Below them the clouds lapped and rolled like the elements before the
creation. Still they descended, and the moist oblivion closed about
them, like the curse of a world without color. The bleak mists separated
and began to roll up above them, a cloud split asunder, and through the
slit the earth jumped up, and the solid land spread before them as when
at the dawn it obeyed the will of the Creator. They saw the hills and
the mountains grow, and the rivers trickle toward the sea. The masses of
brown and green began to be splashed with red and yellow as the fields
became fertile and fructified; and the insect race of men began to crawl
to and fro.
The half-breed, who saw the scene for the hundredth time, bent his head
in awe. Frawley straightened in his saddle, stretched the stiffness out
of his limbs, patted his mule solicitously, glanced at the guide, and
stopped in perplexity at the mute, reverential attitude.
"What's he starin' at now?" he muttered in as then, with a glance at
his watch, he added anxiously, "I say, Sammy, when do we get a bit to
eat?"
V
In Valparaiso he readily found the track of Greenfield. Up to the time
of his departure, two boats had sailed: one for the north, and one by
the Straits of Magellan to Buenos Ayres. Greenfield had bought a ticket
for each, after effecting the withdrawal of his account at a local bank.
Frawley was in perplexity: for Greenfield to flee north was to run into
the jaws of the law. The withdrawal of the account decided him. He
returned to Buenos Ayres by the route he had come, arriving the day
before the steamer. To his discomfiture Greenfield was not on board. By
ridiculously casting away his protection he had thrown the detective off
the track and gained three weeks. Without more concern than he might
have shown in taking a trip from Toronto to New York, Frawley a third
time crossed the Andes and set himself to correcting his first error.
He traced Greenfield laboriously up the coast back to Panama and there
lost the trail. At the end of two months he learned that Greenfield had
shipped as a common sailor on a freighter that touched at Hawaii. From
here he followed him to Yokohama, Singapore, Ceylon, and Bombay.
Thence Greenfield, suddenly abandoning the water route, had proceeded
by land to Bagdad, and across the Turkish Empire to Constantinople.
Without a pause, Frawley traced him next into the Balkans, through
Bulgaria, Roumania, amid massacre and revolution to Budapest, back to
Odessa, and across the back of Russia by Moscow and Riga to Stockholm. A
year had elapsed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account