TRONADOR LIGHT
“Wild life is plainly what I was made for,” said Lang. “See how I’ve
thrived on it. A great adventurer’ll be lost in me when I go back to
surgery in Boston. I’ve had maltreatment enough to kill a mule, as I’d
have thought once, and it’s brought me to life. What a broken-down
wretch I was in Mobile! What a whining, ill-tempered dog you must have
thought me!”
“I never did,” Eva denied quickly. She had just relieved Lang at the
helm of the _Chita_, sitting beside him in the little glassed pilot
house forward. They had hoped to make Puerto Montt that evening and
had kept on, though it was now two hours after sunset. Blackness was
over the mountains to the east and the rough islands on the other side
of the wide channel, and the sea heaved gently, smooth and black,
bubbling up palely away from the bow.
“I thought you were wonderful,” she went on “Everything in the world
had smashed under you—so you thought then. I was so sorry—oh, I can’t
tell you! I wanted to comfort you, even at first when we met on the
boat. And afterward, when it was I who seemed to have lost everything,
you were so good to me, and you never seemed to remember your own
troubles. I couldn’t tell you then how grateful I was. I never can
tell you. But you’ll know some time.”
“You’ve already brought me about a hundred times more than I deserve,”
Lang murmured, abashed, and he was not thinking of the emeralds.
They were in a locked drawer in Morrison’s little stateroom, and even
his share in these was to be no trivial reward. The stones had been
carefully sorted, weighed, cleaned, appraised as far as possible. A
few of them were almost certainly only green sapphires, of slight
value. Many were flawed. The biggest, which Lang had fondly hoped to
be worth a fortune, developed under a magnifier a series of central
cracks, and it would have to be cut into four, or perhaps five parts.
How the stones would cut was still in doubt, but Morrison, who knew
something of rough precious stones, estimated conservatively that the
lot should bring between fifty thousand dollars and seventy thousand
dollars if they were disposed of with due skill and no haste.
It would be no great fortune, but it was all Lang wanted. It was as
good as a million to him. It would give him a fresh start; and he had
his own work back again. He was not afraid of another breakdown.
Action and adventure and rough open-air life had braced and hardened
him and worked out the lack of control in his hands, which had been
probably nervous, after all. The emergency operation at the camp had
restored his confidence. A few weeks’ practice would bring back all
his old technique. As he gazed ahead through the darkness, looking for
the revolving light at the top of Chiloe Island, the future looked a
dazzle of certain success.
Carroll and Louie had died within three hours of each other, and lay
together in one grave in the gravel at the foot of the glacier. Lang
was thankful now that it was not his bullet that had killed either of
them; though their deaths were hardly to be regretted. But he did
still sorely regret the fate of his German Chileans of the schooner,
and he planned to make inquiries at Puerto Montt, and indemnify their
families, if they had any.
Morrison had been greatly fired when he finally heard Lang’s complete
account of his discoveries inside the glacier, and had insisted on
seeing them himself. With reluctance Lang went with him through that
tunnel that he had hewn out in a sort of nightmare.
It seemed a surprisingly short way now to the death camp, where they
chipped all the bodies clear of ice, discovering still another in
doing so. Morrison measured and sketched them, and even managed to
carry in a camera and take flash-light photographs. They gathered up
all the crystals that Lang had discarded, but found no more emeralds;
though Morrison secured material that was almost more precious to
him—copper knives and spears of unusual design, a primeval fire
striker, bone carvings and decorations, and, most important of all,
under the furs of one of the Indians, a number of skeins of peculiarly
colored and knotted cords.
They were like the indecipherable _quipus_ of the Incas, those records
in knotted strings that no one has ever been able to understand. But
these cords were knotted on an evidently different system, and
Morrison had high hopes that they might turn out a sort of Rosetta
stone which would solve the secret of the Peruvian records. At any
rate it confirmed his theory of the extent of Inca influence into the
far south.
Morrison was sitting back in the cabin then, poring over the _quipus_
under the swinging light. They would mean glory for him, should he
succeed in making sense of them. He would write a book, which learned
men would read and quarrel over violently, but it seemed to Lang a
poor sort of ambition.
The adventure was over, but he would never get the thrill and flavor
of it out of his bones. Eva was beside him, her shoulder almost
touching his own, as she steered, looking ahead for the ending mark of
the voyage.
“Eva!” he whispered suddenly.
He did not know what he meant to say. She turned her face, then let go
the wheel impulsively, threw both arms around his neck and drew his
head to her. The boat yawed wildly. They heard Morrison’s startled
shout.
“What’s the matter, there?”
Eva seized the wheel again and steadied her. Looking ahead, Lang saw
something like the faintest, most remote summer lightning touch the
horizon clouds, vanish, reappear, vanish.
“I think we’ve raised Tronador Light,” he called back.
Morrison came forward and stared over their shoulders.
“Yes, that’s old Tronador,” he said with satisfaction. “Many a time
I’ve seen it winking as I came up this channel—never with such a cargo
as we’ve got on board to-night.”
“It’s time—you’ve deserved it long enough, father,” Eva murmured.
“Of course I deserved it, but I’d never have got it but for luck, and
Doctor Lang. Close to a hundred thousand. It was you who turned the
trick for us, Lang, and you’ll get your reward.”
“I’ve got my reward already,” said Lang, with some emphasis.
Morrison glanced at him sharply, and said nothing for a moment.
“Yes, I know. I’ve seen it coming,” he returned somberly. “You get the
reward, but I pay it, Lang. I pay it, and I can’t afford it. I suppose
I can’t help myself.
“Oh, well, it’s the fate of parents,” he went on resignedly. “And I’ve
still got something, after all—some stuff that’ll make the scientific
world take notice. Wait till I write my monograph on the _quipus_!”
It seemed a cold and barren sort of success, Lang thought, sitting in
touch of Eva’s shoulder. His own triumph seemed charged with fire. He
was coming back with treasure and love and future brilliance, and he
felt profoundly sorry for his future father-in-law. And, miles ahead,
Tronador Light swept every minute wider circles of light on the black
horizon.
THE END