Tierra del Fuego Read Online Free PDF Page B

other armaments manufacturers on the outskirts of Buenos Aires for an Argentinean government contract. He had always had a somewhat childlike imagination, the kind that can be useful when it comes to military strategy, and on this particular occasion he had thought of a trick to make sure his cannon and shells were more competitive. During the night, he hosed down with kerosene the targets intended for him. The following day, at the trials held by the military authorities, his shells not only hit the targets but also set them on fire.
    A compatriot of his made him a tempting offer, the post of manager on a cattle ranch at Las Heras, in Argentinean Patagonia, and he came south to apply military discipline to the raising of cattle. But it was only a small ranch, not enough to satisfy the ambitions of Sergeant Fritz Novak, who had imagined himself living like a king in his own dominions, like the managers of the great English-owned estates. But he was a German, and the Germans always lagged behind the English when it came to colonial enterprise.
    Around that time, something happened on the coast to the south of the ranch where he worked. A seal-hunting cutter, sailing off the long, low coastal shelf of Patagonia looking for the eastern mouth of the Straits of Magellan, was caught in a storm and ran aground on the shore of a cape that Ferdinand Magellan had named the Cape of Eleven Thousand Virgins. The survivors, digging a well in search of water, found that the muddy soil contained abundant particles of pure gold. From being a disaster, the shipwreck became a stroke of luck, and news of the find spread throughout the world. From every corner of the earth, adventurers arrived in search of the precious metal. Overnight, the place, called Zanja a Pique because of the high walls separating the pampa from the Atlantic shore, became a makeshift camp for men of every nationality. But one stood out from the others for his know-how and daring. That was the Romanian engineer Julius Popper—“Don Julio” as they started to call him once they became familiar with his personality. Popper had been on the banks of the Yangtze when he heard about the find, and like a swallow from Salang had ­immediately flown all the way from ancient China to virgin Patagonia.
    Sergeant Novak, too, left his ranch and made the short journey from Las Heras to Zanja a Pique. The latter yielded a fair amount of gold, but not enough that they did not later have to defend their holdings with bullets.
    Julius Popper looked beyond the Straits of Magellan and with his engineer’s eye saw that the eastern coast of Tierra del Fuego, just opposite Zanja a Pique, had the same geological formation as Patagonia.
    From among the adventurers he sought out the boldest and most determined—their later rebellion confirmed how well he had chosen them—and organized an expedition to Tierra del Fuego. They were the first white men to cross the Onasin, as the Ona Indians called their land, and they crossed it in blood and fire, leaving many native corpses behind them as a mark of the Indians’ first contact with civilization.
    Immediately he discovered gold in the Páramo, and with the experience of Zanja a Pique behind him, Popper put together a private army and placed at its head the German ex-sergeant Fritz Novak, who seemed to have been predestined for such an important position.
    What had Novak gotten out of it all? Only a life full of conflict and danger, watching his master’s back! No sooner did Popper have his own army than he turned into the self-styled King of the Páramo. Whereas he, Novak, who had virtually been Popper’s second-in-command, was now hiding out in the rocks, like a cornered rat!
    In his mind’s eye, he had a clear image of the Romanian—his broad forehead, his blue-white face, his red beard and mustache, his straight, rather flat nose, and his green, snakelike eyes with their cold, sharp expression. An