For these few days, it happened that I was left in the charge of Joshua
Trust. In other words, he was the watch-dog that guarded me, day and
night; and a dull dog he was. He never opened his mouth, save to
grumble at everything--the heat, the insects, the very food he cooked
himself. Now and again, he would sigh; which puzzled me, until I solved
the problem for myself: he was inclined to regret the idle days aboard
the _Mary Greenfield_ when he had naught to think about except his grog
and cards.
So, in this man's company, I learned nothing concerning what was afoot.
But I was free to use my eyes, and I could scarce fail to observe that
they were turning by degrees that ruined habitation into a kind of
depot. For, day and night, came stores and arms and ammunition to the
place--all manner of such things as might be required upon an expedition
into the wild hinterland of that strange country, where there were few
roads, but many bridle-paths and broad rivers to be crossed.
Amos came often to the hut, and Mr. Forsyth was always with him; and, as
I knew, it was the last-named who had paid for all. That, however, was
all one to me. I was safely caught, thousands of miles from dear, silly
Sussex; and even if I was so fortunate as to escape from Joshua Trust,
what was I to do in that foreign land, where I could not speak a word of
the language and had no friend to whom to go?
On the fourth day of my captivity came six mules, and with them three
men whom I took to be half-castes of a sort, for they were no more than
two parts black and spoke Spanish, shouting at one another when they
conversed. But I was more interested in the mules, which were of a kind
that I had never seen before; for they were small animals, little larger
than donkeys, with mouse-grey woolly coats like sheep. Each of these
was provided with a pack-saddle; and when they were loaded for the
inspection of Amos Baverstock and Forsyth, I was amazed at the great
weight that such slender and seemingly fragile beasts could carry.
On the fifth day after we had left the ship, we set forth upon our great
march towards the south. Our party numbered eight in all: Amos,
Forsyth, and Trust (the first the acknowledged leader of the
expedition); myself and the three mulemen, whilst the other was a
guide--a lean, cadaverous Spaniard, black as a raven, whom I never heard
called by any other name than that of Vasco. I do not think this fellow
was an evil man by nature, except in so far as he was capable of doing
almost anything for money. In that, at any rate, he was honest: he
served his masters faithfully, no matter who they were.
And now we come to the march itself that, step by step, led me farther
and farther from the confines of civilisation and into the heart of a
cruel and magic wilderness where things happened that I should not
believe, had I not seen them with my eyes.
The first stage of our journey was uneventful enough; and the
scenery--especially on the mountains we were obliged to
cross--surprisingly beautiful. We first climbed to a great height,
following a zig-zag road, along which the little mules struggled
gallantly with their heavy loads. I had thought that, on gaining the
crestline, we must again descend to something approaching the level of
the sea. But this was not so; for the mountains proved to consist of a
series of parallel chains, and no sooner had we negotiated one valley
than we found ourselves upon the watershed of another.
These valleys were thickly populated. We were seldom out of sight of
villages and towns, many of which contained considerable buildings. The
country had the aspect of being extremely fertile and prosperous. There
were plantations of coffee and cocoa, tobacco and cotton, but a far
greater area of the valley regions was given over to the cultivation of
manioc and maize. For all I could ever learn, there was no flour in the
land, for I never tasted bread, but subsisted upon hot maize cakes, made
by Vasco, the guide, which I found as good as hot-cross buns.
When we were clear of the mountains, we began to descend into the valley
of a great river which, had I learned more geography when I was at
school, I would have known to be the Orinoco. The course of this great
stream we followed for many days, marching in a south-westerly
direction, against the current. The climate was now a great deal hotter
than it had been near the coast, and towns and villages were few and far
between. One thing that I observed was the courteous behaviour of the
inhabitants, who seldom failed to wave their hands to us and pass the
time of day.
We came to a vast sea of grass where, here and there, were scattered
woods; and finally, after crossing a river of some importance, a
tributary of the Orinoco, we sighted a great mountain that overtopped
the surrounding hills like a giant in the midst of pygmies.
Amos, who had been unusually reticent upon the line-of-march, now became
talkative, almost hilarious. He carried constantly a grin upon his
fox-like countenance, and would often chuckle to himself.
For the great mountain in front of us might be described as the gateway
of the road to the Treasure we were seeking, and was marked upon the
left-hand top corner of the map. It was called Mount Tigro, but by that
name I have never been able to trace it upon any modern map, though it
was shown to be about twenty miles south of the Rio Guaviare.
We were now--though I did not know it at the time--close upon the
frontier of Colombia, and, I think, for a time our route lay through
that little-known country, until we turned eastward again into the
territories of the Amazonas.
We were now in a mountainous and savage land, where we could make but
the slowest progress. For not only were the hills steep and pathless,
but in places clothed in such luxuriant vegetation that we had often to
break a way with hatchets for the mules.
We were marching by the map, and Amos had become our guide. He and
Forsyth--who never seemed to tire--would lead our little column, myself
walking in company of Joshua, and the pack-mules bringing up the rear.
We were soon to bid good-bye to these faithful, dumb companions; for,
after we had climbed the slopes of another range of mountains, we
followed the course of a river valley that led us rapidly downward, to
land us into the very heart of such a forest as I did not dream to be
possible.
The mulemen were paid off--by no means too handsomely, I thought--to
return upon that long and tedious journey to the coast. And we five
went on alone--Amos and his two confederates, Vasco and myself--carrying
our stores and provisions in knapsacks on our backs, and all armed as
though we were like to meet with savage men.
In the first place, I must tell you that the heat was insufferable, for
all this while we had been approaching the equator. The forest swarmed
with myriads of stinging insects, and sometimes I saw great tree snakes
of a magnitude that even now makes my blood run cold when I think of
them. We came upon one, lying half coiled upon the bank of a woodland
pool, and I am ready to swear that he was longer than a cricket-pitch,
and of a thickness almost equal to my own waist.
But I marvelled most at the forest trees, the names of some of which I
learned from Vasco, who had a little English, of which he was
exceedingly vain. One of these was a palm-tree, the very leaves of
which were forty feet in length, standing almost erect, all bunched
together--a magnificent sight to behold. And these forest giants were
intertwined and intermingled with thousands of creepers, parasites, and
climbers, so that in places, even at mid-day, when the tropic sun was at
its height, it was dark as night in the vast Region of the Woods.
For weeks we struggled onward, literally fighting our way through that
all but impenetrable wilderness. I saw that Amos had more than he could
do to trace our route upon the map; and there were times, I am
convinced, when even Vasco and Baverstock himself truly believed that we
were lost.
He told us he was looking for a certain landmark; and in that dark and
endless forest he might as well have searched for a pin. At one time,
there was not a living soul within hundreds of miles of us. There were
great alligators in the rivers that we crossed by means of rough dug-out
canoes, which we made upon one bank and left upon the other; the jungle
teemed with snakes, many of the venomous kind besides the great
loathsome pythons, in whose coils an ox might have been crushed to
death; thousands of gaily-coloured birds were among the tree-tops high
above us, and the dead leaves about our pathway swarmed with little
things that crept and crawled and stung so vilely that we were covered
from head to foot with painful swellings. But never a sign did we see
of any human being. Nature reigned in that black wilderness,
untrammelled and supreme.
And then, as one steps on a sudden from a darkened room, we came forth
one morning from the forest into the blazing light of the sun. And
there was such a wonder as I had never seen before.
Before us was a plain upon which was growing a tall, reed-like grass;
and in the centre of this plain was a long, hog-backed hillock, bare of
trees. Remember, we were in the very heart of the Unknown, for months
we had seen no sign or trace of humanity, and I, at least, judged myself
to be hundreds of miles from the very outposts of the civilised world;
and yet, upon the summit of this hillock was a great ruined palace or a
temple, encircled by a colonnade of vast stone pillars, no less in their
proportions than those of Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain in England,
only they were there by the score, and stood perpendicular and massive,
not one having fallen from its place.
I stood rooted in amazement, when my attention was attracted by Amos,
whose behaviour was now that of a madman. He threw both his arms into
the air, which action--in view of his hunched back and his pig-like,
glittering eyes--made him look more evil and gleeful than ever, and
shouted at the top of his voice:
"Found!" he cried. "The Temple of Cahazaxa, who fled from Cuzco with
the Treasure! And now, boy, the matter rests with you!"
He changed as in a flash from unbounded joy to passion. He seized me by
the shoulders, gripping me so tightly that it was as if his fingers
burned into my flesh like red-hot irons.
"I'll have the truth from you!" he shrieked, dancing like a maniac on
his feet. "The truth, and nothing but the truth! Or else, I swear as
I'm a living man, you die here and now."
"What truth?" I asked.
My voice was trembling; for so terrible did the man seem that a cold
sweat had broken out upon my forehead. He drew nearer to me still,
peering into my face and whispering.
"Henceforward," said he, "you guide us. Either you have seen the map or
Bannister has told you all he knows. In any case, you guide us from
here to the place where the Greater Treasure is hid. Refuse, and you
die, here and now, in the midst of this almighty desert."
One glance at the man was enough to tell me that he meant every word he
said. And yet, I do not think I was any longer afraid.