During our stay in Rio we saw much to interest us. The negro was very much in evidence. Slavery was still the law of the land; all the toil and burden-bearing falls to the poor slave's lot. One day we all three took an early train and alighted at a small hamlet on the border of a stream about thirty miles from Rio, beyond the ranges of mountains that hem in the city. We managed to find some saddle mules and started to see the country. We rode for some miles through a land covered with moundlike hills, no sooner coming to the bottom of one than we were ascending another. These hills are covered with coffee bushes filled with red fruit, about the size of a cherry, each containing two kernels. The coffee was being picked into large flat baskets by slaves, which, when filled, they carried away on their heads to the drying grounds.
The roads were bordered with orange trees loaded with luscious fruit, to which we helped ourselves. After a time we turned into a bridle path and rode some miles through a dense forest. We emerged upon the outskirts of a coffee plantation, where the slaves were just on their way to dinner, and another half mile brought us to the planter's residence. Thirty or forty slaves of both sexes and all ages were grouped upon the grass, engaged in eating a black-looking stew out of metal dishes, their fingers serving for knives, forks and spoons. Seeing three horsemen ride out of the forest, they stared in stupid wonder, until one more intelligent than the others went in search of the overseer. Presently a white man appeared, and, in response to Mac's "Parlate Italiano," came the smiling answer, "Si, Signor," proving, as we wagered he would be, a native of beggarly, sunny Italy.
The overseer showed us over the place, and explained all the processes of preparing coffee for the market. In one corner of a large, unpainted building was what he called the infirmary, and a comfortless looking place it was. He said there was no doctor employed, and that he dealt out medicine to the slaves himself. After being served with coffee we thanked him for our entertainment and returned to Rio by an evening train.
The mail steamer Ebro was advertised to leave Rio for Liverpool on Wednesday of the week following the exciting events narrated in the last chapter. This was the mail that would carry the draft for £10,000 on the London and Westminster Bank, along with a letter from the Rio bank, stating that they had cashed Mr. Gregory Morrison's draft upon the letter issued by them.
Twenty-two or three days after the steamer left Rio the London bank would know their correspondents in Rio had been victimized, but 8,000 miles of blue water was between them, with no way to bridge it but by steam; so we had at least forty-four days more to gather in our harvest. I ought to say, apparently forty-four more days, for by an amazing blunder we were about to bring a storm upon our heads.
The steamer we purposed to load our money on and ourselves, too, was the Chimborazo, advertised to arrive on Tuesday and to leave for the River Plate and the west coast the next day. So it was agreed that on Monday Mac should go to the bank and arrange to cash his letters for twenty or thirty thousand pounds, and go the next day for the money. As soon as Mac came from the bank and announced that all was well, another of us was to call at the Bank of London and Rio and the River Plate Bank, present his letters of introduction and ask in each bank to have the five thousand pounds or ten thousand pounds ready the next day. They purposed to call about 11 o'clock, so as to give me time to exchange the Brazilian bank notes for sovereigns, and to buy my ticket by the Chimborazo, to secure my stateroom and to take the gold to the steamer, and, above all, to get my passport vised by the police.
Monday came. We expected a nervous day, not such a paralyzingly nervous one as it proved to be. In fact, a nervous Tuesday followed a nervous Monday. My reader must remember that we were in the tropics, with a blazing sun looking down on us with an intensity that made one long for Greenland's icy mountains to cool us.
We went into the public park for our last consultation before our fortune, which never came, was to come.
Mac had in the little morocco case in his pocket two letters each for £20,000. Certainly no man in the world, save him, could have carried off such a game played for such high stakes. Handsome in person, faultless in address, cool in nerve, a master of all the languages spoken in Rio—Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French. Above all, he had a boundless confidence in himself. What an honorable future might have been his but for his youthful follies! Truly he could have achieved a wonderful success in any honorable career. Unhappily for him, he, like thousands of our brainiest youth, had entered the Primrose Way. In our youthful fire and thoughtlessness we saw only the flowers and heard the siren's song, but at last the Primrose Way led us down into a gloom where all the flowers withered and the gay songs turned into dirges.
Looking at his watch Mac jumped up, saying: "It is 10.45 and time to be off." So he started for the bank, we following at some distance, our nerves all on the stretch. We felt that our lives and fortunes were trembling in the balance. The minutes dragged like hours. While watching we saw several persons enter or leave the bank, and still our friend delayed his appearance.