The girl rose from her perch and drew long breaths of the diamond air. The waxing light revealed her companion, a tall man muffled in a blanket coat, who had been standing beneath her. She turned to him. “It is well called this the Courts of the Morning, Excellency,” she said. “Aren’t you glad I made you come with me?”
He was busy lighting his pipe. When he raised his face to her, there was a flicker of a smile around the corners of his deep-set eyes.
“I blame myself for not appreciating long ago the charms of this corner of my province. It is a place to intoxicate youth.”
“And you?”
“I am no longer young. To me it is a picturesque mantelpiece between the sierras and the sea. I observe—” he nodded towards the ropeways and the trestles—”I observe your communications. Ingenious!”
“You may examine them at your leisure. We have no secrets from our leader.”
“Your leader malgre lui. You foolish children are consistent in your folly. Tell me one thing, Miss Dasent. I am apparently at liberty. A charming young lady takes me out to admire the sunrise. Supposing I desire to leave—desire it very badly. I am a busy man and my business will suffer from my absence… Say that I am resolved to end this folly and at this moment. What would hinder me?”
“Need you ask?” she said.
“I ask,” he replied. Something minatory and grim had come into his face.
“I should hinder you,” was her answer.
He took a step towards her, while she watched him keenly. As his foot was raised for a second step, she blew a small whistle, and he halted. Out of the rocks and bushes men had appeared by magic, lean Indian faces with their eyes fixed on the girl. She looked at her companion, and he smiled. Then she waved her hand and the faces disappeared.
“I thought as much,” he said. “As I said, you are consistent in your folly.” The momentary animation had gone out of his face, and left it placid, set, and inscrutable.
He did not move when out of the chasm two figures emerged, so quietly that even the girl, who had been expecting them, started as their steps rang on the stony platform.
They were young men, apparently much of an age, but very different in build. One was tall and burly, with an untidy head of tow-coloured hair and a face so rugged that the features might have been rough-hewn with an axe out of some pale wood. It would have made an excellent figurehead for an old China clipper. He wore a khaki shirt, khaki shorts, and football stockings, but there was something about him that smacked of the sea. His companion, who wore similar clothes, was slight and beaky, with s mop of longish dark hair. They were about to cry some greeting to the girl when they caught sight of her companion and both stiffened, like men who had been trained, in the presence of a superior.
“Excellency, may I present to you two members of your staff?” she said. “This,”—indicating the tall man—”is Lieutenant Roger Grayne, a naval officer… This is Captain Bobby Latimer. You are not interested in these things, I know, Excellency, but Captain Latimer has quite a reputation in our Air Force.”
The bareheaded young men saluted. “Pardon our rig, sir,” said Grayne, “but we’ve been up all night. We’re rather in want of a bath and breakfast. We’ve just been saying good-bye to the Corinna.”
“Ah! Your line of communications?”
“One of them,” said the girl, smiling.
“I venture to remind you,” said the older man, “that the republic of Olifa possesses a navy.”
The sailor laughed. “Not a very good one, sir. A trifle short in small craft and a whole lot short in practice Olifa has never had much coast-patrol work to do, and she is mighty ignorant of this northern shore. I’d like to take you down below there and show you the landing. It’s as cunningly tucked away as the ports the old-time buccaneers used to have among the Florida keys. It would take pretty bright men some months to hit it off.”
“But supposing they were fortunate? What then?”
“Why then, sir, they could make it difficult for the Corinna and certain other craft, but they couldn’t put any considerable spoke in our business.”
“What would prevent them fighting their way up and cornering you like rats on this shelf?”
“Ye—es,” was the answer. “They might—with Heaven’s own luck and plenty of time and no sort of regard for casualties. That four thousand feet of gully is a mighty difficult ladder to climb, and every rung has its nasty catch. I’m not worrying about our little backdoor to the sea. Come here, sir, and have a look down. The mist will be gone by now.”
The Gobernador allowed himself to be led to a little platform of rock which projected above the gulf. On his arrival he had made the ascent in a thick fog, and had had no chance of noting the details. Now he saw that the path dropped at once into thick bush, while the trestles zigzagged till they were lost behind a spur of rock. Only the wireways ran straight in a dizzy angle till far below they seemed to terminate in a dull blur on the water’s edge. But what he chiefly observed was that the shore made a little bay, which ran south and was sheltered from the ocean by a green conical spur. To a ship at sea that bay was securely hidden, and the ravine must appear as one of a hundred others on the scarred and wooded mountain face. There would be some intricate prospecting before it was discovered.
He turned to the others with a shrug of his shoulders.
“I think I have had enough of the picturesque. What about breakfast?”
A path led them into the shallow trough of the plateau, where the stream from Choharua wound among lawns and thickets in shining links like a salmon-river. They crossed it by a rough bridge of planks, and then the land lifted gently under the shadow of the mountain, while the shelf broadened as it turned the southern skirts. Presently it flattened out to a miniature plain, and they came suddenly into an area of crowded life. It looked like a cantonment. Around a block of wooden huts lay a ring of tents, from which rose the smoke of morning fires. On the left there we horse-lines, and beyond them the tall masts of a wireless station. On the right were what looked like aeroplane hangars. A busy hum came from the place, and that mingled smell of wood-smoke, horses, and cooking food which since the beginning of time has been a mark of human concourse.
The western ocean was hidden by the lift of the shore scarp, but since the coast recessed at this point there was a gleam of water from the south. To the south-east lay the great wall of the sierras, but as it bent inland the land in front seemed to sink in craggy and forested foothills, giving the eyes a great prospect towards what seemed a second and lower plateau. The air was filled with an exquisite morning freshness, half of the sea and half of the hills, and the place seemed part eyrie, part sanctuary—an observation point over the kingdoms of the world, and also a tiny sheltered kingdom, brooded over by virgin peaks and guarded by untravelled seas.
The four stopped before one of the larger tents. A little way off a small party of Indians were off—saddling weary horses. The girl pointed to them.
“See, Excellency,” she said. “Another of our lines of communication.”
An