A STORY OF THE PAST
“He swore up and down that he wasn’t near this deck,” Hal declared
vehemently, when he got back to his uncle’s cabin ten minutes later. “No
one in the steerage saw him come up or come down. I was the only one who
saw him slinking around up here—I know it was him this time, Unk! But
the sailors below thought I was seeing things I guess, for when I got
down there, friend Pizella had his shoes and trousers off and was
stretched out in his bunk as nice as you please.”
“Strange, strange,” murmured Denis Keen, putting his book down on the
night table beside his elbow.
“Sure it is. The way I figured it, he must have started peeling off on
his way down. Undressing on the wing, huh?”
“It would seem so, Hal. Your very earnestness convinces me that it was
no mere hunch you acted upon this time. The fellow is up to
something—that’s a certainty. But he wasn’t anywhere near this cabin. I
heard not a sound.”
“And the Brazil-nut was strutting his stuff in the saloon, so he’s out
of the picture.”
“Well, that’s something to feel comfortable about.” Denis Keen laughed.
“Surely you didn’t think....”
“Unk, when there’s sneaking business going around like this that you
can’t explain or even lay one’s finger on, why, one is likely to suspect
everybody. Anyway, I guess they’ll keep closer watch on him just to get
rid of me.”
“No doubt they’re beginning to suspect that you have some reason for
picking on Pizella. Either that or they’ll think you’re suffering from a
Pizella complex. But in any case, Hal, I think it won’t do a bit of harm
to have the man watched in _Manaos_.”
They forgot about Pizella for the rest of the voyage, however, mainly
because Pizella did not again appear above decks. Hal quickly forgot his
hasty suspicions and was lost in the charm of the country on either side
of the river. The landscape changed two days after they entered the
Amazon, and in place of the low-lying swamps, a series of hills, the
_Serra Jutahy_, rose to their right.
After leaving the hills behind, they caught a brief glimpse of two
settlements, larger and more important than most of those they had seen.
The captain pointed out the first of these, _Santarem_, which lay near
the junction of the Amazon and _Tapajos_, the latter an important
southern tributary.
“_Santarem_,” the captain obligingly explained, “should interest the
Señors.”
“Why?” Hal asked immediately.
“It is full of the romance of a lost cause,” said the captain. “After
the Civil War in your great United States, a number of the slave-owning
aristocracy, who refused to admit defeat and bow their heads to Yankee
rule, came and settled in this far-away corner of the Amazon.”
“A tremendous venture,” said Denis Keen. “I dare say their task was too
much for them.”
“For some, Señor. Some of them returned to your fair country broken in
body and spirit, but others held on. Only a very few of the older
generation live, but there are the sons and grandsons and
great-grandsons to carry on—yes? A few of these families—they have
scattered up this stream—down that stream. One of them that is perhaps
interesting more than the others is the Pemberton family. Everyone
familiar with the Amazon has heard their sad story. It began when
Marcellus Pemberton, the first, settled in _Santarem_ along with several
other old families from Virginia.”
“Marcellus Pemberton, eh?” said Denis Keen. “That certainly smacks of
Old Virginia.”
“He was a very bitter man, the first Marcellus Pemberton. A very young
man when he went to fight against the North, he fled from his home after
the War rather than bow to Yankee rule. He settled in _Santarem_ with
other Virginia families, took a wife from one of them, and had many
children. All died but his youngest son—even his wife got the fever and
died. Marcellus and his youngest son left the settlement then and went
to live a little way up the _Rio Pallida Mors_. And so it is with that
son that the story centers, even though he married an American señorita
from _Santarem_.”
“And they had a son, huh?” Hal asked interested.
“Yes, Señor Hal. But of him I know little—the grandson. It is as I said
Old Marcellus’ son who is interest—yes? Ten years ago he disappeared
mysteriously. His wife died heartbroken a little later and left behind
the girl Felice, a fair flower in the jungle wilderness, and the
grandson who must now be twenty-five. Felice, like the good girl she is,
stays with her grandfather who is now getting very old.”
“And I suppose they’re as poor as the dickens, huh?” Hal queried.
“They’re starving to death I bet, and yet I suppose they’re keeping up
the old tradition. Pride, and all that. They ought to know the war is
forgotten. Peace and good will ought to be their motto and bring them
back to the U. S.”
“Too true, Señor Hal,” the captain agreed, “but they do not stay for
that, I do not think. They stay because of an uncertainty and that is
the sad part of the story. I did not tell you how the Señor Marcellus,
Junior, died ten years ago.”
“Ah, I thought this wouldn’t end without Hal getting the pièce de
résistance out of the story,” Denis Keen chuckled.
“Well, I notice you’re listening intently yourself,” said Hal
good-naturedly. “Go on, Captain.”
“To be sure,” said the captain amiably. “It takes but a moment to tell
you that Señor Marcellus was looking for gold up the _Rio Pallida Mors_
(_Pale Death_)—most people call it _Dead River_, Señors. One day he
started out prepared for his long journey to his lode and he stopped a
moment to tell his wife to promise him that, if some day he did not come
back, they would not rest until they found his body. He had what you
call a presentiment—no? But his wife she promised and the children
promised, also his father. So he went and as he feared he did not
return.”
“And they never found him?”
“No, Señor Hal. Neither did they find where his lode had gone. To this
day they have found neither him nor the mine. And so they look always
for his body. The Indians they say he has come back from death in the
form of a jaguar and every moonlight night he shrieks along the banks of
the river, crying for his children or his father to come and find his
body in the rushing waters of _Pallida Mors_.”
“A tragic story, Captain,” said Denis Keen. “They must be an unhappy
group up there, being reminded of their father’s sad ending every time
there’s a moon.”
“Something spooky about him being reincarnated in jaguar form, huh?
Gosh, they don’t believe that part of it, this Pemberton family, do
they, Captain?” Hal asked.
“Ah, no. They cannot even believe he is really dead, Señors—they say
they _won’t_ believe it till they find his body. And so they wait and
the jaguar shrieks on moonlight nights. But _Santarem_ is long in the
distance, Señors—the story is ended.”
“Not for the Pembertons, I guess,” said Hal sympathetically. “Gosh blame
it, I’d like to help those poor people find that man so’s they could get
away and live like civilized people.”
“I think,” said his uncle, after the captain had left them quite alone,
“that you have enough on your hands right now. What with your worries
about Pizella, my future worries about tracing these munitions to Renan,
I think we have sufficient for two human minds.”
“Aw, we could tackle this Pemberton business afterward, couldn’t we,
Unk? Even if we just stopped to pay them a friendly visit. Gol darn it,
I should think they’d be tickled silly to talk to a couple of
sympathetic Americans after living in the wilderness and surrounded by
savages all their....”
“I take it this _Pallida Mors_ will have you for a visit, come sunshine
or storm, eh, Hal?”
“And how! A nice little surprise visit to the Pembertons,” Hal mused
delightedly.
Destiny thought differently about it evidently, for Hal was the one to
be surprised, not the Pembertons.