The Treasure of the Incas | Page 2

marry a half-pay
lieutenant of the navy with no chance in the world of getting employed
again, for I have no interest whatever."
"It is an awkward case certainly, Prendergast," the other said; "and
upon my word, though I sympathize with you, I cannot blame
Fortescue. He is not what you might call a genial man, but there is no
doubt that he was a splendid lawyer and a wonderful worker. For ten
years he earned more than any man at the bar. I know that he was twice
offered the solicitor- generalship, but as he was making two or three
times the official salary, he would not take it. I believe he would have
gone on working till now had he not suddenly come in for a very fine
estate, owing to the death, in the course of two or three years, of four
men who stood between him and it. Besides, I fancy he got hints that in
the general opinion of the bar he had had a wonderfully good innings,
and it was about time that younger men had a share in it. What his
savings were I do not know, but they must be very large. His three sons
are all at the bar, and are rising men, so there was no occasion for him
to go on piling up money for them. But, as I say, he has always had the
reputation of being a hard man, and it is practically certain that he
would never allow his daughter to marry a man whom he would regard

as next door to a pauper. Now, what are you thinking of doing?"
"Well, sir, Miss Fortescue has agreed to wait for me for two years, and
of course I am eager to do something, but the question is what? I can
sail a ship, but even could I get the command of a merchantman, it
would not improve my position in the eyes of the parents of the lady in
question. Now, you have been knocking about all over the world, I do
wish you would give me your advice. Where is there money to be got?
I am equally ready to go to the North Pole or the Equator, to enter the
service of an Indian prince, or to start in search of a treasure hidden by
the old bucaneers."
"You talk Spanish, don't you?"
"Yes; all my service has been in the Mediterranean. We were two years
off the coast of Spain, and in and out of its ports, and as time hung
heavily on our hands, I got up the language partly to amuse myself and
partly to be able to talk fluently with my partners at a ball."
The elder man did not speak for a minute or two.
"You have not thought of South America?" he said at last.
"No, Mr. Barnett; I don't know that I have ever thought of one place
more than another."
The other was again silent.
"I don't think you could do better anywhere," he said slowly. "It is a
land with great possibilities; at any rate it is a land where you could be
understood, and of course it would be folly to go anywhere without a
knowledge of the language. I was, as you know, five years out there,
and came home when the war broke out between Chili and the
Spaniards. I have been more in Peru than in Chili, and as Peru was still
in the hands of the Spanish, it would have been impossible for me to go
there again as long as the war lasted. Knocking about as I did, I heard a
great deal from the natives (I mean the Indians). I gathered from them a
number of their traditions, and I am convinced that they know of any

number of gold mines that were formerly worked, but were blocked up
when the Spaniards invaded the country, and have been kept secret ever
since.
"The natives have never spoken on the subject at all to the Spaniards. If
they had, they would have been flogged until they revealed all they
knew-- that is to say, they would have been flogged to death, for no
tortures will wring from an Indian anything he knows about gold. They
look upon that metal as the source of all the misfortunes that have
fallen upon their race. With an Englishman whom they knew and
trusted, and who, as they also knew, had no wish whatever to discover
gold mines, they were a little less reticent. I never asked them any
questions on a subject in which I had not a shadow of interest, but I
certainly had some curiosity, not of a pecuniary kind, because the
matter had always been a riddle as to the hiding-place