The Curse of the
Cardews
Or
After Three Hundred
Years
By W. Murray Graydon
Digitized from https://trove.nla.gov.au/ This
is part one of a twenty part series. It was never published in book form. The
scans of the 111 year old newspapers do not go through OCR well so I doubt that
I will be digitizing the other 20 parts. I was attracted to this story because
of the references to British Guiana (Guyana). It could be a great read but time…/drf
Author of “The Blackmailers,” “Reaping the Whirlwind,” “The Heir of the Loudouns,” Etc.
From Northern Argus newspaper, Clare, SA,
17 April 1908.
PART I. THE CURSE.
No peace nor joy nor quiet life
Shall male heir of Cardew know.
But bitter cup and bloody strife
Shall spirit crush and pride bring low.
Cardew, if thou the curse would spurn,
To earth Torrana’s dust return.
CHAPTER I. WHITHER FATE LEADS.
“Hello, Gordon! I haven’t seen you for an age. Where are you bound for in
such a hurry?” and the speaker, a middle-aged individual with a complexion
burned to the colour of his own coffee-berries, leaned over the gate to wave an
inviting hand.
“Going to England, Jim,” the
other responded.
“The deuce you are! You don’t
mean it? Lucky dog, if you’re telling the truth. But stop and have a drink.”
“Not now, old man. I’ll see you
to-morrow or at the Tower House to-night. So long!”
Salutations
and questions similar to the above—they were answered in much the
same way—continually hailed the popular and genial planter from up-country,
Gordon Ferguson, as he drove his dusty cart and span of vicious-looking mules through
the suburbs and into the main thoroughfare of Georgetown, Demerara, which
thriving port, at the mouth of the Demerara River, is, as every one knows, the
capital of British Guiana.
Ferguson was a vigorous man of forty, with plain and honest
features, and kindly blue eyes that sometimes reflected, in his lonely hours,
the memory of the sorrow that had clouded his life years before. As we shall see more of him
hereafter, let it suffice for the present to say that he had owned and
conducted a sugar plantation in Guiana since his youth, and that he had recently
decided to pay a visit to the old country—the first
since he left home—owing to economically successful crops during the past two
seasons.
He was as enthusiastic as a boy over the prospect, and his heart
was held with bright anticipations. It was near the end of February, and the
sunset glow, flashing through the forests of the west, heralded that pleasant
hour when Georgetown turns from business to idleness and troops out of doors to
enjoy the evening air. The grey roofs of the town, half-buried amid palm trees and
luxuriant vegetation, looked very attractive to the toil-worn planter, fresh
from the wild solitudes of the interior, as he drove along broad, quiet
avenues, between detached houses, standing in spacious gardens and a double row
of trenches, in which blossomed the Victoria Regia lily. He entered
Water-street, lined with the warehouses of English, Scotch, and European
merchants, and heard the strains of the band playing in the Botanical Gardens
and caught a glimpse of carriages poking to and fro on the sea wall, before he
finally drew up at the hotel known as the Tower House.
“Take the team to the staples.
Sambo,” he said to the black servant who came forward to relieve him. “My
manager will call for it next week. Thank goodness, I’ve seen the last of it
for a month or two.” he added to himself.
Ferguson followed his luggage
indoors, and after a bath and a change of clothes, he emerged again as the
swift, tropical twilight was falling. Stepping round to a shipping office near
by, he greeted the single occupant, a clerk, who was writing at a high desk, in
tones that implied old acquaintance.
“As hard at
it as ever. Tom. Can you wake up long enough to tell me if you’ve got an empty berth on the Royal Mail steamer
that leaves day after to-morrow?”
“Hello,
Ferguson! You’re quite a stranger. You want a berth—eh? Not leaving us?”
“I’m going home on a visit—home to God’s own country, which
is England.”
“Right you are. Glad of it. The trip will do you good.” and
Tom Kingdom glanced wistfully at the man in whose shoes he longed to stand, “Wait
a moment,” he added, “and I’ll talk to you.”
“But the berth?”
“Oh. I’ve got one; don’t worry.”
The clerk bent
over his writing, and Ferguson, turning carelessly to the maps and photographs
that hung on the wall, discovered something that instantly arrested his
attention and brought an exclamation of astonishment to his lips. It was a
placard in large print—he could read it by the light of a smoky lamp—offering a
reward for a certain Juan Rivera, a Spaniard, who had escaped from the convict
settlement at the Mazaruni River. A description of the missing man, meagre and
unsatisfactory in its details, was appended.
“By Jove! when did Rivera get away?” gasped Ferguson.
“A fortnight ago,” replied the clerk.
“And have they caught him yet?”
“I believe not. He is supposed to have fled towards New
Amsterdam. I wish he would come this way, and into my office; but there’s no
such luck. Isn’t Rivera the chap who stabbed the Dutch Consul?”
“Yes; and it
got him a sentence of fifteen years,” replied Ferguson, speaking in an odd voice
and with a painful look of reminiscence in his eyes.
“He was a bit of a swell, wasn’t he?”
“So I’ve
heard, and it was probably true. He came out here with a pot of money,
squandered it all, and then started to drink, and gamble. It was said that he belonged
to an ancient and respected family in Spain, and that his real name was Morrana,
or Torrana, or something like that. I curse the day I ever” —Ferguson broke
off abruptly. “I left home two weeks ago. I’ve been
visiting friends on the way down,” he went on. “Rivera owes me a grudge, and I shouldn’t
wonder if he has been hanging round my place. I testified against him at his
trial.”
“Well,
they’re pretty sure to catch him sooner or later,” said Tom Kingdom as he rose
from the desk. “Have a drink, old man, will you?”
He led
the way to
a back room,
and
had just taken glasses and a bottle from a closet when he was called out by
footsteps in the office.
“What
can I do for you?” Ferguson heard him ask,
and the low-spoken reply, “I want a passage on your
next steamer,” reached him as distinctly. It was a familiar voice —a voice from
out of the dead
past— and Ferguson started as he put down the bottle he had picked up. Looking
through a crack of the door, he saw a tall, apparently middle-aged man, with an
olive-tinted complexion and black beard and moustache, wearing a suit of grey
flannels, spectacles, and a broad-brimmed Panama hat with a brown and scarlet band.
“Much too old,” he told himself. “No, it can’t be. The fellow is a
stranger. And yet”—
The next
instant he had flung the door wide and dashed into the office. “You scoundrel,
you have been robbing my house!” he cried, “Those are my clothes, my hat!”
He grabbed
at the visitor’s beard, and it came away in his hand. As quickly he tore off spectacles
and hat, and suspicion became certainty.
“Juan
Rivera!” he exclaimed.
The Spaniard, now revealed as a young and handsome man of
twenty-seven or twenty-eight, muttered an oath and whipped out a knife. But his
arm was promptly struck up by Kingdom, and thus foiled of his murderous
purpose, he turned and took to his heels before either of the two could seize
him.
“After him!”
cried Ferguson.
“Help!
Police!” cried the clerk. “Rivera! Rivera! Catch him!”
Though Water-street was thronged with people at this hour,
and the meaning of the clamour from the shipping office ran like wildfire among them, the
escaped convict got safely across, knocking down two lads who tried to stop
him. A loud hue and cry rose behind him, and an excited mob of men and boys
were pressing at his heels as he dived into a side thoroughfare, whence we will
follow him on his desperate race for freedom.
Bitterly did Juan Rivera repent the impulse that had
prompted him to steal wearing apparel from the wardrobe of his hated enemy, and
still more bitterly did he regret his folly in trusting his disguise to the
chances and hazards of Georgetown. His overwhelming confidence, the belief that
his very daring would enable him to sail with impunity by a Royal Mail steamer,
was likely to cost him dear. Straining every, nerve, he sped on, and
fortunately his aimless course took him into the comparatively quiet and dark
residential neighbourhood. He twisted and doubled, swerved from right to left,
and finally, when he had out-distanced his foes and was at the point of exhaustion,
he climbed with difficulty to the top of a six-foot wall and dropped
into an extensive garden on the further side,
He lay
there, breathing heavily, until his pursuers had rushed by the spot and were
seeking him beyond. The night had now fallen, and to that he owed his good luck
so far. He presently rose, his fertile brain scheming and planning, and having
crept through dense, shrubbery and trees, he emerged close to a large
two-storeyed house, where a single light was visible in an upper room. He
crouched low again as a man and a woman passed quickly down the gravel walk,
conversing audibly. They were evidently going to discover what the noise meant.
“We must not
leave the poor fellow long.” said the woman. “He has been writing all the afternoon,
and the effort has exhausted him. I am afraid the end is near.”
“I fear so,” assented The man.
“It is
very sad, Charles, but it would have been more so had he been
left to die in that wretched hovel. I am glad we took him in.”
The voices
and footsteps faded away, and Rivera stood up.
“I won’t be
taken alive,” he vowed, “Any death rather than to return to
that hell on the Mazaruni. I must hide for a time. And perhaps I can obtain a
fresh disguise yonder. Apparently there is no one at home but a sick man.”
He cautiously approached the house and finding the door
locked, he gained admission by an open window. From
the hall, where not even a cloak or hat was hanging, he mounted to
the upper floor, and paused on the threshold of a rear room. He glanced within,
hesitated, and then entered, with noiseless steps. His fierce
passions were subdued by what he saw; for the
moment he forgot his perilous plight.
A
dimly-burning lamp revealed a young man—he was well under 30 —stretched on
a narrow bed. His eyes were closed, his shrunken features were the hue of wax,
and his breathing was so faint that it could barely be detected. He was evidently
at the point of death. The fingers of one lean hand clutched a pen, and on a
table by his side were ink, paper, and an open envelope, the latter addressed
to a London solicitor.
“I might be worse off,” thought Rivera.
“At least I have a chance.”
Impelled by
curiosity, he examined the envelope. The sheets within, written in a
weak but legible hand, contained a confession. The dying man, it appeared, had
been a clerk of the aforesaid solicitor. With a key made from a wax impression
he had opened a client’s box, transcribed a copy of a valuable paper, and fled
with it to British Guiana. There a fatal
illness had seized him, and in his last moments he desired to atone for his sin. He had burned the paper, he
declared, and his knowledge of the secret it might have guided him to—a secret
that explained the theft and flight—would perish with him.
The convict
read on, oblivious to everything else. The pathetic, penitent sentences burned
into his brain, thrilled him as if each word was a pin-prick.
‘‘Miguel
Torrana!” he muttered. “My ancestor! What can this mean?”
The revelation, dawning by
degrees, burst suddenly upon him in its entirety. His mind went back to his
childhood and early youth, to a family legend that had grown dim and
disreputable through centuries of repetition. Spurred memory woke almost forgotten names and places, and he marvelled at the
strange fate that had led him to this house— to this chamber of death.
“It is an omen,” he told himself, “It bids me
hope and endeavour.
By heavens, I will escape I will foil my enemies, throw them
off the track and win the golden heritage
that is mine by right. There are difficulties to be met, but I will conquer them.
If any cross my path—and there is a
likelihood of that—let them beware. To England
first, and then”—
A noise downstairs—it was a key turning in
a lock—startled
Rivera to a sense of his danger. “You have given me something to live for.” he
said, softly, with a glance at the dying man: and thrusting envelope and confession
into his pocket, he swung from the window at the end of the room and
dropped to the ground.
By a rear garden and a gate he came to a quiet street. He
walked leisurely on, seeking his bearings while he listened to the confused
clamour that he was bareheaded, that he had left the house empty-handed; until
a native policeman sprang from hiding in front of him, brandishing a cudgel.
“You black dog!” yelled Rivera.
His knife flashed
out. He struck at and missed the terrified negro, darted past him, and was off
like a hare. One pursuer was bawling at his heels, and eager voices were catching
up the clamour on all sides of him. The mischief was done and he knew the odds were
desperate, but his hot Spanish blood sustained his courage.
“If I can
only get out of the town!” he thought.
The hue and cry rang
nearer. His foes headed him off right and left, badgered and worried him like a
pack of yelping curs; and at last, having been driven along the only way that
was open to him, he broke cover on the broad avenue skirting the sea, and saw
the harbour and the shipping melting before him into the dusky shroud of the
night.
Escape was impossible,
one would rightly have said. The fugitive was hopelessly cornered, but he
leaped on to the parapet, and for a moment stood defiantly at bay, knife in
hand, facing the shouting mob that was closing on him from three sides. Then he
turned and dived head first into the water. A splash,
followed by a white swirl twenty feet out. That was all. The quarry had baffled
the pursuers in the flush of their triumph, and they could only stare,
helplessly into the darkness, some with angry imprecations and some with
grudging meed of admiration.
Boats were
hastily procured. For half the night they pulled to and fro, and at daybreak
every craft in the harbour was searched. But of Juan Rivera no trace was found,
and it was generally believed—even Ferguson did not doubt—that he had been devoured by
the hungry sharks infesting the vicinity.
CHAPTER II. THE HEIR TO
BEACHCOMBE.
Between ten and eleven o’clock on a mild and fragrant April
evening, when London streets and squares were bathed in a flood of moonlight
that was a fitting accompaniment to the opening of the season, a man in a soft,
hat and a long-overcoat walked slowly past a West-end mansion. Soft strains of
music fell on his ear, and shadowy forms, like the figures of a
biograph, moved behind the window blinds. He cursed them under his breath.
A carriage drew up at the kerb, and as two belated guests entered the house,
the man caught a glimpse of the brilliant luxury within. He retraced his steps, sauntered by a second and a third time.
“Shall I
send her a message,” he asked himself, “or shall I trust to a letter reaching
her hands unopened? No; something must be done to-night, else I dine with the
Duke Humphrey to-morrow, as these Englishmen are pleased to call it. My need of money is too urgent for delay;
and with that, walking rapidly away, he turned out of the square and vanished.
Mrs. Adair’s
ball-room was thronged, and if the company present did not consist of the cream
of society, it at least numbered some representatives
of the exclusive circle, and for the rest was made up of people who were not
far removed from the border-line of Mayfair and
Belgravia. As the dancing was in full swing, and the hum of conversation and
the frou-frou of silken skirts blended harmoniously with the notes of the orchestra,
two young men stood apart at one side of the spacious apartment, where they
had paused for moment’s rest. Intently, but with a different purpose, each watched the
couples that whirled by them.
There was not
a year’s
difference between them. Brian Desmond, slender and of medium height, with fair
hair and grey eyes, was a type of the popular clubman who takes life easily,
forms fast friendships, and is capable of forceful action if such a need ever
arises. His father, Colonel Desmond, was a retired officer and a widower, and
had inherited a considerable fortune from his wife. Geoffrey Cardew—it is with
him our story is chiefly concerned—was tall and
well built, good-looking rather than handsome, with thoughtful brown eyes and a tawny moustache that shaded a
strong mouth. Though he bore one of the oldest names in England, fate had put
him at a desk, in the India Office and compelled him to exist on three hundred
a year and his private income of two hundred more; which handicap, causing him
to be regarded hitherto as somewhat of a nonentity in social circles, he had
felt more bitterly than he had been known to confess. But those days were gone
for ever, and to-night, as he stood talking to his friend, every fibre in his
being thrilled with the realisation of his altered fortunes and prospects. It was
of such recent date, the change, that he had scarcely had time to get
accustomed to it.
“By Jove! I
never saw her looking better,” said Desmond, in a low voice.
“Who?” inquired Geoffrey. “Ah, you mean
Carmen.”
There was no need to ask the question. A tall and regal
girl, of a bold, dark style of beauty that was clearly not English, was just
then gliding past the two with languid and inimitable grace. Diamonds glittered
at her throat and in the coiled masses of her raven hair; her features a perfect
oval, were of a creamy olive tint. She ignored Desmond, flashed her black eyes
at Cardew for an instant, and disappeared with her partner in the throng.
Desmond’s face clouded. It was an open secret that he was in love, and
hopelessly so, with Carmen Torrana, who for
several years had been residing in London with her aunt, the wife of an
Englishman of wealth and position. And it was equally well known, perhaps that
the Spanish girl had months ago lost her heart to one who was indifferent to
that coveted jewel.
“There is no woman in the world to compare with her.” said Desmond,
sadly.
“She is beautiful, I admit’” replied Geoffrey, “but
with the beauty of a young panther.”
“Dangerous,
you mean?”
Geoffrey
paused, and his face flushed with a tell-tale colour. At the moment Brian’s sister
was passing, and it was her smile that had betrayed his feelings. As fair and sweet
as an English rose, as fresh and tender as the dawn of an English summer
morning, Violet Desmond was as different from Carmon Torrana as day is from night.
Nor was Geoffrey the only one who thought so. He had held aloof while better
men tried their chances and failed.
“It is not
for me to dispute your choice.” said Desmond. “I wish you luck, old chap—at
last.”
“But you would have wished me that
always if I had presumed to” —
“Of
course—you know that. But the pater.”—
“I quite understand.” said Geoffrey, shruggling his
shoulders. “I do not complain. It is the way of the world we live in”
He smiled
unconsciously. Brian wished him luck, and Colonel Desmond would doubtless do
the same, and Violet—how would she answer the question he meant to ask this
very night?
“I believe
she cares for me, and for myself alone.” he reflected. “Had I stooped to
dishonour, I might have won her long ago. She is not mercenary—she refused
Parkinson with his ten thousand a year. But I could never have asked her to
share a life of comparative poverty, and happily, I need not,”
Yes, he was very
glad that he had the right to
speak at last. It still seemed too good to be true. Only a month ago he had been
the insignificant civil clerk, with little or no prospect of ever having the
command of more than five hundred a year. His elder brother George, who had
quarrelled with him unreasonably,
and made an unfortunate marriage and led an unhappy and dissipated
existence abroad for years was then living in a continental city. The two—their
parents were deceased —were sons of a younger and impoverished brother, and
George had inherited from a bachelor uncle. And now George’s wife was dead, and
George had followed her in the grave a fortnight afterwards, and he, Geoffrey
Cardew, had succeeded at the age of twenty-five to six thousand pounds a year and to
the ownership of Beechcombe. the stately ancestral mansion on the crest of Hedsor
Hill, in Buckinghamshire, that had been the home of the Cardews since the reign
of Elizabeth. Little wonder that he was dazzled by his good fortune, and that
he wanted but one thing to make him the
happiest man in the world.
“Wake up, dreamer, and do your duty.’’ said Brian. “We are forgetting our obligations
to our hostess.” and with that he moved away.
“He has gone to find Carmen.” thought
Geoffrey, as he looked after his friend. “I wish she
would reward his devotion as it deserves,
and refrain from showing such embarrassing marks of favour to myself, and from
staring me out of countenance with those black eyes
of hers. I have never given her
the slightest encouragement, that I’ll swear; but I can’t
help feeling uneasy sometimes. She is a true daughter of Spain,
passionate in love and passionate in hatred. Heaven
forbid that I incur her enmity!”
A true
daughter of England was approaching him, and at sight of that lovely
face Geoffrey forgot all else. It was his dance,
and he claimed it. Relieving Violet of her escort, he rested
one hand on her slender waist, and the two glided into the mazes of a waltz,
to the measure of the dreamy, rapturous music that was in tune with
their own hearts. On and on they swept, units among many, and yet as deliciously isolated as if they
had been tripping it to Pan’s pipes over a moonlit forest
glade.
The strains of the orchestra died a way in a buzz of conversation.
Geoffrey led his partner to a
secluded corner of the conservatory, hidden by potted ferns
and feathery mimosa, and stood by her for a moment, waiting until the
music struck up again. It was the propitious moment. Under the
soft lights her face flushed, Violet’s beauty was more than he
could resist. She raised her eyes to his, swiftly
lowered them; and seating himself at her side, while he clasped her
unresisting hand, he poured out the old story— the sweet, eternal story that will be
ever new as long as the world lasts.
“I have always loved
you,” he went on. “I will live only for your happiness. Do you—can you—care for me a little.
Violet?”
“More than a little, Geoffrey,” she said,
looking up at him bravely and said, looking up at him bravely and blushingly. “Yes,
I will be your wife.”
He kissed
her lips, then started up at the sound of a light footstep and the rustle of a
skirt. Carmen Torrana stood within three yards. Her bosom heaved, a fiery red
spot burned in each cheek, and scorn and anger flashed from her eyes.
“Pardon,”
she said; and vanished in company with Brian, who had been in the background.
“How she
frightened me!” said Violet, with a little shiver. “I believe she hates you,
Geoffrey.”
“Imagination.
dearest,” he assured her.
Ten minutes later,
when Geoffrey and his promised bride left the conservatory, they came upon
Brian in the ball-room alone.
“Where is the senorita?” his sister asked.
“Gone.” Brian
moodily replied. “A note was brought to her, and she went off in a hurry.”
“With her
aunt?”
“With
herself,” said Brian, and inclined her head towards Carmen’s elderly relative,
who was passing on the arm of a Scotch baronet.
CHAPTER
III. A LEGACY FROM THE DEAD.
Brian was
honestly and openly delighted—there was no one he liked so well as his
prospective brother-in-law —and Colonel Desmond was blandly acquiescent. He patted
Geoffrey’s shoulder and congratulated him— “though
Violet might have looked a little higher,” he said. “No
offence, my dear fellow.”
“I am not worthy
of her—no man is,” replied Geoffrey, “But the Cardews have refused titles in
their time,” he added, proudly.
“And never a
king of Ireland,” said the colonel, “but had a Desmond at
his right hand.”
Life ran in pleasant lines for Geoffrey
then, and he soon fitted into his place as
if he had never been out of it. He had left the India Office, and occupied
chambers at the Albany —partly to be near Violet, and mainly
because Beechcombe, which had been shut up since George Cardew’s accession, had
to be made ready for him. The legal formalities that would put him in possession
of the estate were not entirely completed, but he had carte blanche to draw on the family
solicitor for funds, and he found it a novel
sensation to spend gold as he had formerly spent shillings. Though he regretted
his brother’s death, he did not profess to more grief than he could honestly
feel. George had treated him shamefully, without just cause or reason, and the
two had not met or
written to each other for seven years.
One sunny
May morning, a fortnight after Mrs. Adair’s reception, Geoffrey drove down to
Chancery-lane to keep an appointment which his solicitor had requested in
writing. He arrived on the minute, for he had promised to join Violet later in
the park.
“I don’t
suppose it is anything more important,” he told himself, “than a document that
requires my signature.’’
Archibald
Menzes, a man of sixty, whose head was silvered by the family secrets that
reposed therein, was waiting for him in the private office. He greeted his client with an air of
professional gravity that for once was not assumed, and having carefully locked
the door and put out biscuits and a bottle of port—at which Geoffrey’s modern and
uncultivated taste rebelled—he opened a ponderous safe and took from it a
sealed blue envelope. He seated himself opposite to Geoffrey and cleared his
throat.
“I need not
tell you, Mr. Cardew,” he began, “that ancient and honourable blood flows in
your veins. Your fore-fathers, sir, lived in an age when gentlemen of spirit
met with adventures that are unheard of and impossible in these prosaic days.
And in your case, strangely enough, an echo of one such adventure has survived to the
present. At intervals of greater or less extent during the past three
centuries—If I am right in tracing the custom so far back— there has come a
time to each successive male heir of your race when he has made cognizant of a
certain family affair and was put in possession of certain papers relating to the
same. Those documents I am about to deliver into your keeping, as I am bound to do by
virtue of my trust, and as I did in the case of your uncle and of your brother.
Have you any knowledge, may I ask, of what is known as the Curse of the
Cardews?”
“Very
little, if any.” Geoffrey replied, wondering what was coming next. “There was a
vague family tradition, I believe, mixed up with Elizabethan swashbucklers and hidden
treasure, and that sort of thing. I have an indistinct recollection of my
grandfather speaking of it—or it may have been my father—and even that was not meant for my
ears.”
“And your brother George?”
“He never referred to the matter, nor did my uncle James.”
“Well, it
was neither a myth nor a tradition, Mr. Cardew,” said the solicitor. “it was a
fact, a chapter of actual happenings, and it is as real to-day—it has been my
privilege to be convinced of that—as it was
three hundred years ago. But I will give you a brief outline of the story, and
afterwards you shall examine the proofs. In the year 1595 Sir Walter Raleigh,
in consequence of reports that credited the northern part of the continent of
South America with being a land of marvellous treasures, and hoping to surpass
the discoveries of Cortez and Pizarro, equipped an expedition and set sail from
England. Among those who accompanied him was your ancestor, Geoffrey Cardew the
first, from whom you are descended in an unbroken line. He distinguished
himself in the defeat of the Armada, and prior to that he had erected Beechcombe,
of which one original wing still stands intact. In due course the expedition
arrived at Orinoco, and sailed up that mighty river, when some of the
adventurers sought in one direction and some in another. A party of five,
braving the perils of the unknown wilderness, pushed up for a considerable distance
to the south, into what is now the north-western part of British Guiana. Of
these Geoffrey Cardew was one, and another was a certain Miguel Torrana, a Spanish
gentleman of good birth. He and several companions had been rescued during the
voyage from a sinking ship. The rest of the crew, it seems, had perished of
starvation.”
“Torrana?”
broke in Geoffrey. “Does the family exist at the present day?”
“I do not
know, sir. It is highly improbable, Why do you ask?”
“From mere
curiosity.” Geoffrey replied, truthfully enough. “Will you pardon my
interruption, Mr. Menses, and continue your story?” to himself, he added, “It
is an odd coincidence at least.”
“Of these
five men,” resumed the Solicitor, ‘‘three died of fever in the interior. The
survivors were Miguel Torrana and your ancestor, who had formed a comradely
friendship which, sad to say, was destined to end in tragedy. Ultimately they
found gold, amassed a large quantity of it, and then quarrelled over the
spoils. Both were hot-tampered, and neither would yield. In a moment of
ungovernable rage Geoffrey Cardew struck the Spaniard to the ground with a
weapon. Believing his friend to be dead, and overcome with remorse and grief,
he dragged the body deep into a thicket and fled in a canoe, taking the
ill-gotten treasure with him. But the canoe springing a leak before he had gone
far, he landed, buried the greater part of the gold, and continued his journey
on foot. He reached the Orinoco barely in time to sail with Raleigh—the five
men had been given up for lost—and when he returned to
England in 1596 he gave his son Myles a truthful account of his adventures,
with one exception. Miguel Torrana,
he declared, had died of fever like the rest. His deception,
we must admit,
was but human nature, though it was to lead to strange consequences. As for
his sin, he expiated that within a month, for he was killed in London in a brawl.
(To be
Continued).
