The Curse of the Cardews

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?”

“I am far from suggesting it. She is not my taste, that is all. Give me a woman who”—

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).