Harry Escombe

Harry Escombe, by Harry
Collingwood

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Title: Harry Escombe A Tale of Adventure in Peru
Author: Harry Collingwood
Illustrator: Victor Prout
Release Date: April 13, 2007 [EBook #21066]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARRY
ESCOMBE ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Harry Escombe A Tale of Adventure in Peru
By Harry Collingwood

_________________________________________________________
______________Harry Escombe is a young apprentice in a civil
engineer's office. The firm has received a contract to survey and built a
railway line in Peru. Harry is chosen to go, and is informed that if he
does well in the work the future for him is pretty bright.
But there is a fly in the ointment. The man in charge of the project is
about as nasty as anyone can be: his character is beautifully depicted
throughout the book. He makes Harry do a piece of surveying in an
unnecessarily dangerous manner, as a result of which he falls down a
precipice from which he cannot be rescued, and is therefore written off
as dead.
But he was indeed rescued. He was taken to a house where he
remained in a coma for some time. Then he is thought to be a
re-incarnation of The Inca, and taken by Indians to their own city,
where he is worshipped as a god. This could be quite embarrassing if
you found yourself in this situation, as you'd be unable to perform
miracles, and do the things a deity might be expected to do. However,
Harry managed rather well. But eventually he manages to escape from
the situation, and to return to his home in England.
_________________________________________________________
_____________HARRY ESCOMBE A TALE OF ADVENTURE IN
PERU
BY HARRY COLLINGWOOD
CHAPTER ONE.
HOW THE ADVENTURE ORIGINATED.
The hour was noon, the month chill October; and the occupants--a
round dozen in number--of Sir Philip Swinburne's drawing office were
more or less busily pursuing their vocation of preparing drawings and
tracings, taking out quantities, preparing estimates, and, in short,
executing the several duties of a civil engineers' draughtsman as well as
they could in a temperature of 35° Fahrenheit, and in an atmosphere
surcharged with smoke from a flue that refused to draw--when the door

communicating with the chief draughtsman's room opened and the head
of Mr Richards, the occupant of that apartment, protruded through the
aperture. At the sound of the opening door the draughtsmen, who were
acquainted with Mr Richards's ways, glanced up with one accord from
their work, and the eye of one of them was promptly caught by Mr
Richards, who, raising a beckoning finger, remarked:
"Escombe, I want you," and immediately retired.
Thereupon Escombe, the individual addressed, carefully wiped his
drawing pen upon a duster, methodically laid the instrument in its
proper place in the instrument case, closed the latter, and, descending
from his high stool, made his way into the chief draughtsman's room,
closing the door behind him. He did this with some little trepidation;
for these private interviews with his chief were more often than not of a
distinctly unpleasant character, having reference to some stupid blunder
in a calculation, some oversight in the preparation of a drawing, or
something of a similar nature calling for sharp rebuke; and as the lad--
he was but seventeen--accomplished the short journey from one room
to the other he rapidly reviewed his most recent work, and endeavoured
to decide in which job he was most likely to have made a mistake. But
before he could arrive at a decision on this point he was in the presence
of Mr Richards, and a single glance at the chief draughtsman's
face--now that it could be seen clearly and unveiled by a pall of
smoke--sufficed to assure Harry Escombe that in this case at least he
had nothing in the nature of censure to fear. For Mr Richards's face was
beaming with satisfaction, and a large atlas lay open upon the desk at
which he stood.
"Sit down, Escombe," remarked the dreaded potentate as he pointed to
a chair.
Escombe seated himself; and then ensued a silence of a full minute's
duration. The potentate seemed to be meditating how to begin. At
length--
"How long have you been with us, Escombe?" he enquired, hoisting
himself onto a stool as he put the question.

"A little over two years," answered Escombe. "I signed my articles with
Sir Philip on the first of September the year before last, and came on
duty the