A THOUSAND PEARLS
Pant’s knees trembled a little as his feet splashed in that bubbling
stream that coursed its way through the dreadful Maya cave. It had been
strange, the entering of this supposedly haunted cave, with companions.
How much more awe inspiring to be entering it alone!
He wondered about those companions of that other adventure. Who was this
son of a rich man? What had brought him into the jungle? Where was he
now?
As these and many other questions crowded his mind, he made his way
cautiously through the outer passages to find himself standing once more
on the shore of that curious inland lake which had filled their minds
with curiosity on that other visit and so inspired them with fear.
He found everything as it had been. The placid surface, sending back a
glowing reflection of his light, broke into a thousand ripples as he
waded knee deep in its icy waters.
“Clear,” was his mental comment. “Can see my toes. What a marvelous
reservoir for supplying a city’s drinking water! What a pity there is no
city near!”
He had waded back to the glistening sands of the beach when, of a sudden,
he found his being vibrant to a great expectancy.
“What can it be?” he asked himself. Instantly the answer came.
“The canoe! The canoe on the shore,” he told himself. Strange how one’s
nervous system responds to outer things that his mind does not recall.
“But of course,” he assured himself as he neared the spot, “the thing
won’t give me the shock it once did. We know now that it has been there
for two hundred years.
“But wha—”
His gaze covered a space far in advance of him, many yards beyond the
spot where the canoe had stood.
“Gone!” he muttered, stopping dead in his tracks. “The canoe is gone!”
Who can say which shock was the greater, the first sudden discovery of
the canoe that other time, resting on the beach of this underground lake,
or the present astonishing revelation that had come to him?
For a moment he experienced great difficulty in restraining his feet.
They appeared ready to carry him back to the entrance. Something within
him, an echo of the ancient superstition of his ancestors perhaps, seemed
to be insisting that after all this cave was haunted by the spirits of
beings who perished long ago and it was they who had ridden away in the
mysterious canoe.
For a moment he wavered. Then reason triumphed. “It was Kirk,” he told
himself. “He has returned with his giant Carib, and for some reason or
another has rowed the canoe to some other part of the lake.
“Only question is, would the thing float after all these years?
“Perhaps,” he thought, “they did not row it away. That giant of his may
have put it on his back and carried it outside. What a treasure for some
museum of antiquity!”
The thought that some one had been in the cave since he left it was
disturbing. Could it be that Kirk and his Carib, or whoever it may have
been, had made a thorough search of the place and had carried away the
box of beaten silver.
His heart sank at the thought and he hurried on, reproaching himself for
having waited so long before returning.
Yet he had been needed every moment at the chicle camp. It was a great
season. The trees were prime, the rainfall abundant. He and his
grandfather, with the faithful Caribs, had been working day and night.
One long, low, palm-thatched shed was already piled high with bricks of
chicle.
“By and by the season will end, then we will have won,” he told himself
not realizing that the chicleros’ battle is never won until his bricks of
chicle are aboard a steamer bound for the United States. Then, and not
till then, are his worries at an end.
Pant had dared snatch a day for this adventure. And here he was. Hope
vied with fear for a place in his heart as he hurried over the sand
toward the entrance to the treasure chamber that might yield a great
fortune or offer blank and broken walls to his eager searching gaze.
He climbed the water washed rocks with his heart thumping lustily against
his ribs. He entered the small chamber above with the feeling of one who
enters some ancient temple at night.
With one quick swing he swept the walls with his keen eyes, then with a
low murmured, “Gone!” he sank upon the wet rocks.
Courage and hope conquered disappointment. Rising to his feet, he found
himself ready for a more thorough search.
Back behind a tumbled pile of broken bits of rock, thrown in a heap by
the earthquake, he caught the dull gleam of some object that was not
rock.
With breathless eagerness he attacked the jagged pile. Ten minutes later,
with a cry of triumph on his lips, he lifted the beaten silver box from
its hiding place.
“Strange!” he murmured. “Still locked. Scarcely a dent in it.”
Holding it before him, he shook it vigorously. A rattling sound was the
response. His heart raced wildly.
Mopping the perspiration from his brow, he began studying the fastenings
that held the cover to its place. There were seven of these. Six were
mere clasps that lifted in response to a pry of his clasp knife blade.
The seventh, a true lock, resisted vigorously. A sharp blow from the
small axe that hung from his belt, severed this and the lid flew up, to
reveal such a glistening nest of pink, blue and white pearls as is given
to few eyes to see.
“Pearls!” he murmured, scarcely daring to believe his eyes. “A thousand
pearls. A king’s ransom!”
Then chancing to remember a story he had read as a small boy, he said, “I
wonder if they will turn to rough stones and worthless leaves when I
reach the sunlight.”
This thought troubled him little. The pearls were real enough. Once the
six clasps were back in their places, he felt sure enough of being able
to bring the box and its contents to the light of day.
“But when I have done this,” he thought to himself, “to whom will they
belong? To me?”
This problem he considered long and earnestly. The land on which he had
found this treasure was wild and rough. No one laid claim to it. But
there was the story of the first Don and his beaten silver box of pearls.
Was this the box? Were these the pearls? Did they belong by direct
inheritance to that last of the Dons who lived now at the foot of the
mountain?
“Seems probable,” he told himself. “But after all,” he concluded, “the
real question now is not their ownership, but how are they to be brought
safely from this heart of a jungle to the centers of civilization where a
thousand pearls may be offered for sale in safety and with a reasonable
hope that one may find a buyer. The old Don could never do this. It must
be my task.”
Having come to this conclusion, he bound the box in a stout brown canvas
bag he had brought for the purpose, then began retracing his steps over
the way that led to the outer air and sunshine.
Hugging the treasure, he made his way into the chamber of the underground
lake. Many and strange were the sensations that passed over him. At times
he seemed to hear the cry of terror that escaped the giant Carib’s lips
as his mind became possessed with fear for the earth god of the Mayas.
Unconsciously he found himself looking back, as if expecting to be
followed and overtaken by some unseen force that would wrest the treasure
from him. Such was the spell of the Maya cave.
At times he fancied that the earth beneath his feet was beginning to
tremble and shudder as once it had. He redoubled his speed. But in the
end, he knew that this was pure fancy. The water that glimmered at his
side was as still as a forest pool at midnight.
He fell to wondering about the canoe that had stood so long by the
water’s brink. “Who can have been here? Who could have taken it?” he
asked himself.
As he asked himself this question, his foot struck some object that, in
the silence of the cave, gave off a dry and hollow sound. Leaping back,
he threw his flashlight upon the spot.
“A paddle,” he murmured, “from the ancient boat.”
“Strange they didn’t take that with them,” he thought after a moment
spent in examining it. “Oh well, since they did not, I will. It is
elaborately carved and mounted with metal. Looks like gold. A splendid
keepsake.”
Having picked up the paddle, he threw the light of his torch about him in
every direction. Off to the right, further up from the beach, some other
object cast dark shadows on the sand. An exclamation escaped his lips as
he came close to it.
“A broken bit of a canoe!” he whispered.
Then like a flash it all came to him. “No one has been here,” he told
himself. “The canoe has not been carried away. It was wrecked by the
great wave caused by the earthquake.”
For a moment he stood gazing upon the bit of ancient wreckage. Then,
suddenly realizing that it was growing late, that it was already dark
outside the cave, he hurried on.
Darkness had indeed fallen when he reached the outer world of the jungle.
This did not trouble him much. He had flashlights and a lantern. There
was a trail leading directly to their camp. He would be there in two
hours.
“And then,” he thought, “what am I to do with this box of pearls? There
are men enough in this wild land who would split my head open for much
less than this. They must not know.”
As he made his way through the underbrush, now listening to the distant
bark of a crocodile and now catching the puh-puh-puh of a jaguar, he
pondered the problem of concealing the treasure and of bringing it safely
to the outside world.
At last he hit upon what seemed a brilliant idea. The box was the shape
of a brick of chicle, only smaller. When he got to camp he would stuff
the box with dried palm leaves so it would not rattle, then he would wrap
it round and round with other palm leaves.
Having done this, he would remove one of the two bricks of chicle in a
gunnysack beneath the storing shed and put in its place the beaten silver
box.
“I will mark that sack with a bit of green thread woven in and out of the
rough fibre. It will be safe enough until I can decide what to do with
it. Does it belong to me, or to the old Don? Guess I better talk it over
with my grandfather. He will know what is right.”
When he arrived at camp he found everyone asleep but one Carib watchman.
As soon as he made himself known to the watchman, he inquired for his
grandfather only to learn that at present his grandfather was away, but
was expected back in the morning.
When, an hour later, he lay down to rest, the beaten silver box with its
priceless contents lay in a coarse gunnysack beside a brick of chicle
worth fifty cents a pound. And about it, above, below, on every side were
other sacks of chicle.
“I must not let it get out of my sight,” he told himself. “I must—” At
that he fell asleep.
The journey of the day had been long, his curious experience exhausting.
He slept well; too well. When he awoke, the sunlight sifting down through
the palm leaves shone upon his face.
His first waking thought was of the beaten silver box. Hurrying into his
clothes, he fairly raced to the storing shed. There his eyes fell upon
that which left him standing motionless, speechless, struck dumb,
paralyzed with fear.
“Gone!” he whispered feebly at last. “The whole pile of chicle at that
end is gone, and the silver box with it!”
“The chicle is gone!” he exclaimed to his grandfather a moment later when
that old gentleman came into the shed.
“Yes,” his grandfather smiled. “Monago and his band of Caribs came in
with me at dawn from the north corner of the tract for some supplies. I
sent them with four pit-pan loads of chicle down the river. They will
bring up supplies. The chicle will be shipped at once. I received word
yesterday that the chicle supply was short and that ours should be rushed
through to meet the demand.”
“Gone!” the boy whispered as he crept away for a few moments of quiet
thought.