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Harold Bindloss
Kit Musgrave's Luck
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066128739
Table of Contents
CHAPTER III A MOUNTAIN EXCURSION
CHAPTER V MRS AUSTIN'S VERANDA
CHAPTER VI THE INJURED PASSENGER
CHAPTER IX KIT GIVES HIS CONFIDENCE
CHAPTER X MRS. AUSTIN MAKES SOME PLANS
CHAPTER VI BETTY CARRIES A MESSAGE
CHAPTER VIII AN IDLE AFTERNOON
CHAPTER X SMOKE ON THE HORIZON
CHAPTER XI MIGUEL TAKES CONTROL
CHAPTER XII THE RETREAT TO THE BOAT
CHAPTER V THE RETURN TO THE BEACH
CHAPTER VII THE "LUCIA" ARRIVES
CHAPTER VIII "CAYMAN'S" RETURN
PART I
THE WIDE HORIZON
CHAPTER I
KIT'S PLUNGE
The morning was hot, and Kit Musgrave, leaning on the African liner's rail, watched the volcanic rocks of Grand Canary grow out of the silver haze. He was conscious of some disappointment, because on the voyage to Las Palmas he had pictured a romantic white city shining against green palms. Its inhabitants were grave Spaniards, who secluded their wives and daughters in old Moorish houses with shady patios where fountains splashed. Now he saw he had got the picture wrong.
Las Palmas was white, but not at all romantic. A sandy isthmus, swept by rolling clouds of dust, connected the town and the frankly ugly port. The houses round the harbor looked like small brown blocks. Behind them rose the Isleta cinder hill; in front, coal-wharfs and limekilns, hidden now and then by dust, occupied the beach. Moreover, the Spaniards on board the boats about the ship were excited, gesticulating ruffians. Bombay peddlers, short, dark-skinned Portuguese, and Canario dealers in wine, tobacco, and singing birds, pushed up the gangway. All disputed noisily in their eagerness to show their goods to the passengers.
Yet Kit was not altogether disappointed. Somehow the industrial ugliness of the port and the crowd's businesslike activity were soothing. Kit had not known much romantic beauty, but he knew the Lancashire mining villages and the mean streets behind the Liverpool docks. Besides, he was persuaded that commerce, particularly British commerce, had a civilizing, uplifting power.
Seeing he would buy nothing, the peddlers left him alone, and he mused about the adventure on which he had embarked. Things had happened rapidly since he went one morning to Don Arturo's office in Liverpool and joined the crowd in the great man's