Читать книгу The Saint of the Speedway онлайн

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For all its usually incredible source, the story, which had set these men wandering in the world’s remote places, had had a curious ring of reality in it. Charlie Wun Lee was a queer, reasonably honest, far-travelled old Chinaman who dispensed ham and eggs to belated travellers in a squalid frame house in their home town of Beacon Glory, hidden away in the hill country of Alaska. And his story had been inspired by sheer friendliness for two men who found themselves in a position where the outlook for livelihood was completely threatening.

He had told them he knew where there was more gold than the world had ever seen before, and both being gold men their appetites had been at once whetted.

Briefly, his story was that he had been shipwrecked when he was cook on an Australian coasting vessel. The ship went to pieces, but he and six others reached land after terrible privations. All they knew about their whereabouts was that it was the coast of Australia somewhere on the northwest of the continent. It was a country of unbearable heat and fever-haunted jungle. They were marooned on this coast for more than a year, keeping body and soul together with such food as they could collect from the sea and the forest. Fortunately, they had little need for clothing, for they discovered not a living soul, and no indication, even, of the blacks whom they knew peopled these regions of the country. But during that long, desperate year one by one his white companions had died off, victims of a subtle jungle fever that killed them slowly and painfully, until only he and one other were left alive. This stealing death frightened him. The dank jungle became a place of dread. So he and his last remaining companion took to the river and sought to reach the hills out of which it sprang.