The Adventurers Read Online Free PDF

from the alcalde's stable to go home to get his clothes. That way he would not have to walk the two kilometers back to town.
    His mother was in the front yard hanging out the washing. She looked up as he tied the horse to the fence. Quickly he explained to her where he was going. Like his father she was thrilled and happy over his great opportunity. Anxiously she helped him select his two best shirts, which she packed carefully with his best suit in an old worn travel case.
    They came out into the yard again just as a ship with sparkling white sails came past the breakwater into the harbor. She stopped for a moment and looked at it across the water. "Mira!" She pointed.
    Jaime smiled. His mother had told him about the ships. About how when she was a little girl her father used to take her up on the hill so they could watch the ships coming into the harbor. And about how he used to say that one day a big ship with white sparkling sails would come and take them home, home to a freedom where a man did not have to bend his knee for his daily bread.
    Her father had long since died but she still had the dream. Only her dream was now for her son. It was he who would lead them to freedom. With his strength and with his knowledge.
    "Grandpa would have liked that ship," her son said.
    She laughed as they walked toward the horse, which was nibbling at the soft grass near the fence. "You are my ship with white sails," she replied.
    My father kissed her and mounted the horse. He started up the road behind the house. At the crest of the hill, he wheeled the horse around and looked down. His mother was still standing in the yard, looking after him. He waved to her. She raised her hand. He sensed rather than saw her smile, her bright white teeth. He waved again and turned his horse back toward the road.
    As he did he could see the ship heeling toward the quays, the sailors up in the masts running like crazy little ants. The white topgallant was the first to come billowing down, then the foremast, and as he turned to ride away, the ship came easing sideways against the docks, the rest of its sails shuddering down, leaving a tracery of towering masts.
    When he returned to Curatu two months later, the ship was still against the dock, a burned black splintering mass of wood that had once proudly sailed the oceans and had finally brought the black death to the city. Of his father and mother he found no trace.
    When a servant first brought word that a stranger was riding down from the mountain toward the hacienda, Senor
    Rafael Campos took his binoculars and went out on the galena. Through the glasses he saw a dark man dressed in dusty city clothes astride a dark pony threading its way carefully down the tricky mountainside path. He nodded to himself with satisfaction. The servants were alert. One could not be too careful when at any moment the bandoleros might come sweeping down from the mountains.
    He peered again through the glasses. The stranger was riding very carefully. Senor Campos put down the glasses and took his gold watch from his pocket. It was ten-thirty in the morning; it would be an hour and a half before the stranger could reach the hacienda. It would be almost time for lunch. He clapped his hands sharply.
    "Set another place for lunch," he told the servant. Then he went inside to complete his toilet. It was almost two hours before my father reached the hacienda. Don Rafael was seated in the shade on the galena. He was dressed in the immaculate white suit of the aristocrat, and the ruffles of his white silk shirt and the flowing black tie only served to accentuate the thin delicate structure of his face. His mustache was thin and finely cropped in the latest Spanish fashion and his hair and eyebrows held only the faintest tinge of gray.
    Don Rafael rose to his feet as my father dismounted. With satisfaction he noted that my father's suit was clean and brushed, and that his boots were highly polished. My father, aware of the quick