the raft; and, notwithstanding what Rayburn had said in regard to the
ease of cutting them, I must confess that for my part I found the
cutting of pine-trees very wearying and painful. My hands were blistered
by it, and the muscles of my back were made extremely sore by it for
several days. Indeed, the construction of a raft big enough to float us
all, and our heavy packs, and El Sabio, was a serious undertaking. We
spent two days and a half over it, and I never in my life was more
thankful for anything than I was when at last that wretched raft was
done. As Young observed, as he regarded our finished work critically,
there was no style about it--for it was only a lot of rough logs, of
which the upper and lower layers ran fore and aft and the middle layer
transversely, the whole bound together by our pack-ropes--but it was
large enough for our purposes, and it was solid and strong.
In the late afternoon we carried our belongings on board of it, and
Pablo succeeded by dint of much entreaty in inducing El Sabio to board
it also, and we pushed off from shore. For driving the clumsy thing
forward we had made four rough paddles, which well enough served our
purposes, for there was no current whatever in the lake and the air was
still.
[Illustration: AFLOAT ON THE LAKE]
As we went onward we discovered how considerable the city was that here
lay submerged. Through the perfectly clear water we could see to a great
depth, and beneath us in every direction were paved streets, lined with
houses well built of stone. Near the centre of the valley the size of
the houses greatly increased, and the fashion of their building was more
stately; and fronting upon a great open square in the very centre of the
city was a building of such extraordinary size that we took it to be the
palace of a king; but here the water was so deep that we could make out
but faintly the looming far below us of its mighty walls. Never have I
been more pained than I then was; for in that place I found myself close
to making discoveries of surpassing archæological value, and yet I was
as completely cut off from them as though they had no existence.
Just beyond the palace, as we went onward, our raft almost touched the
roof of a noble building that stood upon the top of a vast pyramidal
mound, the base of which we could see but dimly far down through the
waters of the lake. This, evidently, had been the chief temple of the
city; and as we passed over it and came to its eastern side, we had
ghastly and certain proof of the terrible suddenness with which the city
had been overwhelmed. On the broad terrace before the temple was the
sacrificial stone, and upon this dark mass we saw distinctly the
gleaming of human bones; and as we peered down into the water we
perceived that all the terrace was strewn thickly with human bones also,
showing that when the rush of water came many thousands of human beings
had here perished miserably. For a little while, no doubt, all the
surface of the water round about where we were had been dotted thickly
with the bodies of the drowned which had floated upward; and then, one
by one, they had sunk again to the place where death first found
them--where their flesh wasted away from them until only their gleaming
bones remained.
I pictured to myself the dreadful scene that once had passed, down there
below us, where now was only the calm serenity of ancient death: the
great crowd collected to witness the sacrifice, and then the sudden
coming of the waters--possibly so quickly that the victim, held down by
the neck-yoke upon the sacrificial stone, was drowned ere there was time
to slay him. This great mound would be the last of all to be covered,
and the wretched people gathered there must have seen their city
disappear beneath the waters before death came to them. No doubt they
thought themselves safe in that high place, made sacred by the presence
of their gods. And when the water did reach them, what a writhing and
struggling there must have been for a little while; what a crushing of
the weak by the strong in mad efforts to gain even a moment's safety
upon some higher standing-place! And then, at last, the water rose
triumphant in its swelling majesty over all--and beneath its placid
surface were hid the silenced terrors of all that commotion of mortal
agony, whereof the outcome was the peaceful and eternal calm of death.
XII.
IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH.
As the raft approached the western shore of the lake we perceived
beneath us no longer houses, but large walled enclosures which plainly
had been gardens of pleasure--for gaunt trees, symmetrically planted in
groves and beside stone-paved path-ways, yet stood in them; and seats of
carved stone were placed in what once had been shaded nooks; and in many
of the gardens were carved stone fountains of elegant design. Between
the city and what once had been its charming suburb extended a broad
paved way, like that which we had found upon the eastern shore; and this
paved way was continued on the dry ground above the present level of the
lake towards the cliffs westward. On the high western shore were a few
houses, large and handsome, and having walled gardens around them,
which evidently had belonged to persons of great wealth and consequence.
In these we found shadowy remnants of a past magnificence. On many of
the walls were hangings, once rich and heavy, that now were mere films
of ghostly stuff held together by the many gold threads which had been
woven into their fabric. Pottery, wrought into beautiful shapes, yet
ornamented with designs that told of but half-redeemed barbarism, was
scattered about everywhere, and scarcely a piece was broken. Some very
handsome weapons we found also--swords and spears and knives--of the
same curious metal as the sword which Pablo so opportunely had laid
hands upon in the cañon, but far more finely finished and more delicate
in design. And of this same metal was made a great throne, as it seemed
to us to be, that was in the largest room of the finest of all the
houses; a house that we believed was once the pleasure palace of the
king. The audience-chamber in which this throne stood was of finely
wrought stone-work, whereof the whole surface was covered with
low-reliefs of men and animals--scenes of battle, of council, and of the
chase--surrounded by curious tracery of such orderly design that Fray
Antonio agreed with me in the belief that it was some sort of
hieroglyphic writing. But this matter is treated of so fully in my
_Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America_ that I need
not enter upon discussion of it here.
But in none of these houses, much to the disappointment of Rayburn and
Young, did we find any scrap of the treasure for which they so
earnestly longed. And, truly, if treasure remained in this wrecked city,
it was less likely to be in these outlying country houses than in some
strong building in the city's heart; and so beyond their reach in the
depths of the lake. If this were indeed the walled city for which we
were searching--as well it might be, for never was a city surrounded by
grander walls than the mighty cliffs wherewith the valley was
encompassed--our search was like to be a vain one so far as mere
treasure was concerned; though I, for my part, felt myself well repaid
for all that I had thus far suffered by the discovery of so much that
was of archæological value. In this purer pleasure Fray Antonio shared;
yet was he also dissatisfied--for he had come with us that he might
preach Christianity to living souls: and here were only the bones of
countless dead.
The paved way still led westward, and we followed it--for to the
westward must be the valley's outlet. As it rose to a higher level the
way widened; and on each side of it was a stone statue of the god
Chac-Mool. As we came to these statues Young proceeded, in a most
business-like way, and with no apparent appreciation of the queer figure
that he cut, to sit down in turn on each of their heads. And he was
mightily disappointed when he found that neither of them stirred.
"They're not th' tippin' kind," he said, ruefully, as he got down from
the head of the second one and looked at it with an expression of
reproach.
But his countenance brightened, when we had gone a little farther, as he
caught sight of another and much larger statue of the god that was set
in a great niche cut in the cliff at the end of the paved way. To
prepare here the god's abiding-place very arduous labor had been
undertaken. For a space fully one hundred feet high and as many broad
the whole face of the cliff had been quarried into; making a deep recess
that was rounded above, and that from beneath was approached by a long
flight of steps cut from the solid rock. In the centre of the recess,
upon the terraced space above the stairs, was a huge squared mass of
stone, on which the great stone figure of Chac-Mool rested. The opening
faced directly eastward, and as we approached it the stone figure was
seen but indistinctly in the duskiness of the recess, over which, and
far beyond which into the valley, fell the shadow of the mighty cliff.
From in front of this great altar all the valley was open to us; and
hence, before the lake swallowed it, every part of the city must have
been clearly visible in ancient times. As we mounted the steps and
approached the idol I observed that Pablo hung back a little; as though
in the depths of his nature some chord had been touched, some ancient
instinct in his blood aroused, that filled his soul with awe.
Certainly there was no suggestion of awe in Young's demeanor towards the
statue. With a monkey-like quickness, that I would not have given his
stout legs and heavy body credit for, he climbed upon the altar and
plumped himself down on the head of the figure almost in a moment. But
again he was disappointed, for the idol did not stir. As we examined it
closely we perceived that its fixedness was not unreasonable; for the
figure, and the altar on which it rested, were one solid mass of rock
that itself was a part of the cliff--left standing here when the niche
around it was hollowed out. A very prodigious piece of stone-cutting all
this was, and as I contemplated it I was filled with admiration of the
skill of them who had achieved it. But Young came down from the idol
moodily; and he said that the way these people had of playing tricks on
travellers, by making Mullinses that didn't tip when they ought to tip,
was quite of a piece with their putting their treasure where it couldn't
be got at without a diving-bell.
Behind the altar the niche was cut into the cliff so far that the depths
of it in the waning daylight were dusky with heavy shadows; indeed, so
dense were these that Young came near to breaking his bones by falling
into a little hole in the floor, that was the less easily seen because
it was hidden behind a jutting mass of rock. But he caught the rock in
time to save himself from falling, and eagerly struck a wax-match that
he might see if here were a passage-way for us. Descending into the rock
was a stair-way, the steps whereof were smoothed as though many feet had
trodden them; and down these steps he promptly went, holding the lighted
match before him--these Mexican wax-matches are as good as tapers--and
having with him the full box of matches should further light be
required. A minute later we heard his voice calling to us, but where it
came from we could not tell--for he had descended into the rock below
us, and the sound that we heard seemed to come from the air above.
While we listened we saw the gleam of the light in the darkness below,
and then he came up the stair laughing.
"Well, that's just th' boss trick," he said. "I guess th' old priests
who used t' run this place would be everlastin'ly down on me if they
knew that I'd tumbled to it. There's a hole right up into th' idol an'
room inside of him for half a dozen men, an' there's a crack in his head
that you can see out through while you're lettin' off prophecies an'
that sort o' thing. Why, if you had a crowd t' work with who really
believed in Jack Mullins, you could set 'em up for almost anything with
a rig like that!"
But this curious discovery, in which Fray Antonio and I were deeply
interested, did not forward our immediate purpose, which was to find a
way out of the valley. We still cherished a faint hope, indeed, that we
might find the King's symbol with the arrow pointing the way onward, and
so be assured that the city buried in the depths of the lake was not the
city of which we were in search. But in any event the need for getting
out of the valley pressed upon us; and that we might accomplish our
deliverance from this shut-in place, we examined closely the whole
circuit of the cliffs at the western end. Not an inch of this great
expanse of rock, for as far up the wall as our eyes could see clearly,
escaped our attentive observation; yet nowhere was there, even by bold
climbing, a place where the cliff might be scaled, still less an open
path. And so, having walked slowly along the bottom of the cliffs to
the edge of the lake on the north, and there turned upon our steps and
come slowly back again to where we started from, and having made a like
double journey of inspection to and from the edge of the lake to the
south, we came at last to our first point of departure, and rested
before the statue of Chac-Mool, disconsolate.
One discovery we had made in the course of our explorations which
enabled us to understand how the fate that had overtaken the drowned
city had fallen upon it. Close by the northern border of the valley we
saw, high up above us, a vast rift more than a thousand feet wide in the
face of the cliff; and below this the ground was torn into a deep wild
channel, and everywhere huge fragments of rock were scattered over the
ground. Here it was, then, that the water had poured in--bursting forth
from a lake above--by which the city at one stroke had been overwhelmed.
Some little notice, by the mighty roaring that must have accompanied so
great a crash of rocks and so vast a rush of water, the dwellers in the
city must have had; and the gleam of the pouring waters would have shown
them the nature of the ruin that was upon them. There would have been
time, before the water was waist-deep in the city streets, for them to
make their way to the high mound on which their temple stood; and in the
appalling horror of it all they might have clamored to their priests
that a victim should be sacrificed to stay this terrible outburst of
anger on the part of their gods. But it was more than likely that before
the sacrifice could be completed they all--people, priests, and he who
was to be sacrificed--perished together beneath the flood.
"Why," said Young, "th' Mill River disaster wasn't anything to it, an'
that was pretty bad. I was runnin' th' way-freight on th' Old Colony
road when that happened, an' I took a day off an' went up an' had a look
at it. But this just lays that little horror out cold. It's as big as
lettin' loose on Boston the whole of Massachusetts Bay."
That we should be prisoners in a place where death had wrought so
swiftly such tremendous havoc was quite enough to fill our souls with a
brooding melancholy. But in addition to the sombre thoughts which thus
were forced upon us, bred of sorrow for the thousands who had here
untimely perished, the gloomy dread of a more practical sort assailed us
that we also in a little while would join the silent company of the
thousands who had died here in a long past time. And the death that
seemed to be in store for us was less merciful than that which had come
to them. Theirs had been a short struggle, and then a gentle ending as
the waters closed over them. But our ending was like to be a lingering
one and miserable--by starvation.
With the loss of our mules and horses we had been compelled to leave
behind us the greater portion of our stores; and for our protection
against savages, and in the belief that in the mountains we should meet
with an abundance of game, we had left almost all of our provisions, and
made our lading mainly of ammunition and arms. But in this valley, so
smiling and so beautiful, there was no live thing except ourselves. Not
a beast, not a bird had we seen since we entered it; and in the lake, as
we found presently, there were no fish; the only sign that animal life
ever had existed here was that dried and withered remnant of a woman
that we had found in the deserted house, and the bones which we had seen
gleaming below us in the lake. This was, in truth, as we came thus to
call it, the Valley of Death.
While we worked at building the raft we had not thought to be sparing in
our eating--for building that raft was hungry work--and now that
consideration of the matter was forced upon us, we found that we had
with us food barely sufficient for three days. We could, of course, eat
El Sabio--though such was our feeling towards that excellent animal that
eating him would be almost like eating one of ourselves; and Pablo, we
knew, would regard eating this dear friend of his as neither more nor
less than sheer cannibalism. And even if we did eat El Sabio, the meat
of his little body would but prolong our lives for a week, or possibly
for two weeks more. And what then?
Had there been room in our souls for yet more sorrow, we could have had
it in the thought that in all that we had set out to do we had
completely failed. If this Valley of Death were indeed the place that we
had been seeking, little good came to us from finding it. Of the souls
which Fray Antonio had come forth to save, here there were none. Of
archæological discovery, truly, I had something to make me glad; yet
little compared to what was hidden beneath the waters; and even this
little, since knowledge of what I had found soon must die with me, was
of no avail. As for Rayburn and Young, the treasure which they sought
might or might not be near at hand; but they certainly could no more
come at it than, were it heaped up before them, they could carry it
away. And most of all was my heart troubled by the fate that was like to
overtake Pablo because of his love for me. Bitterly I blamed myself for
permitting the boy to come with me; for I should have foreseen that a
hundred chances might intervene to render impossible my intention to
give him his free choice to go or to stay when the decisive
turning-point in our adventure came. In point of fact, one of these
chances had intervened; and the attack upon us that the Indians had
made, and the closing of the passage in the rock behind us that rendered
return impossible, had forced him to remain with us without voice of his
own in the matter; and now would bring him, as it would bring the rest
of us, to the most horrible death of which a man can die.
Night was falling as we ended our search along the cliffs for a way of
escape, and found none, and so came again in front of the great
idol--where our packs had been left heaped up, and where the Wise One,
happily unmindful of the fate that might soon be in store for him, was
energetically cropping the rich grass. We built a fire, for the air in
that deep valley, mingling with the mists rising from the lake, was damp
and chill; and beside the fire we made our evening meal. There was no
good in talking about what was so apparent to all of us; but Young, who
was our cook, showed his appreciation of the situation practically by
serving only half rations and by making our coffee very thin and poor.
Silently we ate our short allowance of food; and thereafter we smoked
our pipes with but little talk for seasoning, and that little of a
melancholy sort. Of our own plight we did not speak at all, but in what
we said there was constantly a reflection of the bitter sorrow with
which all our hearts were charged. I remember that Young, who truly was
as merry a man naturally as ever I knew, told us that night only of
dreadful railroad accidents--of wrecks in which men lay crushed among
the heaped-up cars, shrieking with the agony of their hurts; and then
shrieking with dread, and with yet greater pain as the fire that seized
upon the ruin around them came nearer and nearer until they fairly were
roasted alive. And Rayburn told of a prospecting party besieged by
Indians upon a mountain peak in Colorado; how, one by one, they slowly
died in a raving horror of thirst until one man alone was left; and how
this one man prolonged his life until rescue came by drinking the blood
of his own body, and yet died in raging madness almost at the moment
that he was saved.
For myself, I had nothing to add to these horrors; yet such was my frame
of mind that I found a certain bitter gladness in listening to the
telling of them, and in tracing between them and our own case the
ghastly parallel. In our talk, which wont on in English, Fray Antonio
took no part; but he could follow well enough the meaning of it in our
tones. On his face was an expression of tender melancholy that seemed to
me to tell of sorrow for us rather than of dread of what might be in
store for himself; and that this truly was his mood was shown when the
others paused, sated and appalled by the horrors which they had conjured
up, and he spoke at last.
It was not a sermon that Fray Antonio gave us; but out of the abundant
store of faith by which he himself was sustained he strove to comfort us
with thoughts of better things than life can give. And with the promise
of hope that he held out to us with the solemn authority that was vested
in him by reason of the service to which he was vowed, he mingled a
certain yearning for us, very moving, that came of the love and the
tender gentleness that were in his own heart. And yet, though he knew
that, excepting Pablo, we all were heretics according to his own creed,
there was no word of doctrine in all of his discourse. Rather was what
he said a simple setting forth of that primitive Christianity which has
its beginning and its ending in a simple faith in an all-pervading,
all-protecting love. And of this love, as it seemed to me, he himself
was the human embodiment. Looking in his gentle face, which yet had such
high courage, such noble resolution in it, I felt that in him the spirit
of the saints and martyrs of long past ages lived again.
With our souls soothed and strengthened by what Fray Antonio had spoken
to us, we lay down at last to sleep; yet was it impossible for us to
drive out from our hearts that natural sadness which men must feel who
know that they have failed in a strong effort to accomplish a project
very dear to them, and who know also that they are standing upon the
very threshold of a most tormenting death.
XIII.
UP THE CHAC-MOOL STAIR.
We awoke the next morning at the very moment that the sun rose above the
mountain peaks to the eastward; and our waking was due in part to the
sunshine striking upon our faces, but more to the prodigious braying,
that echoed thunderously from the cliffs around us, with which El Sabio
welcomed the advent of the god of day.
"It is a good sign, señor," said Pablo, "when El Sabio brays thus nobly
at sunrise. He does not do it often, but when he does I know beyond a
doubt that I am to have a lucky day."
"An' I must say," Young struck in, "that for a man who expects t' have
t' eat his boots in th' course of a day or two I'm feelin' this mornin'
most uncommonly chipper myself. For one thing, I mean t' have another
look around that idol. I'm not at all sure that he's not th' tippin'-up
kind. Maybe we didn't put enough weight on him yesterday; or he may do
his tippin' up from th' other end. Anyhow, I'm goin' t' have another
whack at him as soon as I've eat my breakfast; an' that's a performance
that won't take long t' get through with, considerin' how thunderin'
little there is t' eat."
Truly, the eating of our breakfast did not consume much time; and, so
short did Young make our rations, I am not sure that we were not
hungrier at the end of it than we were at its beginning. When we
finished, the sun was still low in the east; and the bright rays struck
full upon the statue of Chac-Mool, on the great stone altar, and into
the depths of the niche that had been hollowed behind it in the face of
the cliff. We observed that the idol was so placed that the very first
rays of the sun, coming through a cleft between two great peaks to the
eastward, shone brightly upon it, while yet all the rest of the valley
save the cliff above the niche remained in shade.