The Great Quest by Charles Hawes

Author:Charles Hawes [Hawes, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Action & Adventure, Juvenile
Publisher: Feedbooks
Published: 1921-01-23T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

A WARNING DEFIED

THE brig Adventure, two thousand miles from home, lay now in the strong, silent current of a great tropical river, which seemed to me to have an almost human quality. In its depth and strength and silence, it was like a determined, taciturn man. I felt keenly its subtle fascination; I delighted to picture in my mind its course all the way from the mysterious hills far inland, of which Pedro and Gleazen and Matterson told stories filled with trade and slaves and stirring incidents, down to the low, marshy shore, which had already cast a spell upon me.

For months since that fearful night when we five fled from Topham, Arnold and Gideon North and I had been holding ourselves ready at every moment to stand up against Gleazen and Matterson and meet them man to man in behalf of my poor, deluded uncle, who now would go slinking about the deck, now would make a pitiful show of his old pompous, dictatorial manner. But when I burst in upon them in the cabin, there had been that in their manner, even after their anger spent itself, which told me more plainly than harshest words that the time for action had come very near.

To Arnold, when we were alone in our stateroom, I said, "What would you think, were I to load my pistols afresh?"

He looked curiously at me.

"You think," said he, slowly, "that there is already need?"

"I do," I replied.

I felt a new confidence in myself and in my own judgment. I regarded our situation calmly and with growing assurance. Although I did not then realize it, I know now that I was crossing the threshold between youth and manhood.

He gravely nodded.

"It is a wise precaution," he said at last, "although I prophesy that they will use us further before the time comes when we must fight for our lives."

So we both slept that night with new charges in the pistols by our heads, and Arnold, very likely, as well as I, dreamed of the utterly reckless, lawless men with whom we were associated. I question, though, if Arnold thought as much as I of the stern man in the cane house on the river-bank, or if he thought at all of the girl whose white face and dark eyes I could not forget.

For another day we continued to lie in the river; but the brig, alow and aloft, bustled with various activities. We sorted out firearms on the cabin floor, and charts and maps on the cabin table, and on the spar-deck we piled a large store of provisions. And in the afternoon Matterson took Captain North in the quarter boat down to the mouth of the river, and there taught him the bearings of the channel.

Side by side Arnold and I watched all that went forward, here lending a hand at whatever task came OUT way, there noting keenly how the stores were arranged.

"Well, sir," said Arnold, quietly, when Captain North for a moment

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