It was near upon the time of sunset when I slowly climbed the hill. I
could not take my eyes from the great stones before me, many of which
must have been at least ten square yards in surface area, and cut so
straight and square that, without cement or mortar, they fitted one
against the other as nicely as a child's wooden bricks. I wondered how
they had come there, by what means they had been transported and lifted
into position; and I marvelled that an ancient people should have been
masters of such science.
But it was not this alone that caused my footsteps to become slower and
slower as I approached the ruin. Despite myself, I could not help
remembering much that the wild man had said to me of ghosts and evil
spirits.
In the dim evening light, wreathed in the mist that rose from the
surrounding plain, those great pillars of cold, silent stone looked not
to belong to this world of common things. Towering, as they did, above
the tree-tops of the forest, they made me think of the enchanted palaces
of which in childhood my mother had read to me from fairy tales. If
there were ghosts anywhere in all the world, they were here--and I was
sure of that.
This notion got the strongest hold of me; and presently, a cold sweat
broke out upon my forehead, and I wished that I were back with the wild
men in their woodland village. However, I had more pride than to
retreat, and that at the eleventh hour; and I continued to go forward,
though something after the manner of a condemned man towards the
gallows.
As it grew darker I became more afraid. Night in those tropic latitudes
comes suddenly; darkness falls like a curtain upon a stage; and when I
had gained the outer pillars, which formed together an encircling
colonnade, there was scarce light enough for me to see a distance of
thirty yards.
Within the circumference of these outer pillars--which attained upon an
average a height of about fifty feet--was a great roofless building with
a floor of flagstones, where the silence quite unnerved me. It was more
oppressive than the silence of the forest, where I had always been
conscious that one was surrounded by Life in a million forms: plants,
insects, and animals--all at war that they might live.
But this place seemed dead, save for vast colonies of small red ants
whose bite was poisonous; for I had not been there a full minute before
I was bitten from head to foot, and there were painful weals all over
me.
It was plain I could not sleep amid the ruins as I had intended. Not
only would the ants torture me almost to distraction, but the place was
uncanny, and I could now well understand how those ignorant woodlanders
believed it to be haunted.
I was about to go, and had actually turned towards the main entrance,
which I could see quite clearly in the light of the newly-risen stars,
when a sound came to my ears that was so like a groan that I felt my
blood run cold.
I stood transfixed, more frightened than bewildered. Looking about me
on every side, straining my eyes in the semi-darkness, I could see
nothing. I was convinced that there was no one in that vast chamber
save myself and the red ants. And yet the groan came again, louder than
before.
I tip-toed across the room, my heart throbbing like an engine. And like
a frightened child, I hid myself in a corner; for I had no convictions
any longer, and I wished only to be somewhere where I could not be seen.
Then a spider descended upon me from somewhere high up the wall. And
you may laugh at me when I say that I sprang to my feet and dropped my
blow-pipe and let out a cry that was very near a shriek. But you would
never have laughed had you been placed as I was, seen that spider, and
felt upon your shoulders his restless, furry legs. For this was no
common spider that eats flies and gnats, but a bird-devouring brute, the
size of a saucer; and this is no exaggeration when one takes into
account the full extension of his legs.
As I fled, I picked it from off me with my hand, and threw it away;
whereupon I found that it had covered my fingers with a disgusting and
sticky saliva. I am only thankful that it had no time to bite me, for I
believe the bite of these terrible insects has been known to prove
fatal. They build webs of such strength and solidity that birds as
large as sparrows are caught in the toils and killed; and I have heard
it said that these monsters also ascend trees, drive hens from their
nests and then devour their eggs.
However, this is no treatise upon Natural History. He who wishes to
know more of this horrid creature may read of it in recognised works of
science. For myself, to have felt once its quick, hairy legs upon my
bare neck and shoulders is enough for many a day, and the thing may
belong to any species and genus that it likes, so long as I never set
eyes upon one again.
For I was thoroughly scared; I had become as jumpy as a bean on a hot
plate. I trust that I am not by nature a coward; but the atmosphere of
that ghostly, misty place, the mysterious groans that I had heard, which
had seemed to come from nowhere, and the long-legged, furry spider, had
all so played upon my nerves that I knew neither what I was doing nor
what would happen next.
I had made, in any case, as much noise as a harlequinade. I had cried
out at the top of my voice and had sent my wooden blow-pipe rattling to
the ground. And then I stood motionless, breathless, waiting--as it
seemed--for some new calamity.
This time it was no groan I heard, but a human voice calling, at first
loudly, and then more softly, in a strange foreign tongue.
I listened, and I dared not move. The silence that followed endured for
minutes, during which the seconds were punctuated by the violent beating
of my heart. And, presently, I began to think. As I mastered my fears,
I became capable of reasoning.
It was folly to consider ghosts. Such superstitions were well enough
for untutored savages, wild men of the forests, but they would never do
for Richard Treadgold, who had lived his years in Sussex--though, of a
certainty, I had heard of more than one so-called haunted house between
Beachy Head and Selsey Bill.
I was convinced that I had heard a human voice. I had been able even to
distinguish words, howbeit in a language that I did not comprehend. And
if that were so, it must follow that I was not the only human soul
within that gloomy ruin.
I looked about me, and saw in the starlight my blow-pipe, lying on the
floor. I picked it up, and placing a dart within the mouthpiece, began
to explore the place, starting at the wide entrance and making a tour of
the walls.
It was not long before I came upon a square hole in the ground, edged
with shallow coping stones to keep out the water when the place was
flooded by the rains. It reminded me of a hatchway on board a ship.
Below it was quite dark. I lay down upon the floor at full length with
the idea of listening: for I was now sure that I was on the track of the
secret of the place. But presently my eyes grew accustomed to the
darkness, and I saw before me a flight of narrow steps, leading
downward--as it seemed--into the very bowels of the earth.
I had now mastered my fears. I was determined to be a fool no longer,
but to conduct myself like the man I wished I were. I would have
descended without a second's thought had it not been for two grave
considerations: firstly, I had no means of striking a light; and
secondly, the stairway was so narrow that I must leave behind my long
Indian blow-pipe, the only means of self-defence I had.
I have set down already much by no means favourable to myself; and
therefore I have the less hesitation in recording an incident which goes
far to prove that there were moments when I was a worthy pupil and
admirer of John Bannister himself. For I went down that black and
shallow staircase, half naked as I was and quite unarmed, not knowing
what would befall me at the end of it.
Half-way down, the staircase turned, when to my surprise I saw below me
the dim reflection of a light. And presently I found myself in a long
shallow chamber, where I stood bewildered.
In the centre of the room was a rough stone altar upon which burned an
oil lamp of a quaint design and wrought in bronze. Of other such lamps,
similar in all respects, I counted five, lying upon the stone flooring,
each surrounded by its own pool of oil.
The whole place indeed was in great disorder. Curtains of finely woven
hair had been wrenched from the walls and cast upon the ground. Benches
and short-legged tables had been overturned, and in some cases broken.
Here lay a sword, and there a spear, and here again a pistol, broken at
the small of the butt. Nor was all this the worst of it, by any means;
for immediately before me, lying in stiff, huddled attitudes--a pathetic
and a tragic thing to see--were three stone-dead men, as sure as I first
saw the light of day in Sussex.
Dead they were, for they neither moved nor even breathed. And when I
sighed aloud at the wonder of it all, a fourth man whom I had not
noticed, lying upon the floor at the other end of the room, struggled
upon an elbow and cried out to me, and afterwards pointed a finger down
his throat.
I was no such fool as to mistake his meaning. He wanted water to drink,
and I looked about me to find it. At the foot of the altar was a pool
of clear, crystal water, a spring that bubbled from out of the crust of
the earth, the overflow being conducted to the far end of the chamber by
means of a shallow, wooden trough. I found a drinking vessel which, to
my amazement, was of gold; and this I filled in haste, and brought to
the wounded man.
For wounded he was, a leg being broken at the thighbone, so that he
could not move an inch without suffering the greatest pain. It was this
pain I daresay, as much as loss of blood, which had thrown him in a
fever; for his skin was burning to the touch.
Three times I filled the cup, and each time he emptied it; and as he
drank, he thanked me with his eyes.
Then he lay back and rested, whilst I gazed upon that shambles; for a
shambles it was--blood was everywhere.
I went to the dead men, to each in turn, to make sure that there was no
spark of life in any. And this was the second time that I looked upon
the cold face of death; for, sure enough, each one was dead. And they
were shot; they had been killed by leaden bullets: one in the head,
another in the heart, whereas the third, poor wretch! had died in agony,
with a great wound in his stomach.
But dead though they were, I could not regard them without noticing how
different they were in features and in figure from the wild men of the
woods.
The savages with whom I had sojourned for so long, for whose simple
kindness I shall be ever grateful, were of a Mongolian cast of
countenance: they had high cheek-bones, lips thinner than a negro's, and
yet thick and loose, and their eyes were almond-shaped, inclining
downwards to the nose. Also, their greatly receding foreheads and chins
suggested that they belonged to one of the lower and least intelligent
species of mankind.
But the three dead men, as well as he who was yet alive, had aquiline
noses, thin lips, and rounded eyes. Also they were fully dressed in
long tunics of some woven material, open at the throat, and girdled at
the waist. They wore their hair long, but cut straight, level with the
eyebrows; and above this fringe a broad metal band encircled the head
above the ears.
I looked from them to the altar, and saw thereon a graven disc from
which rays extended to the extremities of the stone. Beyond doubt this
was meant to be the sun; and of a sudden I remembered that the
inhabitants of Old Peru had been wont to worship the sun.
So these, perhaps, were those same Peruvian priests of whom Amos
Baverstock had spoken, they who shared with John Bannister the secret of
the Greater Treasure of the Incas.
And then the truth burst upon me as in a flash--I had struck the pathway
traversed by the tiger. The death and destruction by which I was
surrounded was the work of Amos Baverstock himself.
I picked up the broken pistol, looked at it in the lamplight, and knew
straightway that I had guessed aright. For I recognised it at once. It
had belonged to Joshua Trust. It was the same pistol I had seen often
in his hands, the one with which he had fired at me upon the
Littlehampton road. And if I had had any doubts upon the matter, they
would have been dispelled at once; for there were the man's initials,
"J.T.," carved with his sailor's jack-knife on the wood.
I just let the broken pistol fall to the ground at my feet; and at the
noise, the wounded man, to whom I had given water, struggled again upon
an elbow, and spoke to me--_in English_.