



Produced by Camille Bernard & Marc D'Hooghe at
http://www.freeliterature.org (Images generously made
available by the Hathi Trust.)





THE TREASURE OF PEARLS

A Romance of Adventures in California

BY

GUSTAVE AIMARD


AUTHOR OF "RED TRACK," "ADVENTURERS," "PEARL OF THE ANDES"

"TRAIL HUNTER," "PIRATES OF THE PRAIRIE," &C, &C.


LONDON: J. and R. MAXWELL

MILTON HOUSE, 4, SHOE LANE E. C.

GEORGE VICKERS, ANGEL COURT, STRAND

AND ALL BOOKSELLERS


(From the Collected Works 1863-1885)




CONTENTS.


         I. THE PIECES AND THE BOARD
        II. ENVY NO MAN HIS GRAVE
       III. THE PIRATE'S BEQUEST
        IV. A DESERT MYSTERY
         V. THE GODSEND
        VI. ANY PORT IN A STORM
       VII. A WAKING NIGHTMARE
      VIII. "THE LITTLE JOKER"
        IX. THE WAY LAYERS
         X. THE PEARL DIVER'S PRICE
        XI. THE TWO CAPTAINS OF THE "GOLETA"
       XII. THE ROUT COMPLETE
      XIII. INTERVENTION
       XIV. THE HAUL OF MILLIONS
        XV. THE PATHFINDER'S HONOUR
       XVI. A HAVEN WORSE THAN THE STORM
      XVII. THE PUREST OF PEARLS
     XVIII. OUT AND AWAY
       XIX. THE OLD, OLD FRIENDS
        XX. THE ANGELITO
       XXI. THE LANCERS' CHARGE
      XXII. THE PACT OF BLOOD
     XXIII. CANNON IS BROUGHT TO BEAR
      XXIV. THE UNWILLING VOLUNTEER
       XXV. THE LOYALTY OF THE APACHE
      XXVI. THE HARVEST OF THE KNIFE
     XXVII. THE TRUE CABALLERO
    XXVIII. THE BEST BAIT TO CATCH APACHES




THE TREASURE OF PEARLS




CHAPTER I.

THE PIECES AND THE BOARD.


We stand on Mexican soil. We are on the seaward skirt of its
westernmost State of Sonora, in the wild lands almost washed by the
Californian Gulf, which will be the formidable last ditch of the
unconquerable red men flying before the Star of the Empire.

Before us, the immensity of land; behind us, that of the Pacific Ocean.

O immeasurable stretches of verdure which form the ever-unknown
territory, the poetically entitled Far West, grand and attractive,
sweet and terrible, the natural trellis of so rich, beautiful, mighty,
and unkempt flora, that India has none of more vigour of production!

To an aeronaut's glance, these green and yellow plains would offer only
a vast carpet embroidered with dazzling flowers and foliage, almost as
gay and multicoloured, irregularly blocked out like the pieces of glass
in ancient church windows with the lead, by rivers torrential in the
wet season, rugged hollows of glistening quicksands and neck-deep mud
in summer, all of which blend with an unexampled brilliant azure on the
clear horizon.

It is only gradually, after the view has become inured to the
fascinating landscape, that it can make out the details: hills not to
be scorned for altitude, steep banks of rivers, and a thousand other
unforeseen impediments for the wretch fleeing from hostile animals or
fellow beings, which agreeably spoil the somewhat saddening sameness,
and are hidden completely from the general glance by the rank grass,
rich canes, and gigantic flower stalks.

Oh, for the time--the reader would find the patience--to enumerate
the charming products of this primitive nature, which shoots up and
athwart, hangs, swings, juts out, crosses, interlaces, binds, twines,
catches, encircles, and strays at random to the end of the naturalist's
investigation, describing majestic parabolas, forming grandiose
arcades, and finally completes the most splendid, aye, and sublime
spectacle that is given to any man on the footstool to admire for
superabundant contrasts, and enthralling harmonies.

The man in the balloon whom we imagine to be hovering over this mighty
picture, even higher up than the eagle of the Sierra Madre itself, who
sails in long circles above the bald-headed vulture about to descend on
a prey, which the king of the air disdains--this lofty viewer, we say,
would spy, on the afternoon when we guide the reader to these wilds
apparently unpeopled, more than one human creature wriggling like worms
in the labyrinth.

At one point some twenty men, white and yet swarthy, unlike in dress
but similarly armed to the teeth, were separately "worming" their
tortuous way, we repeat, through the _chaparral_ proper, or plantations
of the low branching live oak, as well as the gigantic ferns, mesquite,
cactus, nopal, and fruit laden shrubs, the oblong-leaved mahogany, the
bread tree, the fan-leaved abanico, the pirijao languidly swinging its
enormous golden fruit in clusters, the royal palm, devoid of foliage
along the stem, but softly nodding its high, majestically plumed head;
the guava, the banana, the intoxicating chirimoya, the cork oak, the
Peruvian tree, the war palm letting its resinous gum slowly ooze forth
to capture the silly moths, and even young snakes and lizards which
squirmed on the hardening gum like a platter of Palissy ware abruptly
galvanised into life.

These adventurers insinuated themselves through this tangle unseen and,
perhaps, unsuspected by one another, all tending to the same point,
probably the same rendezvous. A marked devil-may-care spirit, which
tempered the caution of men brought up in the desert, betokened that
they were master of the woods hereabouts, or, at least, only recognised
the Indian rovers as their contesting fellow tenants.

Elsewhere, a blundering stranger, of a fairness which startled the
pronghorn antelopes