Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig
Fenn George Manville
English
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Below is a summary of Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig
Old Gold; or, The Cruise of the Brig Jason, by George Manville Fenn.
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Here we have yet another suspense-filled adventure novel by Fenn. There
seems to be no end to the situations into which the people in the book
can get themselves, and from which there seem to be no escape.
A couple of wealthy Englishmen are determined to sail as far as they can
up one of the great rivers of South America, perhaps the Orinoco or
perhaps the Amazon. At the time this has never before been done. After
finding a ship and skipper they are joined by Briscoe, a rather pushy
young man, who has some good characteristics, but whom none of them
really like, and who gets on board, with all his stores and a servant,
by a series of subterfuges.
As they make their way up the river--they choose the Amazon--they are
attacked by the local natives, armed with bows and arrows. Then a boat
they send out to explore near a great cataract is sucked in by the
towback of the falls. This is normally fatal, but the wind slightly
changes, and they find an eddy which carries them clear.
Creating a trackway to enable them to haul a large ship's boat past the
falls, they leave their brig at anchor below the falls, and continue
with the exploration. They find an extraordinary rock-hewn city in the
cliffs bordering a canyon, abandoned perhaps for centuries, and now
inhabited by serpents, bats and possibly with various deadfalls guarding
the various chambers. Needless to say they find golden artefacts in
profusion, but just as they find them they are attacked by a huge fleet
of local savages in canoes, so they leave in a hurry.
Re-equipping the brig next year, they cannot find the way back to this
El Dorado, and it is the same in future years.
A most enjoyable book.
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OLD GOLD; OR, THE CRUISE OF THE BRIG JASON, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.
CHAPTER ONE.
OVER YONDER.
It was very, very hot. That is to say, it was as hot as it knows how to
be in Johnstown, Guiana, which means a damp, sticky, stifling kind of
heat. The sun made the muddy river look oily, and the party of three
seated under the great fig-tree which shaded the boarding-house by the
wharf seemed as if they were slowly melting away like so much of the
sugar of which the wharves and warehouses and the vessels moored in the
river smelt.
Let us be quite correct: it was more the smell of treacle, and the casks
and sugar bags piled up under an open-sided shed all looked gummy and
sticky; while the flies--there, it was just as if all the flies in the
world, little and big, had been attracted to hum, buzz, and in some
cases utter useless cries for help when they had managed to get their
wings daubed with the sweet juice and strove vainly to rise in the air.
Captain David Banes, a weather-beaten sailor of about forty, took off
his Panama hat, drew a yellow silk handkerchief out of the crown, and
dabbed the drops off his face, brow, and the top of his head, which
looked as if it had been rubbed and polished till all the hair for a
broad space had been cleared away.
Then he said: "_Phe-ew_!" put the handkerchief back, and nursed his hat
upon his knees, as he stared across the rough table, upon which coffee
and breakfast-cups were standing, at the sun-burned gentleman who looked
something like a modern yachtsman, though it was a good seventy years
ago.
The latter looked back at him half-smilingly, took out a handkerchief
and wiped his face, and glanced across at another sun-burned individual,
to wit, a young man something like him in face, who was driving away
flies from the sugar-basin, at which interference with their sweet
pleasure they buzzed angrily, and the moment a spoonful of sugar had
been taken out settled back.
"It's hot, Brace," said the second personage.
"Yes, I know," said the young fellow, smiling. "I found that out
myself."
"Ay, youngster," said the captain, "and it don't want a man o' genous to
find that out. I always say this is the hottest place there is, for I
never found a hotter. I dessay it is worse in our cook's oven, but I
never tried that."
He looked first at one and then at the other, as if he expected them to
laugh; but as they did not he screwed up his face, coughed
unnecessarily, and then said:
"Yes, it is hot, gentlemen. Wants to be if you mean to grow sugar."
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