Real Gold: A Story of Adventure

“Tanning! Ha! ha! No, no; Peruvian bark, that they make quinine of. Physic for fevers.”

“Oh! I see.”

“It’s very jolly, and he makes plenty of money; but I do get so tired sometimes. I should like to go to sea, or to travel, or something. I hate being always either at studies or keeping accounts. I wish I were going along with you.”

“To be killed by the Indians,” said Perry drily.

“I should like to catch ’em at it,” cried Cyril. “But I’d risk it. What an adventure, to go with your father to hunt out the places where the Indians buried the Incas’ gold!”

“My father did not say he was going in search of that,” said Perry.

“No; he’s too close. But that’s it, safe enough; you see if it isn’t. Only think of it – right up in the grand valleys, where it’s almost dark at mid-day, and you walk along shelves over the torrents where there isn’t room for two mules to pass, and there are storms that are quite awful sometimes. I say, I’d give anything to go.”

“I wish you were going, Cil.”

“You do?” cried the boy excitedly. “I say: do you mean that?”

“Of course I do,” said Perry, looking amused at his companion’s eagerness. “We’ve got on right enough together since we have been staying at your house.”

“Got on? I should think we have,” cried Cyril. “Why, it has been no end of a treat to me for you to be at our place. I can’t get on very well with the half-Spanish chaps about here. They’re gentlemen, of course, with tremendously grand descents from Don this and Don that; but they’re not English boys, and you can’t make English boys of them.”

“Of course not.”

“Ah, you may laugh,” continued Cyril, “but would you believe it? I tried to get up a cricket club, and took no end of pains to show them the game, and they all laughed at it, and said I must be half mad. That’s being Spanish, that is! It’s no wonder their country’s left all behind.”

“Then the cricket was a failure?” said Perry.

“Failure? It ended in a fight, and I went home and burned the stumps, bats, and balls.”

“What a pity!” cried Perry.

“That’s what father said, and it did seem too bad, after he’d had the tackle brought out from England on purpose. I was sorry afterwards; but I was so jolly wild then, I couldn’t help it.”

“How came there to be a fight?” said Perry after a pause, during which he watched the frank, handsome face of his companion, who was looking at the great peak again.

“Oh, it was all about nothing. These Spanish chaps are so cocky and bumptious, and ready to take everything as being meant as an insult. Little stupid things, too, which an English boy wouldn’t notice. I was bowling one evening, and young Mariniaz was batting. Of course he’d got his bat and his wits, and he ought to have taken care of himself. I never thought of hitting him, but I sent in a shooter that would have taken off the bail on his side, and instead of blocking it, he stepped right before the wicket.”

“What for?” said Perry.

“Ah, that’s more than I know,” said Cyril; “and the next moment he caught it right in the centre of his – er – middle.”

“Ha! ha!” laughed Perry merrily.

“It knocked all the wind out of him for a minute, and then, as soon as he could speak, he was furious, and said I did it on purpose – in Spanish – and I said it was an accident that all people were liable to in cricket, and that they ought to be able to defend themselves. Then he said he was able to defend himself.”

“That meant fighting,” cried Perry, growing more interested.

“Of course it did, but I wasn’t going to notice it, for the mater said I was to be very careful not to get into any quarrel with the Spanish fellows, because they are none too friendly about my father being here. They’re jealous because he’s a foreigner, when all the time there isn’t a more splendid fellow living than my father,” cried the boy warmly. “You don’t half know him yet.”

“Well, what happened then?” said Perry, as he noted the warm glow in the boy’s cheeks and the flash of his eyes.

“Oh, Mariniaz appealed to three or four of the others, and they sided with him, and said that they saw me take a long breath and gather myself up and take a deadly aim at his chest, and then hurl the ball with all my might, as if I meant to kill him.”

“What rubbish!” cried Perry.

“Wasn’t it? You couldn’t teach chaps like that to play cricket, could you?”

“Of course not. They didn’t want to learn.”

“That was it; and they egged Mariniaz on till he called me an English beast, and that upset me and made my tongue loose.”

“Well?”

“He said he knew from the first I had a spite against him, and had been trying to knock him over with the ball; and, feeling what a lie it was, I grew pepper, and told him it wasn’t the first time an English ball had knocked over a Spaniard, for I got thinking about our old chaps playing bowls when the news came about the Armada.”

“Yes?” cried Perry, for Cyril had stopped.

“Well, then, he turned more yellow than usual, and he gave me a backhanded smack across the face.”

“And what did you do?” cried Perry hotly, for the boy once more stopped.

“Oh, I went mad for a bit.”

“You – went mad?”

“I suppose so. My mother said I must have been mad, so I expect I was.”

“But you don’t tell me,” cried Perry impatiently. “What did you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do: tell me.”

“I can’t recollect, and I never could. I only know I turned very hot and saw sparks, and that there was a regular banging about, and sometimes I was up and sometimes I was down; and then all at once I was standing there, with Mariniaz lying on the ground crying, and with his nose bleeding. Another chap was sitting holding his handkerchief to one eye, and two more were being held up by some of the players, who were giving one of them some water to drink, while the other was showing them a tooth which he held in his fingers.”

“Then you’d whacked four of them?” cried Perry excitedly.

“I don’t know,” said Cyril, with his face screwed up. “I suppose I had been knocking them about a bit, and they wouldn’t fight any more. They all said I was an English savage, and that I ought to be sent out of the place; and then I began to get a bit cooler, and felt sorry I had knocked them all about so much.”

“I don’t see why you should,” cried Perry.

“But I did. It made such an upset. There was no end of a bother. My mother cried about it when I went home, and said I should never look myself again; and when my father came home and saw me with bits of sticking plaster all over my face and knuckles, he was in a regular passion, for he had been hearing about it in the town, and had words with the other boys’ fathers. Then he made me tell him all about it from the beginning, sitting back, looking as fierce and stern as could be, till I had done; and I finished off by saying, ‘What would you have done if you had been me?’

“‘Just the same as you did, Cil, my boy,’ he cried, shaking hands; and then my mother looked astonished, and he sat back in his chair and laughed till he cried. ‘Why, mother,’ he said, ‘they tell us that the English stock is falling off. Not very much, eh? One English to four Spanish.’

“‘But it’s so terrible,’ my mother said. ‘Yes,’ said my father, ‘fighting is very disgraceful. No more of it, Cil, my lad; but I’ve made a mistake: I ought to have made a soldier of you, after all.’ I say, though, Perry, I do wish I were going with you, all the same.”

“I tell you what,” cried Perry; “I’ll ask my father to ask yours to let you go with us.”