Suddenly, however, the boat shot forward with marvellous velocity. The bow, or rather the platform at the forepart, rose clean out of the water, and the vessel seemed to skim along the surface. Fast as the jaguar was overhauling the man, the vessel was still faster closing in upon the jaguar. Will steered straight upon the tawny head. The boat appeared to fly along.
Hitherto the jaguar had been so intent upon his victim as to be oblivious of all else. Even the whirring of the propeller had not struck upon his senses. But when no more than three yards separated him from the man, he became suddenly aware that he in his turn was pursued. He turned half round, to see a rushing monster almost upon him. In another instant there was a heavy thud; the boat quivered from stem to stern, but with no perceptible slackening of speed passed clean over the spot where the animal had been.
A few moments more, and the hydroplane was floating on the water like an ordinary boat. Looking back, Will saw the swimmer scramble up the bank. Almost opposite him was the jaguar's head, bobbing up and down on the surface. The impact of the vessel had broken the creature's back. Immediately the Indian caught sight of it, he rushed along the bank in pursuit. The animal disappeared, but emerged again a few yards lower down. Then the man drew a knife from his belt, and plunged into the river. A few strokes brought him level with the carcase, and catching it by the ear, he drew it after him to the bank.
Meanwhile Will Pentelow had turned his vessel round, and, driving her against the current, came opposite to the Indian just as he reached the bank. The ground was steep and slippery, and the man was unable to drag the huge body out of the water. Will glanced all round with a caution born of familiarity with this haunt of caymans; but reflecting that the hydroplane would have scared away any of the dread reptiles that might have been lurking near, he threw out an anchor, and waded to the assistance of the Indian. Together they heaved the carcase out of the water and threw it on the bank. Then they looked at each other.
[CHAPTER II--THE HACIENDA]
William Pentelow was one of those boys who make up their mind early what they are going to be, and work steadily towards this settled aim. The son of a professional man of moderate income, he was sent to a well-known London day-school, showed no special promise for a year or two, but after his first lesson in mechanics declared that he must be an engineer, and from that time made rapid progress in science. His father recognized his bent, and sent him to the Heriot Watt College, where he was thrown among young fellows of many different nationalities, a circumstance that had two results: it caused him to think for the first time of going abroad, and it gave him opportunities of picking up a certain knowledge of foreign tongues. With French and Spanish he was soon at home; German bothered him; he was making strides in Hindostani when a sudden offer launched him on his career.
A friend of his father was superintending the building of a railway in Venezuela, for a British company engaged in working asphalt mines. Originally they had sent their products by barge along a tributary of the Orinoco, down that great river itself, and thus to sea. But after the company had been in existence for some years, the Jefe of the province of Guayana, by indirect means in which the South American official is an adept, secured a monopoly of the navigation of the tributary in question, and at once levied exorbitant transit dues on the only people who used it as a commercial waterway--the asphalt company.
The directors put up with this extortion for a time. Then the accession of a new president drove matters to a climax. This President, unlike almost every other ruler of Venezuela from the time of Bolivar, aimed, not at enriching himself and his clique, but at purifying the public life of the country. One of his first administrative acts was to dismiss the Jefe of Guayana, a notoriously corrupt official, who immediately set about making good his loss of income by doubling his fees to the asphalt company. This was more than the Company could stand. The directors made a vigorous protest to Government, but the Jefe was acting strictly within his legal rights, and there was no redress. The upshot was that the Company obtained a concession for a branch railway line, to run from their mines, along the right bank of the Jefe's river, to a junction with the trunk line about fifty miles distant. The work was immediately put in hand; the services of Mr. Pentelow's friend, Mr. George Jackson, were engaged as chief of the construction staff; and just before sailing, Mr. Jackson bethought himself of young Pentelow, now near the end of his pupilage, and offered him his first job. Will accepted with alacrity. The opportunity of gaining experience and at the same time seeing a foreign country was too good to be neglected. He sailed with Mr. Jackson, and had been several months in Venezuela when our story opens. Forty miles of the railway had already been completed, and was in use for the carriage of asphalt, this being conveyed to railhead from the mines on mules. The Company had ceased to pay dues to the ex-Jefe of Guayana, whose monopoly was now not worth an old song.
Will's only regret in leaving England was the interruption of his hobby. He had been for some time enthusiastically interested in motor-boats, and when Mr. Jackson's sudden offer came, was in the midst of experimenting with a hydroplane. This he had to leave behind. But he had not been long in Venezuela before he found an opportunity of taking up his hobby again. The labourers on the railway, a strangely assorted crowd of Spaniards, Spanish-Indians, Indo-negroes and other mongrels, were scrupulous in one matter: the observance of holidays. Saints' days and festivals were numerous, and on these all work stopped. Finding himself thus with plenty of spare time on his hands, Will turned it to account. In Caracas one day he picked up a petrol engine, very light and at the same time of considerable horse-power. It was part of a motor-car which a wealthy Venezuelan had imported from New York. One break-down after another, imperfectly repaired--for the Venezuelans are notoriously bad mechanicians--had disgusted the owner of the car, who was glad to sell it for a mere trifle. Since the car was useless outside Caracas--and indeed inside the city, for the matter of that, the paving of the streets being remarkably primitive--Will removed the engine, conveyed it to the head-quarters of the branch railway, and with the assistance of a handy man on the staff, by name Joe Ruggles, adapted it to a hydroplane which he built himself. The basin of the Orinoco is so much intersected by rivers and streams of all sizes that the new railway was at no point very far from a watercourse deep enough to float the vessel. The constantly recurring fête days gave Will many opportunities of indulging his hobby, on which he was the object of much good-humoured banter among his colleagues.
The boat, as Will had to confess, was a somewhat rough and ready affair. It was not the kind of thing that would be turned out at Thorneycroft's, and it would no doubt have been regarded with a sniff of contempt by a professional boat-builder. In its essentials it was a kind of punt, the flat bottom being fitted with planes inclined at an angle, so that when the propelling force was sufficient, the forward part of the boat was raised out of the water, skimming along the surface instead of cutting through it like an ordinary boat. The crew and engines were accommodated aft, this disposition of the weight facilitating the skimming action on which the speed of the vessel depended. Although some twenty-four feet long and eight feet in beam, her draft at rest was only a few inches. As Ruggles was accustomed to say, she could go anywhere if the dew was heavy enough. For the hull Will used a light steel framework covered with very thin planking. A boat-shaped windscreen, pierced for two ventilators intended to cool the engines, gave shelter to the crew, a very necessary precaution when the boat was moving at high speed.