BLIND DRIFTING
Late in the evening following his startling adventure in the ancient Maya
temple, Johnny tapped at Jean’s door.
“Hist!” he whispered. “Go get Rod and come to my room. Got something to
show you.”
A few moments later, in the privacy of Johnny’s room, lighted only by a
flickering taper, the brother and sister stood before a mysterious
something which stood upon a stool and was covered by a cloth.
“See!” Johnny exclaimed as he lifted the cloth.
They started back in surprise and wonder. Made of pure gold, with a jewel
gleaming from his hand, the Maya god, an awesome creation, stood before
them.
Determined that his adventure in the temple, which had come so near being
a tragedy, should not be without its reward, Johnny had dared to take the
god from the place of its long concealment. He had succeeded in bringing
it from the corridor to the bush where he had hidden it until he could
smuggle it safely through the darkness.
“That,” he said in an awed whisper, “is the only ancient Maya god ever
discovered; he is the god of the rising sun. There are no such gods in
the museums of the world. This one, aside from the gold and the jewel
which seems to be a roughly cut diamond, is priceless as a curio and as
an example of ancient art. And that,” he exclaimed as he wrapped the
cloth about it and hid it in a dark corner, “makes me all the more
anxious to get away from this hidden city of wild people.”
“You’re not thinking of taking the thing with you!” exclaimed Roderick in
dismay.
“Of course we shall!” Jean looked at her brother in utter disgust. “What
do you think?”
“Think!” exclaimed Roderick. “I think it will get us into a great deal of
trouble.”
“Trouble? Who cares for trouble?”
“I am going to the chief the first thing in the morning,” said Johnny.
“I’ll try to tell him or his daughter, by maps and signs, all about my
camp on Rio Hondo and the urgent need of my getting back there. The
princess likes us. She’ll do anything she can for us. Somehow we must
escape.”
* * * * * * * *
To be drifting down a strange tropical stream at night is enchanting,
haunting, and mysterious enough; but to be drifting down that same stream
with your eyes so completely blindfolded that you only know it is night
because you have been told so, surely this is the most mysterious of all.
Johnny Thompson, Jean and Roderick were passing through just such an
experience. For hours, many hours, seeing nothing, now led by the hand,
now drifting in a dugout, they had traveled. Where were they going? Home?
Going to some more remote corner of the Central American jungle where
there was no danger of their being discovered?
Not one of the three could so much as guess. They only knew they were
going somewhere and were on their way. Such a strange way, too; over
paths that were so overhung with vines and palm leaves that they must be
constantly dodging to avoid them; now on a small stream where the danger
of being caught by vines and dragged overboard was still greater, and now
out upon a wider stream where from time to time a sudden burst of
sunlight warmed their faces, they traveled on and on. For Johnny
especially, the short portages made on foot were extremely difficult, for
always he carried his pack on his back. He dared not trust it to another.
In its very center was the golden god of the rising sun.
It had turned out strangely, his resolve to have it out with the old
chief about allowing them to return to the Rio Hondo. First, by the aid
of many small sticks and stones and a tiny artificial stream, he pictured
to the young princess his coming up Rio Hondo in search of mahogany, his
early success, defeat, a second venture, the treachery of Daego, the
probable condition of his camp at the present moment and the need for his
speedy return.
He had watched with much concern the face of the chief as his daughter
presented the cause to him. That she was telling much, perhaps a great
deal too much, he guessed from the changing expression on the old man’s
face. A frown was replaced by a smile. This was followed by a look of
surprise, if not of consternation.
“She’s not telling about Rio Hondo,” Johnny had whispered. “What do you
think?”
“Yesterday. The hidden corridor,” Jean had whispered back.
“That’s exactly it!” Johnny exclaimed.
At once he regretted having entrusted the girl with his mission. “If she
tells too much she may get us into greater trouble,” he whispered to
Jean, and at that moment he thought of the golden god.
“Of course,” he whispered to Jean, “it’s mine by right of finding. These
people did not build this ruined temple, nor did they make or inherit the
god. It’s been lost for centuries. Can’t tell about their queer ideas and
customs, though.”
Had that plea of the princess gotten them into trouble, or was it getting
them out? This was the question which Johnny asked himself over and over
as they drifted, blindfolded, down that river in the night.
It was strange, fascinating, weird, this eternal drifting, drifting,
drifting on into the night. Now the sudden brush of a palm leaf told him
they were traveling close to the bank; now a mad forward plunge followed
by low exclamations, told of rapids; and now the distant bark of a dog
somewhere on land suggested a cabin and some few scattered inhabitants.
They were quite a goodly company, this Maya band which escorted him from
their city to some unknown destination. Johnny, with his white
companions, rode in a large pit-pan. There were other crafts. From time
to time he caught the sound of their dipping paddles, heard their low
cries of warning as one boat came perilously near another. Twice they had
made camp. At such times as this, blindfolded though he was, Johnny was
able to estimate the number of men.
“About a hundred,” he had said to Jean.
“Quite a band,” she had agreed. “Wonder why so many?”
“Who can tell?”
The princess was with them. He heard her voice from time to time. The old
chief, too, perhaps. He could not be sure of that.
Wondering dreamily how it all would end, and wishing with all his heart
that Jean at least was out of it all, he fell into a doze.
From this he was awakened by a sudden movement of the boat. It was as if
the hand of a giant had seized the prow and suddenly turned it through a
quarter of a circle, then had given it a powerful shove.
For a second the boy’s head whirled.
“Wha—what has happened?” Jean whispered.
Johnny chuckled. “We’re in a larger river, much larger. In fact, it is a
great river, and something tells me——,” his words came swift and eager
now, “that it is the good old Rio Hondo!”
“Johnny, it can’t be!”
“It could be, and is!” said Johnny emphatically. “I haven’t ridden that
old river for nothing. She has a way of teasing and tossing your dugout
while she whirls it forward that no other river ever had.
“Besides,” he added with another chuckle, “I can smell the water. It
actually _smells_ black.”
“What’s that?” the girl exclaimed suddenly.
“Sounds like thunder,” said Johnny.
* * * * * * * *
It was thunder, the forerunner of a storm. It was not a local storm,
either, but one of those wide sweeping storms that tear at the timber on
all the headwaters of a great river. Pant, at the edge of his camp, where
he was assisting in shooting the last of the mahogany logs into their
boom, heard it and his face grew thoughtful.
The hour of great suspense came at last. Their boom was loaded. They were
ready to go down the river. Daego had not yet led his men to the attack.
“We’ll get away in the darkness,” Pant said to his Carib foreman, fairly
dancing about in his eagerness to be away. “We’ll give old Daego the
slip.”
Tivoli’s only reply was a sweep of the hand toward the blackening sky. As
if in answer to his signal, there came crashing down upon them one of
those sudden storms that are known only in the tropics.
“We’ll get away under cover of the storm,” said Pant. “That will be
better still.”
“You don’t now these tropical storms,” said Tivoli. “All night in the
rain fifteen men must work; fifteen men must rest, sleep beneath canvas
in hammocks. Even with fifteen men we may not save the raft, tied up
right here. You do not know the tropics. There will be water in the
river, water in the sky. Which is river? Which is sky? You cannot tell.
The river will rise like a tide. There will come down snags, great trees,
palm trees, mahogany, yamra, black tamarind, santa maria, many, many
snags. All night long, at the edge of the raft, we must fight these snags
away. There will be no sleep for Tivoli tonight, and perhaps no logs for
Mr. Johnny Thompson after that, either.”
Tivoli was right. Such a storm as this was! Nothing of the kind had ever
been witnessed by the boys before. Flash after flash of lightning, water
in sheets, in streams, great avalanches of water that one could all but
swim through. Rolling thunder vied with the increasing roar of black
waters. And after that came the snags! And how those Caribs did work!
All night, till the clock hand stood at three, they labored. Then the
water began to subside.
Then, exhausted, they threw themselves upon the bare logs and slept.
“At dawn we are away,” muttered Tivoli.
* * * * * * * *
All that night, regardless of the lightning that set the water all
agleam, in spite of the deluge of rain that fell, the Mayas and their
blindfolded captives drifted silently down that broad river which indeed
was Rio Hondo.
Awnings of cloth, cunningly treated with the juice from the bark of the
wild rubber tree, protected them from the rain. They were safe and dry.
The river carried them onward. What more need they ask?
* * * * * * * *
At dawn, as a matchless sunrise painted the east red and gold, there
appeared above Pant’s raft on the broad river a black line, a line not of
drift logs, but dugouts, dories and pit-pans. Each craft was loaded with
men, and as the sun sent its rays shooting across them they waved their
hands and let forth a bloodcurdling shout. In each uplifted hand there
gleamed a long bladed machete.
“They come!” said Tivoli in response to Pant’s call. “Let them come. See
that all the men are wakened quickly.”