Part 73

“This is no road; it’s a nightmare,” groaned Dick. But if it were, it was a nightmare which ran with us glaring, showing frightful fangs, for mile after mile of horror. Just as the steep slope of a descent offered a softer cushion for the suffering tyres, and hope stirred within us, we broke into such a region as imagination pictures in the streets of Lisbon after the great earthquake. Gullies and vertical rifts scored the highway serpentining hither and thither, the chasms gaping to swallow the Gloria or at least bite off a wheel.

Now the earthy lip of a cleft would crumble and fall in as our driving-wheels skimmed along the edge; now, steer with all the nerve and nicety I might, the Gloria would rock as she hung half over a gully. Somehow I coaxed her down the hill, and driving out from the labyrinth of crevasses, I breathed a sigh of relief. But the next instant, I had only time to jam on the brakes to save the car from vaulting into a small river which ran across the road. Carefully embanked on either side, the stream flowed swiftly, cutting the descent at right angles.

Whatever the depth might prove, I had to risk it. Mounting the nearer embankment, I drove down into the running water, where the moon laughed up at me as I broke her glittering reflection.

“Good old San Cristóbal!” cried Dick as we came through without damage and climbed the opposite bank, to plump down a breakneck descent on the other side.

But it was early still to praise the saint. We had only to look ahead to see how much more he had to do for us, if we were to win through to Granada at all. Where a little clump of houses had assembled at the bottom of the hill, as if to watch our struggle, another and far broader river flowed.

It also raced across the highway, as if roads were made for river-beds; and this time the situation was so serious that I stopped the Gloria to reflect.

There was no doubt about it; this river was deep. Though a cart might ford it safely, and have the flood of rippling silver no higher than the axles, it was different with an automobile. I wondered bleakly what would happen to the silencer if its mass of heated metal were suddenly plunged into cold water, and what would happen to the commutator.

“When in doubt, play a trump,” said Dick. “And I guess that camel-backed bridge is a trump, if it’s only a knave—or the deuce.”

It was true, there was a narrow erection which might pass as a bridge, if one wished to pay a compliment. It was of stone, and came to a steep point at the apex, like a “card tent” when two cards receive support from one another. It was the question of a fraction of an inch, if the Gloria were to squeeze over; but between the danger of a jam and the danger of a burst cylinder, I decided to risk playing Dick’s trump.

First I got out and unscrewed the wheel-caps to give more clearance, then in again for the trial, while Dick walked, ready to offer aid if it were needed. I had rasped through to the top, and the Gloria had actually started on the down grade, when she gave a grinding scream, and stuck between the parapets.

I tried to move, and could not. The car was hopelessly jammed.

“Nice fix,” said Dick. “If I was writing a book, I’d say, ‘this route only suitable for hundred horse-power cars, built in small sections, and carrying cheerful passengers.’ Now, we were cheerful once—and may be again. Chuck me over the key of the tool-box, will you?”

I did so without a word, lest if I uttered any they should be too strong. But curiosity overcame me when I heard a metallic chinking, then the blows of a hammer.

“Only knocking down a bit of this old parapet,” was the calm answer to my question. “Some of it’s gone already; why not more? I bet future generations will thank me—as it’s certain never to be mended.”

As he spoke, there was a great splash, when a piece of the parapet, already weakened by years of storm and stress, plumped over into the river. The car was released, and slid down the other slope of the camel’s back.

Now it did seem that we might safely thank San Cristóbal, since nothing could well be worse than the pass from which he had just delivered us, scratched, bruised, yet unbroken. We had but to scramble out of the rough river-bed, bump over the level crossing of a railway, to come out upon a broad, smooth highway like a road to paradise. Ready to shout with joy, I put on speed, and the Gloria sprinted over the white and silent way as if she were happy to turn her back upon Inferno.

Yesterday’s study of the map assured me that at length we had struck the main road from Malaga, and there seemed every reason to believe that the ordeal just over would be our last. Flying along at a good fifty miles an hour, under a tired moon that sought the west, presently a town rose grandly up before us, throned on rocks in a wide valley, and pallid in the strange light as some sad queen.

Loja, tragically lost key of Granada, sister of famed Alhama, stronghold of that fierce alcayde who called Boabdil’s sultana daughter! Loja, and only thirty miles more to Granada.

We rushed towards that wide valley, and on to the mountain town which dared to repulse Ferdinand. In the deserted streets the only sound was the singing of many springs, the same musical voices, the same strains that Lord Rivers heard close upon five hundred years ago, when he came with his English archers to help conquer the wild place. El Gran Capitán, too, had come here, a lonely exile, after all his splendid services to an ungrateful king. He, too, had heard the singing of Loja’s springs, not in triumph, but in sorrow.

Down in the valley beyond, the river cried a warning to us; but we did not heed, even when the road surface changed again to gluey mud; squelching on, mile after mile, at the best pace we could, and saying always that soon we should be on the Vega. So the dawn stole up and quivered on the snows of the Sierra Nevada.

The moon was gone, and it must still be long before the sun would shine over the mountains, when a black shadow like a great coffin deserted on the road, gave me pause. I pulled up in haste, only just in time, and could hardly believe I saw aright. But there was no illusion. We were on the highway from the port of Malaga to Granada, yet here was a broken bridge, a noble structure which should have outworn centuries, tumbling into ruin.

The fall of the great central arch was no new thing, for moss and lichen enamelled its jagged edges with green and gold. Some branches loosely strewn across the road were the only signposts indicating this tragedy, though perhaps it was a story as old as the great earthquake of two-and-twenty years ago.

A yard or so more and we should have been over; but San Cristóbal had not forgotten us; and the next thing was, how to cross the river without a bridge. I turned and went back, discovering wheel-tracks which showed an obscure bye-path dipping over the edge of the embankment. I followed, and beheld the ford, a little farther on in a baby forest, where a broad stream lay in flood between low banks.

“We’ll have to get through,” I said, and drove the Gloria into the water. If there should be mud—but there were stones instead; and with tiny waves swishing among the spokes of her wheels she set out to rumble over.

“I believe she’ll do it—” I had begun, when she gave a great hiss, as when a blacksmith plunges a red-hot horseshoe into water; and a cloud of steam gushed up. Still I forced her on, expecting each instant to hear some fatal crash, while we plunged deeper into the stream. Now the little waves splashed coldly across my feet. Would they mount to the carburetor, spoil the ignition, or, still worse, would they crack the cylinders?

Neither of us spoke, and the car stormed on, sobbing. For a moment she clawed in vain at something, and then stumbled, as if on her knees, up the farther bank. Dripping water and puffing steam she climbed to the high-road again, and, with a bound, started on through spouting mud, as if nothing had happened. One would have thought her fired by some incentive as powerful as mine, which forced her on in the face of all difficulties; and perhaps it was a song of gladness which the motor hummed, as she came out upon the Vega.

Suddenly the first beams of the sun streamed down the white slopes of the far Sierra Nevada, touched the vast fertile plain, and wrought magic with a castled hill which floated up, dreamlike, from a purple haze where a great city lay asleep. Clustering vermilion towers blazed with the gold of dawn, and dazzled our eyes with the glamour of romance. For the sleeping city was Granada, and the red towers and gardens on the castled hill were the towers and gardens of the Alhambra.

The adventure was over. And under one of those roofs, dove-grey in the dawn, I hoped that Monica was sleeping.