WHAT THE WATER HID
My thoughts flew. In a moment more I thrilled with an idea. Then I
dashed into the water and got myself up to the little waterfall, made,
as I have said, by a portion of the water coming round a rock and
flowing over the edge of a flat shelf of rock.
I tried to look through that thin veil of liquid, failing which, I
braved a shower and put my head through. In another moment I had my
whole body behind that little cascade. I crouched, sputtering, under the
rocky shelf. Then for eight or ten feet I crawled forward in the
darkness. Directly, the passage made a little turn to the right, and the
ground under my hands sloped upward. It may have been fifty feet, it may
have been a hundred and fifty feet, that I had penetrated that cliff--my
excitement had taken no measure of the distance--when I found that I
could no longer feel the wall on either side. I was in a cavern of
unknown dimensions.
I could hear the rushing of water, below and to my left. A feeling of
exultation filled me almost to bursting; I had at last discovered
Duran's secret. I came to a stop, fearing to lose my exit. How I wished
for my flashlight! I had come away leaving it aboard the _Pearl_.
I do not know how long I had tarried in that spot, when a beam of light
struck down from above on my right. And then came sounds of some being
up there, and the light approached.
I retreated into the narrow passage by which I had come, ready to
scramble out if there should be need. But soon the slant of the light
beams showed me that the lamp had passed to the left, and I ventured
forward again, and peeked around a projection of rock.
There was Duran's blackened face in the light of a lantern, which he was
in the act of hanging on some form of hook in the cavern wall. The
vault, I saw, was high, and at least fifty feet wide. It was down near
the water that Duran was; and I saw him stoop and put his hand into the
stream; and he fished out some sort of packet which he laid on the
cavern floor. Time after time he reached down into the rushing water,
and took out a packet each dive, till he had a pile on the floor that
would measure a peck.
At last Duran sat himself on the cavern's floor, and he busied himself
with untying knots and separating the objects he dealt with in two
piles. And next he rose to his feet and set to transporting one of his
piles to some niche that was out of the field of my eye.
Duran's next procedure was to gather the other pile into a sack. And
this he took in hand and forthwith began to move back toward my part of
the cavern.
I wormed my way down in my passage again, and when I had got a little
way from the cascade, I waited and listened. But he must have gone back
the way he had come. I ventured in again.
When I poked my head out of the passage into the cavern, there was no
sign of Duran. But the lantern still hung where he had fixed it,
throwing its light about that space.
I now ventured down to the scene of Duran's labors. There, completely
spanning the stream, and reaching down to its bed, was a network of some
sort of tough fibre, reinforced with slender bamboo. Near at hand, in a
niche, lay, in a pile near a foot high, short sections of bamboo as
thick as my arm. I took up one in my hand. Even prepared as I was for
the discovery, its weight nevertheless startled me; it might have been
solid brass.
"At last this smells of the gold mine!" I thought to myself. He would
hardly miss one of these. And after hefting in my hand a half-dozen
more, to satisfy myself that all were loaded, I retained that first
bamboo cylinder and hurried to my exit.
As I passed out on all fours through that little waterfall, I got a
fresh drenching. I waded on down the stream, and presently I heard a
voice. It was Ray's; and he was over in our little camp.
It came into my mind to even up for some of the tricks Ray had played
me. So I trilled out a low whistle, and when I heard them coming, I
ducked myself in the creek. I held my breath for as long a space as I
could manage, and then rose out of the water and made for the path,
pretending not to see those petrified forms pedestaled on the creek
bank. I went up the path and moved toward the camp, and when they
hurried forward--"Hello!" I said. "Are you folks back already?"
"Say, now!" began Ray. "What in Sam Hill! Are you playing alligator, or
mermaid, or--"
"Playing!" I said. "I've had no time for play." With one hand I was
nursing the heavy cylinder that I now carried under my shirt.
"And what have you been doing?" demanded Norris, eyes big with
perplexity.
And Carlos appeared no less mystified.
"I've been visiting the gold mine," I said simply.
Even Ray could not resist a look over to that spot in the stream where I
had appeared to them out of the water.
"I thought I heard you whistle," he said.
"Dreaming some more," I suggested.
Norris got a long stick and began poking in the bottom of of the creek.
"Oh, not that way," I told him. "You have to say 'Open Sesame.'"
"Now look here, open up!" pressed Norris, dropping his pole.
"All right," I returned. And I produced the cylinder of bamboo.
"Well I'll--!" began Norris, hefting the thing. "Say, there's sure
something heavy in that thing. Where'd you--?" And again his eyes turned
quizzically toward the water.
"You know what I told you this morning," broke in Ray, taking the
section of bamboo in his turn of scrutiny.
"Yes," assented Norris, "you said Wayne would have it all figured
out--what became of Duran--by the time we came back. And that's one
reason why I was ready to come back as soon as I found those two little
colors."
And Norris showed me two little flakes of gold he'd washed out of the
black sand in the creek-bed.
"But open up now, Wayne," he continued. "Tell us."
"Well you see," I began, "you, Norris, would have it that Duran had gone
through the woods by the lianas; and you, Ray, insisted on it that he
went through the air. Now none of us had thought of his going through
the water--"
Instinctively we all looked into the creek, and there I discovered that
the water had gone muddy again.
"Look there, see that!" I pointed. "You know how clear that water has
always been. And now see how riled it is."
They looked intently as if expecting to see Duran appear out of the
stream as I had seemed to do.
"Aw, say now, what are you giving us?" said Ray.
Norris and Carlos were already moving up toward the spot where the water
poured out of the cliff. But before they were half the way, the stream
cleared again.
And then I went on to tell them how I had discovered the hole behind the
little cascade. And they were open-mouthed till I had completed my
narration of Duran's activities in that cavern in the cliff.
"Well now, and to think--" began Norris. "Anyway that proves that the
gold mine is on a continuation of the creek where I found the colors.
That creek goes into the rocks up there and comes out into some kind of
a basin, and then goes into the cliffs again and comes out here, like a
train going through two tunnels."
"Brava!" cried Ray. "Now you ought to have told us that yesterday, and
saved all that trouble."
Norris had to penetrate the little cascade and see the beginning of the
passage into the cliff. When he came out, it was decided to wait for
night and the coming of Captain Marat and Robert, with the lantern,
before going into the cavern. For, since Duran was working by day he
would doubtless sleep at night.
"Well," said Ray, when we got to the camp. "I want to see what makes
that thing so heavy."
The cylinder of bamboo was plugged at the one end with a section of
wood, the edges being sealed with raw pitch. We heated the thing at the
fire, and then pried out the plug of wood.
"Hooray!" cried Norris and Ray together, as I poured the contents into a
tin.
There was fine dust of gold mixed with many small nuggets.
"How many of those things did you say you saw in there?" asked Ray.
"I didn't count them," I returned. But I showed with my hands the
dimensions of that space that was filled with them.
"And that's only the beginning," said Norris. "Say, Carlos, we've found
your gold mine," he continued, seizing that black by the shoulder.
"Yes, we find him now," grinned Carlos. "Maybe I find where my father
buried." And his face went serious again with the sadness I saw there,
something that was doubtless hatred of Duran, his father's murderer,
showed too. And I wondered--and conjectured--what was in Carlos' mind,
and shuddered.
Marat and Robert came at last, in the dark, and they marvelled at the
tale of success we had to tell them.
"But, Bob," said Ray, in the midst of the tale, "to think that Wayne
would play a trick like that on me!--who nursed him through measles,
mumps, chicken pox, cholera morbus, and a stubbed toe, and even fed him
up, dozens of times, on all-day suckers!--to pop out of the water like
that, and bow, and tell me he had been playing Jonah, and that the whale
had just stopped behind to wipe his feet on the mat and would be in
directly."
Everything, Captain Marat told us, was going well on the _Pearl_; and
Julian, good lad, was content to wait indefinitely, while we searched
for the mine.
Fortunately, Robert and Marat had brought the lantern, and Robert had
thought to bring along the electric flashlights; and most of us were
supplied with matches, protected from the damp in tightly corked vials.
We were soon at the little cascade, and crawling, one after the other,
pushed through the curtain of water.
"I say," began Ray, sputtering, "I feel fit to enter the holy temple
now."
The lantern was set alight, and I led the way up into the interior of
the cliff. My comrades feasted their eyes on the accumulation of
gold-laden bamboo cylinders; and then they must investigate that net in
the stream.
"Now I'll say that's a clever stunt that skunk played here," declared
Norris. "Instead of toting that gold around some difficult path, he
makes the creek carry it straight down here near the outlet. And he ties
pieces of some buoyant stuff to each of the cylinders to make it float."
"Here's what he used," said Robert, who had picked up a small block of
cork that he thrust into the lantern light.
"Sure, that's it," said Norris, taking it into his fingers. "He got his
cork out of a life-belt, and he makes his little cork bricks do duty
time after time. There's no telling how much gold they've floated down
here."
"And what do you suppose he does with it when he takes it out of here?"
asked Ray.
"He take eet to thad little islan' down in Crow Bay," offered Captain
Marat.
"He's planning to take over there all that he's got mined," added
Robert, looking to me for confirmation of his surmise.
"Yes," I assented. "And then he'll likely clear out, and keep away from
this region till we've all had time to forget him, and the coast is
clear again."
"That's it," agreed Norris. "But now we're on his trail again, let's see
the place it leads to." And he turned up that incline, within the
cavern, down which I had seen Duran come during the day.
The climb was rather arduous, as the ascent was somewhat sudden, though
it was smooth going under foot. We went single file, all following
Norris, who was in the van, carrying the lantern.
When we had climbed to a height of perhaps a hundred feet, we came to an
exit of the cavern. We could hear the rustling of the leaves of trees in
the night breeze, and stars showed above. The path continued on up,
apparently on a ledge; and we must finally have attained a height of
three hundred feet, when something like a plateau presented to the left.
We took the path of least resistance, picking our way carefully among
rocks and scattered growth of trees. There was but the one way
sufficiently free of obstacles, and on this road we moved without hitch
or hindrance, till we finally brought up sharp at the edge of a
precipice. Further progress appeared impossible, wanting wings, or some
mechanical means of descent. It was a black abyss of unknown dimensions
that lay at our feet.
"It's down yonder somewhere we'll find our gold mine," said Grant
Norris. "And how to get down, that's----"
"It's no trick to get down," interrupted Ray, "but I'm thinking you'll
be all out of the notion for the gold mine when you land there."
My mind full of the notion to discover a stone stairway, or some other
medium for descent used by Duran, I moved to the right, where a clump of
cedars showed, outlined against the starry sky. It was here my spirit of
enterprise nearly cost me my life, and did deprive me of the use of my
limb and the companionship of my comrades for the span of a day. I got
in among the cedars, and threw a gleam from my flashlight about the
ground, an impulse prompting me to risk the chance that it might be seen
by Duran somewhere below.
In that flash of light my eyes got on a small rope, hanging from the
limbs above me, the other end gone somewhere down the cliff below. I got
my hand on the rope and gave a gentle pull. It was fast above. I made a
bolder pull. It gave several feet; and that unexpected and sudden
release lost me my balance, and I toppled off the brow of the precipice,
clutching the rope for dear life. Wildly I sought to wind a leg about
the rope, for it burned and tore my fingers beyond endurance. I must
have fallen forty or fifty feet, when I struck a bit of a ledge; but my
fall was broken by brush and vines, and it was these vines saved my
life, for they held me in some of their tangle till I finally brought up
with a thump at the bottom.
I was a good deal shocked, but strange though it seems, throughout that
fall I had not experienced a moment's fear for my life. There was a
sharp ache in my right ankle. I wiggled my toes, and satisfied myself
that there were no bones broken, but a step or two convinced me I was to
be a lame brother for a greater or less period.