THE ONE-EYED QUESAL.
Seen in the bright light of the early tropic day the plateau upon which
the _Golden Eagle_ had settled was certainly an ideal spot for a boy’s
camp. It was in form a rough circle about a quarter of a mile in
circumference. To the west the mountain-side shot up in a rugged cliff.
To the east a deep canyon cut down to the valley below, clothed heavily
with huge Manacca palms, plane and rosewood trees, here and there
interspersed by a lordly mahogany grove. Huge ferns as big as
rose-bushes in America shot up out of the rich dark soil, and from the
tops of many of the trees whose names were unknown to the boys trailed
magnificent orchids and lianas and parasitic plants of many varieties.
From below it would have been quite impossible to have sighted the camp
and the mountain above was so rugged and precipitous that any attack or
observation from that quarter would have been most improbable. As soon
as it was light Harry, with the collapsable canvas bucket went to
Frank’s spring and got a supply of water. This done he set about getting
breakfast. In the meantime Frank had been skirmishing about for fruit,
and by the time the fragrant odor of Harry’s steaming coffee-pot had
diffused itself about the camp the elder boy returned triumphantly with
an armful of bananas and dark-green bread-fruit. Harry selected two of
the largest of these last and cutting them open set them on the hot
coals to roast.
“Why, where on earth did you learn tropical cookery?” demanded Frank as
he watched Harry deftly turning the appetizing looking slices.
“I watched the natives down at La Merced,” replied Harry, “you see I
figured that when you are in Rome do as the Romans do, and that as the
jungle is good enough to provide us with ready-grown loaves we ought to
return the compliment by knowing how to cook them.”
Naturally enough the boys’ conversation fell on the mysterious
bell-ringing of the night before.
“I can hardly believe that I didn’t dream it,” remarked Frank.
“But I heard it too,” rejoined Harry, “and there is no question that it
was a bell and a good, loud-toned one at that.”
“Well, what a bell-ringer, let alone a bell, can be doing round here is
inexplicable,” said Frank. “I took a good look around before breakfast
while I was out getting the fruit and I can see no sign of any
habitation or settlement that might account for it.”
“You don’t think it possible that it could be a trick to scare us?”
asked Harry.
Frank laughed.
“I considered that too,” he replied, “I hardly think that it could be
that. Anyhow it will take a good deal more than that to frighten us
away. Seriously though I would like to solve the mystery.”
“Maybe the monkeys hold prayer-meetings,” laughed Harry.
“What’s the matter with forming the Chester Exploration Expedition and
taking a climb up the mountain after breakfast,” he broke out suddenly.
“You’re on,” rejoined Frank, “I think it will be perfectly safe to leave
camp for a while anyhow and we may make some important discoveries.”
Accordingly an hour later the boys were making their first plunge into
the practically unknown fastnesses of the Cordilleras of Nicaragua. Each
carried a canteen full of water, a supply of roasted bread-fruit and
several soup tablets besides matches in waterproof boxes and their
revolvers and rifles. Of course a pair of field-glasses, and the axe
also formed a part of their traveling equipment.
With all this paraphernalia it was hard work clambering up the rugged
mountain-side more particularly as when their course required them to
plunge into the jungle, they found their way impeded by huge snake-like
creepers that hung from the trees and crawled over the ground in every
direction. They had been climbing steadily for about an hour when Harry
uttered an exclamation of delightful surprise.
“Look, Frank,” he cried, pointing to a magnificent bird that flashed
through the jungle ahead of them. Both boys gazed admiringly at the
marvelous splendor of its plumage. It was about the size of an eagle and
its back was covered with a shimmering glossy mantle, so to speak, of
emerald green. Its waistcoat was of a deep rich carmine and its long
curved beak a bright yellow.
“Why,” cried Frank as, with a harsh unmusical cry, the bird vanished,
“that’s a quesal.”
“A quesal?” demanded Harry much mystified.
“Yes, I was reading about them in that book on Nicaragua I got to read
on our voyage down here,” rejoined Frank.
“They were the sacred birds of the ancient Toltecs who decorated their
temples and religious houses with pictures of them,” he went on. “To lay
hands on them meant death to the sacrilegious person so doing and the
priests used to have great colonies of them in the groves round their
temples.”
“You are as good as an encyclopedia, Frank,” laughed Harry, “I’d like to
get a shot at one of them, Toltecs or no Toltecs. Or better still to
have one alive. Just think what they’d say at home if we brought one
back in a cage.”
Frank smiled.
“I’m afraid, Harry,” he said, “that even if we did catch one we could do
nothing like you propose with it. A peculiarity of the quesal is that it
will not live in captivity. Not even an hour it is said. The human touch
kills them immediately.”
The boys steadily pushed forward, although as the sun climbed higher the
heat of the dense tropical forest that covered the mountain-side at the
point they had now reached became most oppressive. Suddenly there was a
loud grunting sound from a few feet ahead and a herd of small brown
animals dashed away. Not before Harry, however, had got his rifle to his
shoulder and brought one of them down with a skilful shot.
“A wild pig,” he announced triumphantly, turning over the animal he had
brought down with his foot. Compared to a domestic porker the wild swine
didn’t look much bigger than rabbits, but the boys hailed the one Harry
had shot as a welcome addition to their larder.
“If we only had some apple sauce,” sighed the epicurean Harry.
“Why don’t you wish for mustard?” laughed Frank.
Harry’s pig weighed about thirty-five pounds, and so he carried it
without much effort over his shoulder till they reached a clear space on
the mountain-side, where they could cache it and easily find it on their
way down.
“Now, if only no ocelots or jaguars come around we’ll have roast pork
for supper to-night,” he remarked as he laid down his burden.
“I’ll show you how to fix that,” said Frank. With a few blows of his axe
he lopped off some low branches from a near-by tree, and placed them in
a circle round the carcass.
“That’s a dodge, Blakely told me about,” he announced when he had
finished. “Any animal thief that happens along wouldn’t touch that pig
now for the world. They see the branches and figure out that it is some
kind of a trap.”
From time to time as the boys mounted higher, they stopped and carefully
turned their glasses on the valley below. Somewhere in its apparently
uninhabited sweep they knew that Rogero and his army and Estrada’s
troops were maneuvering, but nothing that they could see gave them any
inkling as to the exact whereabouts of the troops.
“We shall have to make a scouting trip in the _Golden Eagle_,” said
Frank with determination, as after they had scoured the valley for the
twentieth time, they admitted that it was hardly worth the trouble.
“Yes,” agreed Harry eagerly, “and the sooner the better.”
They stopped for lunch shortly after noon, without having made any
progress in discovering anything about the mysterious bell or who its
ringer could have been. Although Frank’s pedometer showed that they had
covered several miles, they had not even come across the semblance of a
footpath or any other indication that they were not the first human
beings to explore the mountain-side. Lunch despatched they agreed to
proceed as far as a battlemented cliff that shot sheer up ahead of them
for two hundred feet or more, cutting off any view of the mountain-top,
and then turn back. If they had found nothing by that time to throw any
light on the bell-ringer or the instrument on which he performed, they
decided that it would be waste of time to keep on.
At the foot of the cliff its beetling height was even more impressive
than when seen at a distance. It shot up, naked of tree or bush, like a
huge wall. There was not foothold for even a mountain goat on its smooth
gleaming surface.
“Well,” said Frank, as the boys gazed up to where its summit seemed to
touch the blue sky, “here is where we stop short. Not even a fly could
get up that.”
As he spoke, Harry who had been poking at the smooth surface of the
obstruction with the axe, gave a sharp exclamation.
“Did you say that the quesal was the sacred bird of the Toltecs?” he
demanded in a tone of suppressed excitement.
“Yes,” replied Frank. “Why?”
“Why?” repeated Harry, “just look up there and tell me what you make of
that?”
He pointed to some half-obliterated markings on the surface of the cliff
about thirty feet above where the boys stood. There was no doubt about
it—the markings, though dimmed by time and in places almost obliterated
altogether, unquestionably formed a rude exaggerated outline of the bird
they had seen that morning.
“Well, what do you think of it, Frank?” demanded Harry impatiently,
after his elder brother had gazed at the spot for some time.
“Simply this,” replied Frank calmly, though his heart beat faster, “that
we are very near some sort of Toltec temple, or ruin or even the lost
mines themselves!”