“Nice fix,” said Dick. “If I was writing a book, I’d say, ‘this route only
suitable for hundred horse-power cars, built in small sections, and
carrying cheerful passengers.’ Now, we were cheerful once—and may be
again. Chuck me over the key of the tool-box, will you?”
I did so without a word, lest if I uttered any they should be too strong.
But curiosity overcame me when I heard a metallic chinking, then the blows
of a hammer.
“Only knocking down a bit of this old parapet,” was the calm answer to my
question. “Some of it’s gone already; why not more? I bet future
generations will thank me—as it’s certain never to be mended.”
As he spoke, there was a great splash, when a piece of the parapet,
already weakened by years of storm and stress, plumped over into the
river. The car was released, and slid down the other slope of the camel’s
back.
Now it did seem that we might safely thank San Cristóbal, since nothing
could well be worse than the pass from which he had just delivered us,
scratched, bruised, yet unbroken. We had but to scramble out of the rough
river-bed, bump over the level crossing of a railway, to come out upon a
broad, smooth highway like a road to paradise. Ready to shout with joy, I
put on speed, and the Gloria sprinted over the white and silent way as if
she were happy to turn her back upon Inferno.
Yesterday’s study of the map assured me that at length we had struck the
main road from Malaga, and there seemed every reason to believe that the
ordeal just over would be our last. Flying along at a good fifty miles an
hour, under a tired moon that sought the west, presently a town rose
grandly up before us, throned on rocks in a wide valley, and pallid in the
strange light as some sad queen.
Loja, tragically lost key of Granada, sister of famed Alhama, stronghold
of that fierce alcayde who called Boabdil’s sultana daughter! Loja, and
only thirty miles more to Granada.
We rushed towards that wide valley, and on to the mountain town which
dared to repulse Ferdinand. In the deserted streets the only sound was the
singing of many springs, the same musical voices, the same strains that
Lord Rivers heard close upon five hundred years ago, when he came with his
English archers to help conquer the wild place. El Gran Capitán, too, had
come here, a lonely exile, after all his splendid services to an
ungrateful king. He, too, had heard the singing of Loja’s springs, not in
triumph, but in sorrow.
Down in the valley beyond, the river cried a warning to us; but we did not
heed, even when the road surface changed again to gluey mud; squelching
on, mile after mile, at the best pace we could, and saying always that
soon we should be on the Vega. So the dawn stole up and quivered on the
snows of the Sierra Nevada.
The moon was gone, and it must still be long before the sun would shine
over the mountains, when a black shadow like a great coffin deserted on
the road, gave me pause. I pulled up in haste, only just in time, and
could hardly believe I saw aright. But there was no illusion. We were on
the highway from the port of Malaga to Granada, yet here was a broken
bridge, a noble structure which should have outworn centuries, tumbling
into ruin.
The fall of the great central arch was no new thing, for moss and lichen
enamelled its jagged edges with green and gold. Some branches loosely
strewn across the road were the only signposts indicating this tragedy,
though perhaps it was a story as old as the great earthquake of
two-and-twenty years ago.
A yard or so more and we should have been over; but San Cristóbal had not
forgotten us; and the next thing was, how to cross the river without a
bridge. I turned and went back, discovering wheel-tracks which showed an
obscure bye-path dipping over the edge of the embankment. I followed, and
beheld the ford, a little farther on in a baby forest, where a broad
stream lay in flood between low banks.
“We’ll have to get through,” I said, and drove the Gloria into the water.
If there should be mud—but there were stones instead; and with tiny waves
swishing among the spokes of her wheels she set out to rumble over.
“I believe she’ll do it—” I had begun, when she gave a great hiss, as when
a blacksmith plunges a red-hot horseshoe into water; and a cloud of steam
gushed up. Still I forced her on, expecting each instant to hear some
fatal crash, while we plunged deeper into the stream. Now the little waves
splashed coldly across my feet. Would they mount to the carburetor, spoil
the ignition, or, still worse, would they crack the cylinders?
Neither of us spoke, and the car stormed on, sobbing. For a moment she
clawed in vain at something, and then stumbled, as if on her knees, up the
farther bank. Dripping water and puffing steam she climbed to the
high-road again, and, with a bound, started on through spouting mud, as if
nothing had happened. One would have thought her fired by some incentive
as powerful as mine, which forced her on in the face of all difficulties;
and perhaps it was a song of gladness which the motor hummed, as she came
out upon the Vega.
Suddenly the first beams of the sun streamed down the white slopes of the
far Sierra Nevada, touched the vast fertile plain, and wrought magic with
a castled hill which floated up, dreamlike, from a purple haze where a
great city lay asleep. Clustering vermilion towers blazed with the gold of
dawn, and dazzled our eyes with the glamour of romance. For the sleeping
city was Granada, and the red towers and gardens on the castled hill were
the towers and gardens of the Alhambra.
The adventure was over. And under one of those roofs, dove-grey in the
dawn, I hoped that Monica was sleeping.