If this record were a story of romantic adventure, it might well start from the moment Power set foot in the hotel which a relative of an eminent French actress used to keep in Valparaiso. He had not been in the city many hours before a brutal assault on a woman led him to intervene. During the resultant scuffle he was robbed of his pocketbook, and, in addition to a narrow escape from being knifed, he was informed by a supercilious policeman that the whole affair, including the screams of a female apparently in fear of her life, had been cleverly engineered for the express purpose of relieving him of his money.
When settling his affairs at Bison he had arranged that the bulk of his revenues should be lodged with his New York bankers, to whom letters and communications of every sort were to be sent. To provide against the unforeseen—a word of wide significance when applied to the vortex into which he was plunging—it was understood that a cablegram in his name would be acted on only if it bore the code-word “Bido,” a simple composite of the first syllables of Bison and Dolores, and, had it not been for the lucky chance that the bulk of his available ready money, some five thousand dollars, was safe in his room at the hotel, he might have been compelled to reveal his whereabouts to the bank forthwith.
Then, a Chilean gentleman, impressed by the fact that Power was an American, and therefore a millionaire, tried to extract gold from him by the safer and really more effective method of selling him a guano island. Singularly enough, this second thief’s pertinacity opened up the narrow and hazardous path for which Power was looking. The captain of a small steamer engaged in the guano trade went out of his way to warn the American that he was being exploited by a scoundrel. Such disinterested honesty in a Chilean was attractive. Some talk followed, and, three days after arriving in Valparaiso, Power quitted that lively city as a passenger on board the Carmen, bound for islands in the south.
The friendly skipper had no inkling of his new acquaintance’s intentions. He thought that the señor was veritably a speculator in guano, who, all the better-known deposits off the coast of Peru being either taken up or exhausted, was bent on exploiting fresh fields in Chile. This much is certain. Had Captain Malaspina realized that this well-spoken and pleasant-mannered stranger meant to throw in his lot with the savage race which infests the inhospitable islands and rock-strewn channels of the wildest coast in the world, he would have regarded him as a lunatic. He could never guess that his own blood-curdling yarns of these outcasts added fuel to the fire of Power’s strange enthusiasm. He believed that the Indians were cannibals. He had seen them living and eating in the interior of a putrid whale. He had found a five-year-old boy lying on the rocks with his brains dashed out, and was told that the child’s father had shown his anger in that way because the victim dropped some edible seaweed which the man had been at some pains to gather. Mere words could not describe the brutes. The worthy skipper always spat when he spoke of them.
His gruesome stories beguiled a slow voyage while the leaky boilers of the Carmen, iron steamship, of five hundred tons, pushed her sluggishly through the long rollers of the Pacific. Then a heavy sou’westerly gale sprang up, and the Carmen staggered for refuge into the Corcovado Gulf, and thence plashed and wallowed through the sheltered Moraleda Channel. To eke out her scanty stock of coal she put into the estuary of the Aisen River, where Malaspina bargained with Indians for a supply of wood.
Power saw his opportunity, and seized it eagerly. He asked to be put ashore for a couple of days in order that he might study the natives at close quarters. The friendly skipper was unwilling, arguing that a tribe of monkeys would better repay investigation, but ultimately yielded to pressure. There was really no great risk, he knew, because Chilean gunboats had taught these coast Indians to leave white men alone; so Power was landed, his total equipment being a small medicine chest, a hut, a folding bed, some few stores, and a shotgun, with a hundred cartridges, all told. He took more food than such a brief stay demanded; but the necessity of placating the head men of the village supplied a plausible excuse. A couple of silver dollars proved an irresistible bribe to a Spanish-speaking Indian who promised to guide him into the interior, and a letter to the amazed skipper of the Carmen saved the villagers from reprisals.
“I am sorry I was compelled to mislead you [he wrote]; but I mean to explore the Andes at this point, and I prefer to set out on a crazy project without undergoing the protests and dissuasion I should certainly have met with from the kind friend you have proved yourself. If all is well with you seven years from this date, write to me, care of the National Bank, New York. I will surely answer.”
“Seven years!” shouted Malaspina, shaking a huge fist at the silent hills. “Seven devils! He is mad, mad! There will be an inquiry by the American consul, and I shall be accused of killing him. Holy Virgin! What a fool I was to let him go alone!”
He was minded to flog an Indian or two, and thus extract information; but calmer counsels prevailed. After all, he had a letter proving that Power had left the ship voluntarily. At first he resolved to report the astounding incident on returning to Valparaiso, and discussed the matter volubly with José, second in command. José said, “No. Let sleeping dogs lie. Those foreign consuls are plaguy fellows. They get many a poor man hanged just to please their governments.”
Malaspina had been well paid, of course; so he decided to hold his tongue, keeping the letter, in case—— Thus was the trail lost. Power was buried alive.