to depart in ignorance of our family history and my mother's vows. They failed in the tests.”
“Why do you tell this to me?” asked Marlow. “It's madness even if it's true!”
“It is sanity, my honest friend. Only the properties, the stage tricks, give it an air of madness to your English eyes—the quest of gold, the endless river, the mysterious jungle. The old way was madness.”
“Is Poppy one of your servants, may I ask?”
“He is, and one of our best. I sent a message to my mother a week ahead of you, warning her that an honest, fearless, poor, and very independent English gentleman might be expected on the river at any time. I asked her to see that you came to no harm. I warned her that you suspected her of profiteering, perhaps even of robbery under arms, but that your adventurous spirit defied her to keep you from the gold of the Orisquibo. She is as clever as she is good, my mother. So she sent Poppy and his men down to the coast, with artful instructions. They found you asleep, with three fellows from the north creeping upon you with knives. The three fled. As for the rest, you know more than I do.”
“Granted that all this is true, what do you want of me?”
“Nothing, my friend. When you are strong enough you may take Poppy and the others and return to your work among the waterfalls, or you may go down to the coast. The river and the labor of the river are at your disposal, for you have passed the tests of the river. Your gold and outfit are safe. You are your own master, my dear Marlow; and I really believe that your successes up in the foothills warrant further operations in the same locality. I congratulate you, my friend.”
“All this is dashed decent of you, Laval—and I'm sorry for the rude things I've thought and said about Madame DeSalberry. I've made rather an ass of myself, I fear. I'd have behaved differently if you had told me the whole truth back in Bados, perhaps.”
“Would you have come to the Orisquibo if I had told you the whole truth?”
“No! You're right, Laval. I wouldn't have come within fifty miles of it, and I'd have thought you a liar, and worse, into the bargain.”
“True, my friend—so I did what I could.”
“It still seems madness to me—but mighty decent! May I ask—just curiosity, you understand—if you—ah, have a sister—unmarried?”
“Yes, indeed. The youngest. Natella.”
“Then I'll clear out in a day or two. Only thing to do under the circumstances, of course.”
“You are free to stay or go, my friend. As for Natella—ah, I must speak seriously to her! She has led me to believe that you are already madly in love with her. I warned her that it was more likely an affection of the eyes than of the heart, due to the sun and the poison of fever.”
Marlow raised himself on an elbow, his heart and brain thrilled by an amazing, bewildering suspicion.
“What do you mean?” he whispered. “Have I ever seen her?”
The other laughed gayly.
“You have pursued her into the jungle on several occasions,” he answered. “She didn't want to run away from you, but her governesses dragged her away.”
Marlow sank back on his pillow and lay silent for a full minute.
“Do I have to clear out?” he asked in a faint voice, staring straight up at the ceiling.
“My boy, my advice to you is to stick to the Orisquibo,” replied Laval briskly. “Now I shall bring your breakfast.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1953, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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