Dawn came--the dawn of a day that I am destined never to forget. Long,
rosy streamers of light broke through the forest, shaking, quivering,
like unstable beams from celestial search-lights. Mist floated upward
from marsh and lake; and through it the spectral palms loomed,
drooping fronds embroidered with dew.
For a while the ringing outburst of bird music dominated all; but it
soon ceased with dropping notes from the crimson cardinals repeated in
lengthening minor intervals; and then the spell of silence returned,
broken only by the faint splash of mullet, mocking the sun with
sinuous, silver flashes.
"Good-morning," said a low voice from the door as I stood encouraging
the camp-fire with splinter wood and dead palmetto fans.
Fresh and sweet from her toilet as a dew-drenched rose, Miss Barrison
stood there sniffing the morning air daintily, thoroughly.
"Too much perfume," she said--"too much like ylang-ylang in a
department-store. Central Park smells sweeter on an April morning."
"Are you criticising the wild jasmine?" I asked.
"I'm criticising an exotic smell. Am I not permitted to comment on the
tropics?"
Fishing out a cedar log from the lumber-stack, I fell to chopping it
vigorously. The axe-strokes made a cheerful racket through the woods.
"Did you hear anything last night after you retired?" I asked.
"Something was at my window--something that thumped softly and seemed
to be feeling all over the glass. To tell you the truth, I was silly
enough to remain dressed all night."
"You don't look it," I said.
"Oh, when daylight came I had a chance," she added, laughing.
"All the same," said I, leaning on the axe and watching her, "you are
about the coolest and pluckiest woman I ever knew."
"We were all in the same fix," she said, modestly.
"No, we were not. Now I'll tell you the truth--my hair stood up the
greater part of the night. You are looking upon a poltroon, Miss
Barrison."
"Then there was something at your window, too?"
"Something? A dozen! They were monkeying with the sashes and panes all
night long, and I imagined that I could hear them breathing--as though
from effort of intense eagerness. Ouch! I came as near losing my nerve
as I care to. I came within an ace of hurling those cursed pies
through the window at them. I'd bolt to-day if I wasn't afraid to play
the coward."
"Most people are brave for that reason," she said.
The dog, who had slept under my bunk, and who had contributed to my
entertainment by sighing and moaning all night, now appeared ready for
business--business in his case being the operation of feeding. I
presented him with a concentrated tablet, which he cautiously
investigated and then rolled on.
"Nice testimonial for the people who concocted it," I said, in
disgust. "I wish I had an egg."
"There are some concentrated egg tablets in the shanty," said Miss
Barrison; but the idea was not attractive.
"I refuse to fry a pill for breakfast," I said, sullenly, and set the
coffee-pot on the coals.
In spite of the dewy beauty of the morning, breakfast was not a
cheerful function. Professor Farrago appeared, clad in sun-helmet and
khaki. I had seldom seen him depressed; but he was now, and his very
efforts to disguise it only emphasized his visible anxiety.
His preparations for the day, too, had an ominous aspect to me. He
gave his orders and we obeyed, instinctively suppressing questions.
First, he and I transported all personal luggage of the company to the
big electric launch--Miss Barrison's effects, his, and my own. His
private papers, the stenographic reports, and all memoranda were tied
up together and carried aboard.
Then, to my surprise, two weeks' concentrated rations for two and
mineral water sufficient for the same period were stowed away aboard
the launch. Several times he asked me whether I knew how to run the
boat, and I assured him that I did.
In a short time nothing was left ashore except the bare furnishings of
the cabin, the female wearing-apparel, the steel cage and chemicals
which I had brought, and the twelve apple-pies--the latter under lock
and key in my room.
As the preparations came to an end, the professor's gentle melancholy
seemed to deepen. Once I ventured to ask him if he was indisposed, and
he replied that he had never felt in better physical condition.
Presently he bade me fetch the pies; and I brought them, and, at a
sign from him, placed them inside the steel cage, closing and locking
the door.
"I believe," he said, glancing from Miss Barrison to me, and from me
to the dog--"I believe that we are ready to start."
He went to the cabin and locked the door on the outside, pocketing the
key.
Then he backed up to the steel cage, stooped and lifted his end as I
lifted mine, and together we started off through the forest, bearing
the cage between us as porters carry a heavy piece of luggage.
Miss Barrison came next, carrying the trousseau, the tank, hose, and
chemicals; and the dog followed her--probably not from affection for
us, but because he was afraid to be left alone.
We walked in silence, the professor and I keeping an instinctive
lookout for snakes; but we encountered nothing of that sort. On every
side, touching our shoulders, crowded the closely woven and
impenetrable tangle of the jungle; and we threaded it along a narrow
path which he, no doubt, had cut, for the machete marks were still
fresh, and the blazes on hickory, live-oak, and palm were all wet with
dripping sap, and swarming with eager, brilliant butterflies.
At times across our course flowed shallow, rapid streams of water,
clear as crystal, and most alluring to the thirsty.
"There's fever in every drop," said the professor, as I mentioned my
thirst; "take the bottled water if you mean to stay a little longer."
"Stay where?" I asked.
"On earth," he replied, tersely; and we marched on.
The beauty of the tropics is marred somewhat for me; under all the
fresh splendor of color death lurks in brilliant tints. Where painted
fruit hangs temptingly, where great, silky blossoms exhale alluring
scent, where the elaps coils inlaid with scarlet, black, and saffron,
where in the shadow of a palmetto frond a succession of velvety black
diamonds mark the rattler's swollen length, there death is; and his
invisible consort, horror, creeps where the snake whose mouth is lined
with white creeps--where the tarantula squats, hairy, motionless;
where a bit of living enamel fringed with orange undulates along a
mossy log.
Thinking of these things, and watchful lest, unawares, terror unfold
from some blossoming and leafy covert, I scarcely noticed the beauty
of the glade we had entered--a long oval, cross-barred with sunshine
which fell on hedges of scrub-palmetto, chin high, interlaced with
golden blossoms of the jasmine. And all around, like pillars
supporting a high green canopy above a throne, towered the silvery
stems of palms fretted with pale, rose-tinted lichens and hung with
draperies of grape-vine.
"This is the place," said Professor Farrago.
His quiet, passionless voice sounded strange to me; his words seemed
strange, too, each one heavily weighted with hidden meaning.
We set the cage on the ground; he unlocked and opened the steel-barred
door, and, kneeling, carefully arranged the pies along the centre of
the cage.
"I have a curious presentiment," he said, "that I shall not come out
of this experiment unscathed."
"Don't, for Heaven's sake, say that!" I broke out, my nerves on edge
again.
"Why not?" he asked, surprised. "I am not afraid."
"Not afraid to die?" I demanded, exasperated.
"Who spoke of dying?" he inquired, mildly. "What I said was that I do
not expect to come out of this affair unscathed."
I did not comprehend his meaning, but I understood the reproof
conveyed.
He closed and locked the cage door again and came towards us,
balancing the key across the palm of his hand.
Miss Barrison had seated herself on the leaves; I stood back as the
professor sat down beside her; then, at a gesture from him, took the
place he indicated on his left.
"Before we begin," he said, calmly, "there are several things you
ought to know and which I have not yet told you. The first concerns
the feminine wearing apparel which Mr. Gilland brought me."
He turned to Miss Barrison and asked her whether she had brought a
complete outfit, and she opened the bundle on her knees and handed it
to him.
"I cannot," he said, "delicately explain in so many words what use I
expect to make of this apparel. Nor do I yet know whether I shall have
any use at all for it. That can only be a theoretical speculation
until, within a few more hours, my theory is proven or disproven--and,"
he said, suddenly turning on me, "my theory concerning these invisible
creatures is the most extraordinary and audacious theory ever
entertained by man since Columbus presumed that there must lie
somewhere a hidden continent which nobody had ever seen."
He passed his hand over his protruding forehead, lost for a moment in
deepest reflection. Then, "Have you ever heard of the Sphyx?" he
asked.
"It seems to me that Ponce de Leon wrote of something--" I began,
hesitating.
"Yes, the famous lines in the third volume which have set so many wise
men guessing. You recall them:
"'_And there, alas! within sound of the Fountain of Youth whose waters
tint the skin till the whole body glows softly like the petal of a
rose--there, alas! in the new world already blooming_, THE ETERNAL
ENIGMA _I beheld, in the flesh living; yet it faded even as I looked,
although I swear it lived and breathed. This is the Sphyx_.'"