“Even so, it was a mistake and a weakness on my part to remain in
Panama,” Francis was saying to Leoncia, as they sat side by side on the
rocks outside the cave entrance, waiting Henry’s return.
“Does the stock market of New York then mean so much to you?” Leoncia
coquettishly teased; yet only part of it was coquetry, the major portion
of it being temporization. She was afraid of being alone with this man
whom she loved so astoundingly and terribly.
Francis was impatient.
“I am ever a straight talker, Leoncia. I say what I mean, in the
directest, shortest way——”
“Wherein you differ from us Spaniards,” she interpolated, “who must
garnish and dress the simplest thoughts with all decorations of speech.”
But he continued undeterred what he had started to say.
“There you are a baffler, Leoncia, which was just what I was going to
call you. I speak straight talk and true talk, which is a man’s way. You
baffle in speech, and flutter like a butterfly——which, I grant, is a
woman’s way and to be expected. Nevertheless, it is not fair ... to me.
I tell you straight out the heart of me, and you understand. You do not
tell me your heart. You flutter and baffle, and I do not understand.
Therefore, you have me at a disadvantage. You know I love you. I have
told you plainly. I? What do I know about you?”
With downcast eyes and rising color in her cheeks, she sat silent,
unable to reply.
“You see!” he insisted. “You do not answer. You look warmer and more
beautiful and desirable than ever, more enticing, in short; and yet you
baffle me and tell me nothing of your heart or intention. Is it because
you are woman? Or because you are Spanish?”
She felt herself stirred profoundly. Beyond herself, yet in cool control
of herself, she raised her eyes and looked steadily in his as steadily
she said:
“I can be Anglo-Saxon, or English, or American, or whatever you choose
to name the ability to look things squarely in the face and to talk
squarely into the face of things.” She paused and debated coolly with
herself, and coolly resumed. “You complain that while you have told me
that you love me, I have not told you whether or not I love you. I shall
settle that forever and now. I do love you——”
She thrust his eager arms away from her.
“Wait!” she commanded. “Who is the woman now? Or the Spaniard? I had not
finished. I love you. I am proud that I love you. Yet there is more. You
have asked me for my heart and intention. I have told you part of the
one. I now tell you all of the other: I _intend_ to marry Henry.”
Such Anglo-Saxon directness left Francis breathless.
“In heaven’s name, why?” was all he could utter.
“Because I love Henry,” she answered, her eyes still unshrinkingly on
his.
“And you ... you say you love _me_?” he quavered.
“And I love you, too. I love both of you. I am a good woman, at least I
always used to think so. I still think so, though my reason tells me
that I cannot love two men at the same time and be a good woman. I don’t
care about that. If I am bad, it is I, and I cannot help myself for
being what I was born to be.”
She paused and waited, but her lover was still speechless.
“And who’s the Anglo-Saxon now?” she queried, with a slight smile, half
of bravery, half of amusement at the dumbness of consternation her words
had produced in him. “I have told you, without baffling, without
fluttering, my full heart and my full intention.”
“But you can’t!” he protested wildly. “You can’t love me and marry
Henry.”
“Perhaps you have not understood,” she chided gravely. “I intend to
marry Henry. I love you. I love Henry. But I cannot marry both of you.
The law will not permit. Therefore I shall marry only one of you. It is
my intention that that one be Henry.”
“Then why, why,” he demanded, “did you persuade me into remaining?”
“Because I loved you. I have already so told you.”
“If you keep this up I shall go mad!” he cried.
“I have felt like going mad over it myself many times,” she assured him.
“If you think it is easy for me thus to play the Anglo-Saxon, you are
mistaken. But no Anglo-Saxon, not even you whom I love so dearly, can
hold me in contempt because I hide the shameful secrets of the impulses
of my being. Less shameful I find it, for me to tell them, right out in
meeting, to you. If this be Anglo-Saxon, make the most of it. If it be
Spanish, and woman, and Solano, still make the most of it, for I am
Spanish, and woman——a Spanish woman of the Solanos——”
“But I don’t talk with my hands,” she added with a wan smile in the
silence that fell.
Just as he was about to speak, she hushed him, and both listened to a
crackling and rustling from the underbrush that advertised the passage
of humans.
“Listen,” she whispered hurriedly, laying her hand suddenly on his arm,
as if pleading. “I shall be finally Anglo-Saxon, and for the last time,
when I tell you what I am going to tell you. Afterward, and for always,
I shall be the baffling, fluttering, female Spaniard you have chosen for
my description. Listen: I love Henry, it is true, very true. I love you
more, much more. I shall marry Henry ... because I love him and am
pledged to him. Yet always shall I love you more.”
Before he could protest, the old Maya priest and his peon son emerged
from the underbrush close upon them. Scarcely noticing their presence,
the priest went down on his knees, exclaiming, in Spanish:
“For the first time have my eyes beheld the eyes of Chia.”
He ran the knots of the sacred tassel and began a prayer in Maya, which,
could they have understood, ran as follows:
“O immortal Chia, great spouse of the divine Hzatzl who created all
things out of nothingness! O immortal spouse of Hzatzl, thyself the
mother of the corn, the divinity of the heart of the husked grain,
goddess of the rain and the fructifying sun-rays, nourisher of all the
grains and roots and fruits for the sustenance of man! O glorious Chia,
whose mouth ever commands the ear of Hzatzl, to thee humbly, thy priest,
I make my prayer. Be kind to me, and forgiving. From thy mouth let issue
forth the golden key that opens the ear of Hzatzl. Let thy faithful
priest gain to Hzatzl’s treasure——Not for himself, O Divinity, but for
the sake of his son whom the Gringo saved. Thy children, the Mayas,
pass. There is no need for them of the treasure. I am thy last priest.
With me passes all understanding of thee and of thy great spouse, whose
name I breathe only with my forehead on the stones. Hear me, O Chia,
hear me! My head is on the stones before thee!”
For all of five minutes the old Maya lay prone, quivering and jerking as
if in a catalepsy, while Leoncia and Francis looked curiously on,
themselves half-swept by the unmistakable solemnity of the old man’s
prayer, non-understandable though it was.
Without waiting for Henry, Francis entered the cave a second time. With
Leoncia beside him, he felt quite like a guide as he showed the old
priest over the place. The latter, ever reading the knots and mumbling,
followed behind, while the peon was left on guard outside. In the avenue
of mummies the priest halted reverently——not so much for the mummies as
for the sacred tassel.
“It is so written,” he announced, holding out a particular string of
knots. “These men were evil, and robbers. Their doom here is to wait
forever outside the inner room of Maya mystery.”
Francis hurried him past the heap of bones of his father before him, and
led him into the inner chamber, where first of all, he prostrated
himself before the two idols and prayed long and earnestly. After that,
he studied certain of the strings very carefully. Then he made an
announcement, first in Maya, which Francis gave him to know was
unintelligible, and next in broken Spanish:
“_From the mouth of Chia to the ear of Hzatzl_——so is it written.”
Francis listened to the cryptic utterance, glanced into the dark cavity
of the goddess’ mouth, stuck the blade of his hunting-knife into the
key-hole of the god’s monstrous ear, then tapped the stone with the hilt
of his knife and declared the statue to be hollow. Back to Chia, he was
tapping her to demonstrate her hollowness, when the old Maya muttered:
“_The feet of Chia rest upon nothingness._”
Francis caught by the idea, made the old man verify the message by the
knots.
“Her feet _are_ large,” Leoncia laughed, “but they rest on the solid
rock-floor and not on nothingness.”
Francis pushed against the female deity with his hand and found that she
moved easily. Gripping her with both hands, he began to wrestle, moving
her with quick jerks and twists.
“_For the strong men and unafraid will Chia walk_,” the priest read.
“But the next three knots declare: _Beware! Beware! Beware!_”
“Well, I guess, that nothingness, whatever it is, won’t bite me,”
Francis chuckled, as he released the statue after shifting it a yard
from its original position.
“There, old lady, stand there for a while, or sit down if that will rest
your feet. They ought to be tired after standing on nothing for so many
centuries.”
A cry from Leoncia drew his gaze to the portion of the floor just
vacated by the large feet of Chia. Stepping backward from the displaced
goddess, he had been just about to fall into the rock-hewn hole her feet
had concealed. It was circular, and a full yard in diameter. In vain he
tested the depth by dropping lighted matches. They fell burning, and,
without reaching bottom, still falling, were extinguished by the draught
of their flight.
“It looks very much like nothingness without a bottom,” he adjudged, as
he dropped a tiny stone fragment.
Many seconds they listened ere they heard it strike.
“Even that may not be the bottom,” Leoncia suggested. “It may have been
struck against some projection from the side and even lodged there.”
“Well, this will determine it,” Francis cried, seizing an ancient musket
from among the bones on the floor and preparing to drop it.
But the old man stopped him.
“The message of the sacred knots is: _whoso violates the nothingness
beneath the feet of Chia shall quickly and terribly die_.”
“Far be it from me to make a stir in the void,” Francis grinned, tossing
the musket aside. “But what are we to do now, old Maya man? From the
mouth of Chia to the ear of Hzatzl sounds easy——but how?—and what? Run
the sacred knots with thy fingers, old top, and find for us _how_ and
_what_.”
For the son of the priest, the peon with the frayed knees, the clock had
struck. All unaware, he had seen his last sun-rise. No matter what
happened this day, no matter what blind efforts he might make to escape,
the day was to be his last day. Had he remained on guard at the
cave-entrance, he would surely have been killed by Torres and Mancheno,
who had arrived close on his heels.
But, instead of so remaining, it entered his cautious, timid soul to
make a scout out and beyond for possible foes. Thus, he missed death in
the daylight under the sky. Yet the pace of the hands of the clock was
unalterable, and neither nearer nor farther was his destined end from
him.
While he scouted, Alvarez Torres and José Mancheno arrived at the
cave-opening. The colossal, mother-of-pearl eyes of Chia on the wall of
the cliff were too much for the superstition-reared Caroo.
“Do you go in,” he told Torres. “I will wait here and watch and guard.”
And Torres, with strong in him the blood of the ancient forebear who
stood faithfully through the centuries in the avenue of the mummy dead,
entered the Maya cave as courageously as that forebear had entered.
And the instant he was out of sight, José Mancheno, unafraid to murder
treacherously any living, breathing man, but greatly afraid of the
unseen world behind unexplainable phenomena, forgot the trust of watch
and ward and stole away through the jungle. Thus, the peon, returning
reassured from his scout and curious to learn the Maya secrets of his
father and of the sacred tassel, found nobody at the cave mouth and
himself entered into it close upon the heels of Torres.
The latter trod softly and cautiously, for fear of disclosing his
presence to those he trailed. Also his progress was still further
delayed by the spectacle of the ancient dead in the hall of mummies.
Curiously he examined these men whom history had told about, and for
whom history had stopped there in the antechamber of the Maya gods.
Especially curious was he at the sight of the mummy at the end of the
line. The resemblance to him was too striking for him not to see, and he
could not but believe that he was looking upon some direct
great-ancestor of his.
Still gazing and speculating, he was warned by approaching foot-steps,
and glanced about for some place to hide. A sardonic humor seized him.
Taking the helmet from the head of his ancient kin, he placed it on his
own head. Likewise did he drape the rotten mantle about his form, and
equip himself with the great sword and the great floppy boots that
almost fell to pieces as he pulled them on. Next, half tenderly, he
deposited the nude mummy on its back in the dark shadows behind the
other mummies. And, finally, in the same spot at the end of the line,
his hand resting on the sword-hilt, he assumed the same posture he had
observed of the mummy.
Only his eyes moved as he observed the peon venturing slowly and
fearfully along the avenue of upright corpses. At sight of Torres he
came to an abrupt stop and with wide eyes of dread muttered a succession
of Maya prayers. Torres, so confronted, could only listen with closed
eyes and conjecture. When he heard the peon move on he stole a look and
saw him pause with apprehension at the narrow elbow-turn of the passage
which he must venture next. Torres saw his chance and swung the sword
aloft for the blow that would split the peon’s head in twain.
Though this was the day and the very hour for the peon, the last second
had not yet ticked. Not there, in the thoroughfare of the dead, was he
destined to die under the hand of Torres. For Torres held his hand and
slowly lowered the point of the sword to the floor, while the peon
passed on into the elbow.
The latter met up with his father, Leoncia, and Francis, just as Francis
was demanding the priest to run the knots again for fuller information
of the how and what that would open the ear of Hzatzl.
“Put your hand into the mouth of Chia and draw forth the key,” the old
man commanded his reluctant son, who went about obeying him most
gingerly.
“She won’t bite you——she’s stone,” Francis laughed at him in Spanish.
“The Maya gods are never stone,” the old man reproved him. “They seem to
be stone, but they are alive, and ever alive, and under the stone, and
through the stone, and by the stone, as always, work their everlasting
will.”
Leoncia shuddered away from him and clung against Francis, her hand on
his arm, as if for protection.
“I know that something terrible is going to happen,” she gasped. “I
don’t like this place in the heart of a mountain among all these dead
old things. I like the blue of the sky and the balm of the sunshine, and
the widespreading sea. Something terrible is going to happen. I know
that something terrible is going to happen.”
While Francis reassured her, the last seconds of the last minute for the
peon were ticking off. And when, summoning all his courage, he thrust
his hand into the mouth of the goddess, the last second ticked and the
clock struck. With a scream of terror he pulled back his hand and gazed
at the wrist where a tiny drop of blood exuded directly above an artery.
The mottled head of a snake thrust forth like a mocking, derisive tongue
and drew back and disappeared in the darkness of the mouth of the
goddess.
“A viperine!” screamed Leoncia, recognising the reptile.
And the peon, likewise recognising the viperine and knowing his certain
death by it, recoiled backward in horror, stepped into the hole, and
vanished down the nothingness which Chia had guarded with her feet for
so many centuries.
For a full minute nobody spoke, then the old priest said: “I have
angered Chia, and she has slain my son.”
“Nonsense,” Francis was comforting Leoncia. “The whole thing is natural
and explainable. What more natural than that a viperine should choose a
hole in a rock for a lair? It is the way of snakes. What more natural
than that a man, bitten by a viperine, should step backward? And what
more natural, with a hole behind him, than that he should fall into
it——”
“That is then just natural!” she cried, pointing to a stream of crystal
water which boiled up over the lips of the hole and fountained up in the
air like a geyser. “He is right. Through stone itself the gods work
their everlasting will. He warned us. He knew from reading the knots of
the sacred tassel.”
“Piffle!” Francis snorted. “Not the will of the gods, but of the ancient
Maya priests who invented their gods as well as this particular device.
Somewhere down that hole the peon’s body struck the lever that opened
stone flood-gates. And thus was released some subterranean body of water
in the mountain. This is that water. No goddess with a monstrous mouth
like that could ever have existed save in the monstrous imaginations of
men. Beauty and divinity are one. A real and true goddess is always
beautiful. Only man creates devils in all their ugliness.”
So large was the stream that already the water was about their ankles.
“It’s all right,” Francis said. “I noticed, all the way from the
entrance, the steady inclined plane of the floors of the rooms and
passages. Those old Mayas were engineers, and they built with an eye on
drainage. See how the water rushes away out through the passage.—Well,
old man, read your knots, where is the treasure?”
“Where is my son?” the old man counter-demanded in dull and hopeless
tones. “Chia has slain my only born. For his mother I broke the Maya law
and stained the pure Maya blood with the mongrel blood of a woman of the
tierra caliente. Because I sinned for him that he might be, is he thrice
precious to me. What care I for treasure? My son is gone. The wrath of
the Maya gods is upon me.”
With gurglings and burblings and explosive air-bubblings that advertised
the pressure behind, the water fountained high as ever into the air.
Leoncia was the first to notice the rising depth of the water on the
chamber floor.
“It is half way to my knees,” she drew Francis’ attention.
“And time to get out,” he agreed, grasping the situation. “The drainage
was excellently planned, perhaps. But that slide of rocks at the cliff
entrance has evidently blocked the planned way of the water. In the
other passages, being lower, the water is deeper, of course, than here.
Yet is it already rising here on the general level. And that way lies
the only way out. Come!”
Thrusting Leoncia to lead in the place of safety, he caught the
apathetic priest by the hand and dragged him after. At the entrance of
the elbow turn the water was boiling above their knees. It was to their
waists as they emerged into the chamber of mummies.
And out of the water, confronting Leoncia’s astounded gaze, arose the
helmeted head and ancient-mantled body of a mummy. Not this alone would
have astounded her, for other mummies were over-toppling, falling and
being washed about in the swirling waters. But this mummy moved and made
gasping noises for breath, and with eyes of life stared into her eyes.
It was too much for ordinary human nature to bear——a four-centuries old
corpse dying the second death by drowning. Leoncia screamed, sprang
forward, and fled the way she had come, while Francis, in his own way
equally startled, let her go past as he drew his automatic pistol. But
the mummy, finding footing in the swift rush of the current, cried out:
“Don’t shoot! It is I—Torres! I have just come back from the entrance.
Something has happened. The way is blocked. The water is over one’s head
and higher than the entrance, and rocks are falling.”
“And your way is blocked in this direction,” Francis said, aiming the
revolver at him.
“This is no time for quarreling,” Torres replied. “We must save all our
lives, and, afterwards, if quarrel we must, then quarrel we will.”
Francis hesitated.
“What is happening to Leoncia?” Torres demanded slyly. “I saw her run
back. May she not be in danger by herself?”
Letting Torres live and dragging the old man by the arm, Francis waded
back to the chamber of the idols, followed by Torres. Here, at sight of
him, Leoncia screamed her horror again.
“It’s only Torres,” Francis reassured her. “He gave me a devil of a
fright myself when I first saw him. But he’s real flesh. He’ll bleed if
a knife is stuck into him.—Come, old man! We don’t want to drown here
like rats in a trap. This is not all of the Maya mysteries. Read the
tale of the knots and get us out of this!”
“The way is not _out_ but _in_,” the priest quavered.
“And we’re not particular so long as we get away. But how can we get
in?”
“From the mouth of Chia to the ear of Hzatzl,” was the answer.
Francis was struck by a sudden grotesque and terrible thought.
“Torres,” he said, “there is a key or something inside that stone lady’s
mouth there. You’re the nearest. Stick your hand in and get it.”
Leoncia gasped with horror as she divined Francis’ vengeance. Of this
Torres took no notice, and gaily waded toward the goddess, saying: “Only
too glad to be of service.”
And then Francis’ sense of fair play betrayed him.
“Stop!” he commanded harshly, himself wading to the idol’s side.
And Torres, at first looking on in puzzlement, saw what he had escaped.
Several times Francis fired his pistol into the stone mouth, while the
old priest moaned “Sacrilege!” Next, wrapping his coat around his arm
and hand, he groped into the mouth and pulled out the wounded viper by
the tail. With quick swings in the air he beat its head to a jelly
against the goddess’ side.
Wrapping his hand and arm against the possibility of a second snake,
Francis thrust his hand into the mouth and drew forth a piece of worked
gold of the shape and size of the hole in Hzatzl’s ear. The old man
pointed to the ear, and Francis inserted the key.
“Like a nickle-in-the-slot machine,” he remarked, as the key disappeared
from sight. “Now what’s going to happen? Let’s watch for the water to
drain suddenly away.”
But the great stream continued to spout unabated out of the hole. With
an exclamation, Torres pointed to the wall, an apparently solid portion
of which was slowly rising.
“The way out,” said Torres.
“_In_, as the old man said,” Francis corrected. “Well, anyway, let’s
start.”
All were through and well along the narrow passage beyond, when the old
Maya, crying, “My son!” turned and ran back.
The section of wall was already descending into its original place, and
the priest had to crouch low in order to pass it. A moment later, it
stopped in its old position. So accurately was it contrived and fitted
that it immediately shut off the stream of water which had been flowing
out of the idol room.
* * * * *
Outside, save for a small river of water that flowed out of the base of
the cliff, there were no signs of what was vexing the interior of the
mountain. Henry and Ricardo, arriving, noted the stream, and Henry
observed:
“That’s something new. There wasn’t any stream of water here when I
left.”
A minute later he was saying, as he looked at a fresh slide of rock:
“This was the entrance to the cave. Now there is no entrance. I wonder
where the others are.”
As if in answer, out of the mountain, borne by the spouting stream, shot
the body of a man. Henry and Ricardo pounced upon it and dragged it
clear. Recognizing it for the priest, Henry laid him face downward,
squatted astride of him, and proceeded to give him the first aid for the
drowned.
Not for ten minutes did the old man betray signs of life, and not until
after another ten minutes did he open his eyes and look wildly about.
“Where are they?” Henry asked.
The old priest muttered in Maya, until Henry shook more thorough
consciousness into him.
“Gone——all gone,” he gasped in Spanish.
“Who?” Henry demanded, shook memory into the resuscitated one, and
demanded again.
“My son; Chia slew him. Chia slew my son, as she slew them all.”
“Who are the rest?”
Followed more shakings and repetitions of the question.
“The rich young Gringo who befriended my son, the enemy of the rich
young Gringo whom men call Torres, and the young woman of the Solanos
who was the cause of all that happened. I warned you. She should not
have come. Women are always a curse in the affairs of men. By her
presence, Chia, who is likewise a woman, was made angry. The tongue of
Chia is a viperine. By her tongue Chia struck and slew my son, and the
mountain vomited the ocean upon us there in the heart of the mountain,
and all are dead, slain by Chia. Woe is me! I have angered the gods. Woe
is me! Woe is me! And woe upon all who would seek the sacred treasure to
filch it from the gods of Maya!”