The roto stared blankly, then waved an arm wide, and rasped out something about “el mar.”
Providentially just then a young fellow passed whom Lang knew, one of the clerks from an American agency on the water front, where he had already inquired concerning Morrison.
“The boat’s sailed,” he interpreted, after a few words with the stevedore. “Went out just about daylight, the fellow says. Oh, yes, I know the Chita well. She used to be a yacht, but was sold; she’s been hired lately, and I heard that some American had her. Were you trying to catch her?” he asked, looking curiously at Lang’s perturbed face. “Not likely she’ll be gone far. I don’t know, though,” he added, after another exchange with the dockman. “He says she took aboard a hundred tins of petrol. Maybe the port officers will know where she sailed for.”
“Ask him if he knows who were in her—how many people?” said Lang.
The stevedore did not know. He had not seen her sailing. Lang turned away blindly, forgetting to tip the man or to thank the interpreter, his mind a boiling blackness of rage and disappointment.
Carroll had tricked him again. It was his own fault. He should have enlisted the police, the consul, some authority; or he should have had a watch kept on the boat day and night. Once more his own insane carelessness had ruined all.
There was only one chance now, and one fact stood out strongly from his defeat. He would have to throw his last stakes on the board where already the dearest lives to him on earth were risked. Far more than treasure was at stake now, and to win he would have to reach the glacier gate before the Chita.
CHAPTER XIII
SOUTHWARD BOUND
At half past eleven that morning Lang was aboard a train for Concepcion.
He had made a hurried study of maps and timetables, visited the consulate and induced the consular secretary to telephone to the railway offices for him. His only chance lay in railway speed. The line followed the coast southward to Puerto Montt, nearly eight hundred miles, which he hoped to reach in a couple of days, allowing for South American railway methods. From Puerto Montt he could surely hire some sort of sailing craft for the indefinite remainder of the distance.