Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/626

 618 But this strange intruder caught me by both hands, held me at arm’s length, and fixed his quick bright hazel eyes on mine.

“Tom, old boy, don’t you know me?”

Bless my soul! Of course I did, though eleven years had passed since my brother Henry and I had met. Harry had been out of England, pushing his fortune, as he called it, and though he had written sometimes, and I more frequently, there had been great gaps in our correspondence. Harry was fresh from Spanish America, had landed at Southampton that very morning, in time for the London express, and had come straight to my den in the Temple. Of course I was glad to see him. The best proof of which was that I kicked the abstract aside, heedless of the wrath of Neeld and Fusby, that I closed my chambers, took Harry and his light luggage to my house in Kensington, and killed the fatted calf in honour of his return. After dinner, when my wife had left us to keep company with the decanters, my sun-burnt brother began as follows:

“You got my last letter from Valparaiso, I think you said? Well, Tom, I am really ashamed to own it was the last. You see at that time I was doing very well, and I began to think that the Will o’ the Wisp of fortune, that had led me such a dance for years, was within my grasp at last. You remember the sanguine, rose-coloured view I took of things, then? The fact is, I saw the world through the medium of the dollars in my purse, and still more of the brilliant prospects a-head. It all turned out moonshine, Tom. The Yankee speculator who had got me and other fools in tow proved himself as great a humbug as ever rigged a share market. We were thoroughly entrapped, lost all we had saved, and, for a long time, I was in such poverty, Tom, as I thank Heaven you and yours have never known, and of which you cannot guess the bitterness.”

“But why did you not—” I began, reproachfully; but Harry cut me short.

“Why did I not write to you for help, eh? Why not write whining accounts of my state to my relatives at home. Why, Tom, I was ashamed, after all my boasts and crowing. Besides, though I knew you’d bear a hand, dear old boy, to drag me out of the mire, I knew fees were not too plentiful with you, and begging doesn’t come natural to me, somehow.

“So I set my face against ill luck, fought the matter out, and after near a year’s toil and privations, I was able to leave the place, free of debt, but with just coin enough to pay my passage to another port. Well, I won’t weary you with descriptions of my doings for the next eighteen months; it’s enough to say that I was assistant to an architect at Buenos Ayres, and right-hand man to a cattle farmer in Brazil, and earned beef and bacallao, but not much beyond. At the end of that time I got a capital offer—that of the post of chief engineer of the Cerro Azul mining company, in Mexico. Don’t laugh, Tom; upon my word that was a bonâ fide, genuine concern. Most of the proprietors were English, with a sprinkling of Yankees and Mexicans. There was money enough—real paid-up capital; my salary was safe, and had been calculated on a liberal scale. Indeed, it was thought one of the prizes of our profession, out there, to get the place, and I should not have got it but for meeting old Captain Cooper, R.N., at Rio. He took a fancy to me, gave me a passage to Vera Cruz, and recommended me to his nephew, the resident director. So there I was, with close upon six hundred a-year, and a small percentage on the ore extracted.”

“Which turned out to be purely imaginary, no doubt;” said I. “Help yourself. That’s decent sherry, though I dare say the Dons have spoiled you in that respect.”

“You are mistaken, brother,” said Harry, “for the silver was real enough, and reasonably plentiful. The mine paid well, or would have paid well, after all expenses had been reckoned for, but for the bribes that we had to furnish under various pretexts. Such a corrupt government you never dreamed of, and the worst of it was, that Chihuahua—did I say that was the State we were in?—was always changing masters, and both factions pressed us for requisitions, mulcts, and taxes of all sorts. Still, the mine did its duty; we got out new pumping machinery from England, with Cornish engines, and Cornish miners, and a very tolerable staff of surveyors and engineers. I must tell you that Cerro Azul, or the Blue Mountain, is one of the rugged hills of the great Sierra de Carcay, the backbone of Mexico, and about fifty miles from the city of Chihuahua. The company had purchased a very extensive concession, and besides the main shaft and two smaller pits, there were many acres of argentiferous ground, to say nothing of copper, and of the gold which the miserable gambusinos washed by grains out of the half-dried beds of the torrents. Mines have always been a hobby of my own; if I know any one branch of my profession better than another, it is that which relates to lodes and smelting, and ventilation, and all that refers to subterranean work. So I fell to with a will, prospecting in my spare moments, analysing, sifting, and comparing specimens, and at the end of two months I could safely report to my employers that two, if not three, fresh veins, at a distance from the main shaft, might be opened with every hope of profit. The company responded, voted me their thanks, and sent out more machinery and capital. I was in high feather, and trusted to make our Blue Mountain mine as famous as any in Mexico. You will ask, Tom, or at least you will think the question, why did I not write? Often I have taken up my pen to begin, but something always checked me. You see, I remembered my confident predictions written from Valparaiso, and the end of them, and I was shy of becoming a false prophet once more. There is no such gambling, after all, as mining operations. My report was an honest and truthful one; practical men on the spot agreed in my estimate of the value of the new veins, and yet I did not want to reckon too much on what might prove a castle in the air. The veins might shrink to nothing, or dip down through the hard crystalline rock, and baffle us. Or the Church party, desperate for means to pay their troops, might confiscate the property of the company, for might is right in Mexico. So, as the Yankees say, I concluded to wait. It so happened,