Two ladies and their maid were getting out. An American young man was
helping them down. The grey car was not a Lecomte. The owner, his
chauffeur, and the three women were of types entirely different from those
we sought.
The discovery, coming after such exaltation of hope, was like a blow over
the heart.
“Hard luck,” exclaimed Dick. “But Carmona’s car must be somewhere.”
“If it ever started,” I said. “I begin to think now that Carmona rallied
his brigands, and sent me out to meet them, knowing I’d surely follow if I
believed he had gone that way.”
“Oh come, there’s hope still,” Dick consoled me. And turning to the owner
of the car, he asked if he had seen another grey automobile. He had not;
and, on further questioning, he went on to tell us that he had started
from Seville meaning to stop at Cadiz and come on here to-morrow; but the
hotel had been full, so he had “rushed it” to Algeciras. These details
proved that his was the motor we had been chasing from the first; and the
excellent Spanish which the Californian spoke to the porters accounted for
one misleading bit of information.
While the party of care-free tourists went indoors, Dick and I stood in
our coats of dust to discuss the situation. We soon agreed that there was
but one thing to do. Wire Colonel O’Donnel for news of Carmona’s
movements, and wait where we were for an answer.
To none save those who count every moment precious could such a delay have
been irksome. The place was a paradise, the garden a corner of Eden, and
the Reina Cristina more like the country house of some Spanish millionaire
than a hotel.
Leaving the Gloria, we went in to write a telegram; and in a court,
charming as the _patio_ of a Moorish palace, we sat to plan out a message.
The people of the hotel confirmed our fears that no answer could come from
Seville till morning; so Dick busied himself in choosing rooms, while, to
save time, I took the car by the sea road to the telegraph-office in town.
How many miles up and down those flower-bordered paths Dick and I walked
next morning waiting for news, neither could have told. Eleven o’clock had
struck when Colonel O’Donnel’s answer was brought to me in the garden.
“On receipt of wire, interviewed verger,” I read. “Made him confess to
accepting large sum from agent of C—— to send you on wrong track. Making
inquiries and hope let you know in few hours whether C—— really gone; if
so, which direction. Advise you stop Algeciras till hear from me again. Am
sending on luggage there.”
“A few hours!” I was beginning to know too well what a few hours could
mean in Spain where, to a population of philosophers it mattered nothing
if a thing happened to-morrow or the day after.
Gibraltar was empurpled with night and sequined with ten thousand lights
when the next telegram arrived—a message which covered two telegraph
forms.
“Just learned C—— left to-day for Granada with same party. Took train, and
whether shipped automobile not found out. C—— believed to be ill. Friend
at club says C—— been heard say knows at Granada man worth twenty
physicians, natural bone-setter, herb doctor. Perhaps wishes consult this
person. Illness seems mysterious. House of C—— well known at Granada.
Inquire at Washington Irving, where suppose you will stay. Will wire or
write to that address.”
I should have been off within the hour, but the quickest way of reaching
Granada was by Ronda, and there was no road for automobiles. One could
walk, one could ride, along a bridle path through gorges unsurpassed for
grandeur; but it was an expedition of two days, whereas if we could curb
our impatience until early morning, we would reach Ronda by train in about
four hours.
Not being quite mad, we waited, rose at five, and before seven were
steaming out of Algeciras, while the great cloud-cataract of the Levanter
churned and boiled over Gibraltar. On a truck, travelling by the same
train, was my brave Gloria, none the worse for yesterday’s wild flight,
and ready for another when she could take the road beyond Ronda. I had not
ceased yet to wonder at the expedition with which she had been shipped.
Dick discovered, however, that the manager of the line was a Scotsman, a
kind of fairy godfather for all the region round, which explained the
mystery; and his road was wonderful. In a glass coach, which was an
“observation car,” we tore through scenery so diversified that it might
have been chosen from the finest bits of a whole continent. There were
wooded ravines tapestried with pink sweetbrier; there were far hill-towns
like flocks of gulls resting on the edge of giddy precipices; there were
strange old fortresses; ruined Moorish castles; velvet-green fields with
aloe hedges grey as lines of broken slate; dark, noble gorges sprinkled
with mother-o’-pearl flakes of white wild roses, that drifted down the red
rock into water green as onyx. There were blossomy bits of Holland and
long tracts of Switzerland. Glacier-mills in narrow gorges were like empty
niches for colossal statues of saints; pink and white orchards foamed at
the feet of ancient look-out towers; black rocks, like huge watch-dogs,
seemed to crouch on cushions of wild flowers; and weeping willows fringed
the river with silver before it dashed away to do battle among the
mountains; acacias showered perfume, and orange groves pushed so near to
the train that a hand reached out could have plucked their golden globes.
There were caves and underground rivers, haunted by enchanted Moors; and
at last, a brief glimpse of Ronda hanging high against the sky, vanishing
like the fabled Garden of Iram, and not to be seen again until the train
mounted the cliff by many loops.
Just as we arrived at the end of the journey a thought in my brain seemed
to snap like the trigger of a carbine. In my haste to get off by the first
morning train I had forgotten to try and find more petrol at Algeciras,
although I had not enough left to get the car to Granada.
There was just time to telegraph back to the Reina Cristina and beg some
of the young Californian, who had fallen so deeply in love with the place
that he intended to stay a week. We had become friendly and he would
certainly grant the favour, therefore we might count on travelling that
night by acetylene and moonlight. Meanwhile, there was a long day to wait,
but I tramped off my restlessness as best I could in exploring every foot
of Ronda.
After that one look upward from the train, when Ronda hung before our eyes
over a thousand foot gorge, we had at last sneaked in, so to speak, by a
back door. If it had not been for that first glimpse, and if we had not
read “Miranda of the Balcony” we should not have guessed, in walking from
the station to the Alameda, that Ronda differed from other Moorish towns.
But far away was a barrier of iron railing, and a curious effect as if
beyond it everything ended except the sky. We walked on, reached that
railing, and leaned over.
No picture, no book had been able to give us a real idea of Ronda. It was
stupendous—wonderful. We stared down at the world beneath as if we hung in
a balloon, for the rock fell away from our feet, a sheer precipice; and
men working in the valley below were like tiny crabs. The Moorish mills
were white, broken hour-glasses, shaking out a stream of silver; geese on
the river were floating bread-crumbs; a string of donkeys crawling up the
steep Moorish road were invisible under their packs, which looked like
mushrooms with moving stems.
The noise of the river floated up to us with a muffled roar, and across
the deep valley its water had cut, tumbled a wild mountain-land, crossed
here and there by white threads of road which clung to the sky-line and
disappeared.
“Great Scott, if this eagle’s nest doesn’t take the cake!” exclaimed Dick,
always modern. “If there were any more to take, it could have that, too.
Hurrah for you, rock and river. You’re sublime.”
But we had not seen all, by hanging over that iron railing, nor nearly
all. There was the palace of the Moorish King, and the terrible steps cut
by Christian captives. There was the bridge swung over the gorge; and the
far-famed “window” of rock, one of the wonders of the world. There was the
old Roman amphitheatre, turned into a bull-ring; the town wall, which
Hercules helped to build; the Roman gate, and the Moorish gate, and the
house where Miranda lived; and a hundred other things to be found by
mounting steep hills or sliding down wild precipices.
The splendid mountain air had given Dick a ferocious appetite;
nevertheless he could hardly be torn from the cliff above the “window,”
and vowed that it would be worth while coming all the way from New York to
Ronda next year when the grand new hotel should be finished.
Rain fell while we lunched, but we wandered out again, in a thin mist like
a sieve, through which sifted turquoises and silver spangles; nor did we
cease wandering until it was time for the train to arrive with the
expected petrol. The Californian had not failed us; and with a good supply
of food for the Gloria, and enough for ourselves to last until morning, we
set off, against the advice of everyone.
The sky had cleared, and twilight would soon merge into moonlight; but we
would need the moon and stars as well on the road we had to travel. In
more than one place it was marked on my map by an ominous, thin black line
which meant “Motorists, beware.” The country was sparsely populated;
people whispered of _bandidos_; and if anything happened to the car in the
middle of the night, there would be no means of getting help.
Still, if we won through without serious mishap, we should save a day; for
there was no train to Granada until morning, and Dick was as keen on the
adventure, for the adventure’s sake, as I was for another reason.
After all, we reminded each other, it was a journey of only a hundred and
twenty miles. With no traffic to interfere, the Gloria ought to fly over
the distance in four hours; and what if everyone did try to discourage us?
We had experienced that sort of thing in Biarritz, and the dangers had
resolved themselves into chimeras. Nothing in Spain was as troublesome
nowadays as the busybodies would have one believe—not even the beggars.
My big searchlights cast a flashing ring on the road, which the car seemed
to push swiftly before it as it ran.
Dick peered through the uncertain light for the hill town of Teba, from
which the Empress Eugenie took her title, but my eyes were glued to the
road.
To think, if we had known at Jerez that Granada was the lodestar, we could
have reached Ronda in a run of four hours day before yesterday! But it was
useless to repine, and fate had given us Ronda.
By the time we had passed through the straggling village of Campillos the
moon was up, a great white, incandescent globe of light, so brilliant that
instead of draining colour from rock, and grass, and flower, it gave new
and almost supernatural values to all.
We had the world to ourselves, a wonderful world like a vast silver bowl
half full of jewels. Over the tops of mountains cut jaggedly of steel,
strange figures seemed to run along the horizon. Bathed in unearthly
radiance lay fields of poppies like deep lakes of blood filling the
valleys between little rolling hills, and here and there a miniature
mountain of pink or glittering grey, rose out of the plain like a fairy
palace which would be invisible in daylight. Olive trees stretching away
in straight lines on either side of endless avenues, fountained silver
under the moon, each avenue swept by a wave of poppies. It was an
Aladdin’s Cave landscape made out of rare metals and precious stones that
imitated trees and flowers.
Antiquera on its wild crags, was a ragged black hole in the silver sky,
until we shot into the town under the dominating castle of crimson
memories.
There, was life and music still; guitars tinkled, children who should have
been in bed frolicked in the streets with lambs that followed them like
dogs, while everyone, old and young, laughed and hooted at the Gloria as
she shot by without stopping, on her way to Loja and Granada.
A sharp turn to the left swept us out of Antiquera, and so good was the
road that Dick and I began to laugh at the gloomy prognostications which
thus far had not been fulfilled.
My spirits rose to such a height that as we passed under the Lovers’ Rock,
still haunted by the Moorish maiden and her Christian lover, I quoted
Southey, verse after verse of the old-fashioned poetry coming back to my
mind. The Peña de los Enamorados stood up like a small model of Gibraltar,
rising out of the plain; and as we wound on among other pinnacles almost
as majestic, we could see the bleached skeleton of Archidona hanging on
its mountain. Once the place had been a famous nest of brigands; and when
after climbing a tremendous hill, we had come into its long white street,
Dick was of opinion that Archidona of to-day was still an ideal summer
resort for the fraternity in case they should crave a town life. Each
low-browed house in the interminable avenue looked a fit nursery for
mysteries and secrets. Here and there a dark face framed in a knotted red
handkerchief peered from a lighted doorway, staring after the Gloria until
she had slipped over the brow of the hill to coast smoothly down another
as steep.
There, had we but known, the peaceful olive grove through which we passed
and hushed the song of nightingales was to be our last glimpse of peace.
Beyond that silver barrier lay chaos, a chaos of wild mountains, deep
chasms, and grim steppes, solitary, unpeopled, forbidding under the moon!
If we broke an axle here, with leagues to walk to the nearest farm, there
was no hope of Granada to-morrow. And now the road was equally well fitted
for breaking axles, necks, and hearts.
It was made of rock in petrified waves, among which the Gloria floundered
and buck-jumped as long ago Dick had expected her to do when she crossed
the Spanish border. Every part of her shivered as though she were a horse
in the bull-ring, and I pitied her as if she had a nerve in every spring
and chain.
“This is no road; it’s a nightmare,” groaned Dick. But if it were, it was
a nightmare which ran with us glaring, showing frightful fangs, for mile
after mile of horror. Just as the steep slope of a descent offered a
softer cushion for the suffering tyres, and hope stirred within us, we
broke into such a region as imagination pictures in the streets of Lisbon
after the great earthquake. Gullies and vertical rifts scored the highway
serpentining hither and thither, the chasms gaping to swallow the Gloria
or at least bite off a wheel.
Now the earthy lip of a cleft would crumble and fall in as our
driving-wheels skimmed along the edge; now, steer with all the nerve and
nicety I might, the Gloria would rock as she hung half over a gully.
Somehow I coaxed her down the hill, and driving out from the labyrinth of
crevasses, I breathed a sigh of relief. But the next instant, I had only
time to jam on the brakes to save the car from vaulting into a small river
which ran across the road. Carefully embanked on either side, the stream
flowed swiftly, cutting the descent at right angles.
Whatever the depth might prove, I had to risk it. Mounting the nearer
embankment, I drove down into the running water, where the moon laughed up
at me as I broke her glittering reflection.
“Good old San Cristóbal!” cried Dick as we came through without damage and
climbed the opposite bank, to plump down a breakneck descent on the other
side.
But it was early still to praise the saint. We had only to look ahead to
see how much more he had to do for us, if we were to win through to
Granada at all. Where a little clump of houses had assembled at the bottom
of the hill, as if to watch our struggle, another and far broader river
flowed.
It also raced across the highway, as if roads were made for river-beds;
and this time the situation was so serious that I stopped the Gloria to
reflect.
There was no doubt about it; this river was deep. Though a cart might ford
it safely, and have the flood of rippling silver no higher than the axles,
it was different with an automobile. I wondered bleakly what would happen
to the silencer if its mass of heated metal were suddenly plunged into
cold water, and what would happen to the commutator.
“When in doubt, play a trump,” said Dick. “And I guess that camel-backed
bridge is a trump, if it’s only a knave—or the deuce.”
It was true, there was a narrow erection which might pass as a bridge, if
one wished to pay a compliment. It was of stone, and came to a steep point
at the apex, like a “card tent” when two cards receive support from one
another. It was the question of a fraction of an inch, if the Gloria were
to squeeze over; but between the danger of a jam and the danger of a burst
cylinder, I decided to risk playing Dick’s trump.
First I got out and unscrewed the wheel-caps to give more clearance, then
in again for the trial, while Dick walked, ready to offer aid if it were
needed. I had rasped through to the top, and the Gloria had actually
started on the down grade, when she gave a grinding scream, and stuck
between the parapets.