Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1959 Read Online Free

rainstorms to
provide more. His cooking apparatus was simple but efficient—a rectangle of
slate clamped in the bottom of the boat, with a basket of charcoal for fuel and
a spit and a saucepan for utensils.
                 Darragh
was no experienced navigator; he had taught himself what he could of
navigation theory, from grubby old books that had come down from North America in that long-ago retreat. He had a compass,
a quadrant and a tattered set of United States Navy charts of the Caribbean Sea , perhaps three-quarters of a century old.
His arms were an ancient but well-whetted cavalry saber; a good sheath knife
of home-forged, home-tempered steel; and—since all firearms had long ago been
confiscated by the chiefs who planned that uprising against the Cold People—a
bow and a quiver full of arrows.
                 Since
Darragh was to spy upon the Cold People, he had prepared and packed warm
clothing. It lay there under the foredeck, a combination garment that would
cover body, limbs and head—also two heavy gauntlets, and a pair of high moccasins
that could lace up snugly. The lack of furry pelts in the tropics had baffled
him at first, but he had made shift with two thicknesses of deer leather tanned
to the utmost softness. Between these layers he had sandwiched a third layer
of cotton lint, and had quilted the whole together with strong tuft stitches.
There was a pair of immemorial glass goggles set in a half-mask of old leather,
which he had oiled carefully to make it soft again, and a scarf knitted of
heavy cotton yarn to protect his face. Completing the cargo was a handful of
personal odds and ends—several hand-whittled pipes; a bag of tobacco; his
father's well-ground straight razor; a bamboo tube of hand-rolled quinine
pills; and a copy of "Robinson Crusoe".
                 At
first Darragh had nothing to do except steer his dugout as the strong-flowing
current of the Orinoco carried him down and down and to the open
sea. There he ran up his sails to take advantage of a fair breeze from
southward.
                 Running
well before that breeze on a bright, hot afternoon, Darragh sailed to starboard
of Trinidad and at sundown dropped his stone anchor
close in to a swampy shore. He slept some hours, breakfasted before dawn on
cassava bread and dried meat, then set sail again. The sun came up to show him
the Island of Tobago on his right.
                 An
effort to sail straight past and away from Tobago was unsuccessful; a strong current beat him
back, and it occurred to him that the same current was mentioned in his Robinson
Crusoe book. He tacked to go around the other way, and was successful.
Pleasant days and nights followed. He slept little, with sails furled and
rudder lashed, but the little he slept was enough for a healthy young body. He
felt that his makeshift navigation was to be congratulated when he made a
landfall at the old port of St. George's on Grenada for fresh water and exploration, on his
seventh day out from the mouth of the Orinoco .
                 He
found that the one-time capital of the island colony was in prone ruins and
overgrown with jungle; plainly, it had received the attention of the invaders
long ago. Trying to trace the old streets, Darragh saw that even the concrete
curbs had gone to powder. He wondered, as so often in the past, at the
riddlesome force of the explosive ray mechanism that had spelled disaster for
his race.
                 Guns
would be nothing against it, and Spence and those other chiefs of the alliance
were unable to think or imagine beyond guns. Darragh found a clear spring and
refilled his array of gourds with sweet water. He picked some custard apples to
take back to the boat, and pushed off to sea again, thinking soberly and
somewhat gloomily.
                 But,
out on the blue water with his palm-woven sails bellying to the breeze, he
plucked up spirits. He had seen nothing of