so he says."
"What mystery, Senor?"
"Why," replied Raoul slowly, looking at her intently; "the mystery of
those three months when he was supposed to have been in a trance."
"What is a trance, Don Raoul?" asked the girl innocently.
Raoul laughed.
"Ah, that would be hard to explain to a queen of the Indians," he said.
"A trance is not exactly a sleep, for a man may talk and travel and
do things, just like other men, when he's in a trance. But when he is
himself again, he remembers nothing of all that happened when he was in
the trance."
"Then you think he was in a trance during those three months when he
disappeared from Bogota?"
"Yes."
"And that he has forgotten all that happened to him in that time?"
"Perhaps."
"Could he ever remember?"
"There is only one way in which he could."
"How is that?"
"If he could return to the same scenes and conditions through which he
passed during those three months."
"But for that you would have to know, of course, what those scenes and
conditions were?"
"Exactly, Senorita."
"Really, it is all very interesting," she said dreamily. "I have heard
something like it in fairy tales, I think; but not in real life. And
now--why do you tell all this to me, Senor?" she asked, as if struck by
a novel idea.
"Ah, Sajipona," he replied with a smile; "I have told you merely in
answer to your own questions. You have shown that--for some reason or
other--you are interested."
"Interested? Why, of course I am interested--if for no other reason,
simply because you are. This David Meudon, you say, left Bogota three
years ago? Strange that he should leave so suddenly--and with his work
in this country unfinished!"
"I can't tell how much you know of David," he said musingly. "But there
is every reason why you, more than anyone else, should be interested in
the man who attempts to solve the secret of Guatavita--Sajipona."
There was no mistaking the emphasis placed on the girl's name; nor was
there any disguising the effect its peculiar pronunciation had upon her.
Sajipona looked at Raoul in alarm, then turned from him in manifest
confusion. Presently, she gave a low laugh and her eyes sought his
again.
"Ah, you Yankees are strange people," she said. "Some say, you are only
money makers. But, it appears, you are more than that; for you listen to
foolish legends, like the rest of us--and you believe them."
"Yes, I believe this one, Sajipona."
"Does the man who so strangely lost his memory by your dynamite
explosion believe this one?" she asked laughing.
"I don't know. Perhaps he never heard it."
"Well, it's very interesting, anyway--I mean, about the trance and the
dynamite. I want to hear the end of it. You will surely come again,
won't you? And tell me when your friend arrives in Bogota," she added,
giving him her hand.
"You are ever the queen; you dismiss me from your presence," he
complained, taking her hand, nevertheless, and kissing it.
"The streets are safe for you now, Senor," she said.
"Thanks to you, La Reina!"
"Ah, I would do much more for you than that, as you know, Don Raoul!"
she exclaimed, an arch smile giving to her beautiful features a rare
flash of piquancy. "And now--Adios, Senor!"
"Surely, not 'Adios,' but--until the next time, Sajipona," he replied,
as he bowed himself from the sala.
Raoul's belief in the legend involved in Sajipona's name marked a
radical change which he had undergone since he arrived in Bogota. To
his keen, logical mind the proposal to enlist in a quest for the long
lost El Dorado seemed, at first, far too quixotic to be taken seriously.
But he humored the idea, originating in David's fondness for studies
touching the borderlands of romance, in the hope that he would divert
a purely fanciful project into more profitable channels. Later on,
however, he was himself caught by the practical possibilities lurking
in the old Chibcha legend. Hence, it followed that while David was
enjoying the picturesque life of the little mountain capital, Raoul was
delving in musty records, running down old traditions, and studying
the topography of the Bogota tableland with a degree of patience
as to details that the subject had rarely received. For days at a
time he burrowed in the crumbling archives of the Museo Nacional, an
unpretentious little edifice, not far from the palace of San Carlos, in
which were stored, pell-mell, practically every evidence that remained
of Colombia's prehistoric civilization. Here, with only the grey,
shrivelled mummies of two ancient kings of the Chibchas to watch him,
he had reconstructed, as best he could, the past of this vanished race
of people, had convinced himself of their wealth, scarcely any of which
had fallen into the hands of the Spanish, and had laid his plans for
discovering a treasure which had balked every explorer before him.
Combined with these studies in the National Museum and in the
vicinity of Lake Guatavita, Raoul had busied himself with the peons
of the neighborhood. From these primitive people he learned enough
to corroborate the main features in the Chibcha tradition as handed
down by Castellanos, Pedro Simon, Piedrahita, and other chroniclers
of the Spanish Conquest. In addition, he unearthed the curious legend
that the Sacred Lake would never yield up its treasure except to one
in whose veins flowed the blood of the Chibcha kings. This bit of
prophetic romance had come, it was said, from father to son through
the four centuries following the martyrdom of the last of the zipas.
He was told, also--and it added to the fantastic character of the
prophecy--that a secret, known only to the zipas and their direct
descendants, attached to Lake Guatavita, and that by means of this
secret the treasure hidden beneath its waters would be discovered.
Raoul at first paid little heed to this part of the legend. It had too
strong a flavor of latter-day romance to go for more than a recent
addition to the main story of the wealth of the Chibcha kings and their
peculiar religious customs. The persistence of the idea, however, the
belief in its truth on the part of those repeating it, gradually excited
his interest and led him into all kinds of theories as to the existence
and recovery of the Guatavita treasure.
That so fanciful a legend could have won even the partial belief of so
ingrained a skeptic as Raoul seems at first absurd on the face of it.
But most of us can recall instances enough of similar lapses from the
hypercritical to the over-superstitious to make this one not altogether
incredible. As often happens, also, in such cases--as with those
otherwise reasonable persons who believe in fortune-telling, omens,
apparitions, etc.,--this bit of superstition, having once lodged itself
in Raoul's mind, increased in importance, opening up an absorbing field
for his love of psychological novelties, until it finally became a
monomania, an obsession, as the scientists call it.
These ancient zipas, he argued, were the chieftains of a superior
race of people. In the annual tribute from the royal treasury to the
national god, who was supposed to live at the bottom of Lake Guatavita,
they catered to the credulity of their subjects while, in reality,
laughing in their sleeves at them, so to speak, all the time. Men of
their intelligence were not apt literally to throw away wealth they had
themselves amassed, and which they must consider as belonging to them
and to their descendants. But as they--apparently--did throw it away,
it was more than likely that they used some kind of hocus-pocus, known
only to themselves, by means of which the God Chibchacum--in whose
existence they did not believe--was cheated of his annual tribute. How
they practiced this deception they must surely have told their children.
The coming of the Spaniards, however, and the overthrow of the ancient
dynasty, had made of the whole affair a greater secret than ever. It
would be handed down from one generation to another so long as there
were descendants of the zipas; but these survivors of the royal line
would find it increasingly difficult, owing to the presence of the
Spaniards, to take the steps needed to recover their ancestral treasure.
There was some plausibility in Raoul's reasoning, enough, perhaps, to
excite the romancer's interest, but scarcely that of the practical
man of affairs to whom are broached the details of a mining venture.
Conviction grew, however, with Raoul, whose investigations were confined
thenceforward less to the archæological aspects of the problem and more
to the task of discovering the whereabouts of the living descendants of
the zipas.
These speculations and the singular inquiry into which they had drawn
his companion excited only a mild interest in David. The latter,
strangely enough, enchanted with the picturesque novelty of the
cloud-city in which he found himself, felt less of the antiquarian's
zeal than when Bogota was a remote geographical possibility. Perhaps
it was the stimulus of mountain air, a bracing climate, that got him
out of his habitual bookishness. Here, at any rate, there was neither
the warmth nor the color of the tropics to entice him to the indolent
dreaming that one of his temperament might easily yield to in the
lowlands of Colombia. The peculiar lustre of the grey-green Bogota
tableland, the cool crystalline atmosphere, invited him to continual
physical exercise. For days at a time he went on long horseback rides.
Then, tiring of this, and feeling something of the restraint experienced
by the stranger who exerts himself abnormally in the rarefied air of
the higher Andes, he fell into the easy habits of the pleasure-loving
Bogotano. Muffled warmly in a ruana, he strolled comfortably about the
streets of the city, amused by the chaffering of peons in the market
place, enchanted by the quaint and varied architecture of the houses
and public buildings, the grotesque paintings and bas-reliefs in the
churches; or else he would sit by the hour in the open window of some
cafe on the Cathedral Esplanade, watching the gay throng of idlers and
politicians for whom this is a favorite rendezvous. The dust and cobwebs
of the Museo did not attract this former dabbler in antiquities, who
abandoned himself eagerly to the fleeting impressions gathered from an
altogether pleasing environment. And Raoul, naturally secretive, gave
him the vaguest outline only of the course and the result of his
studies.
The discovery that made the deepest impression on Raoul took place under
circumstances which intensified his superstitious feeling in regard to
everything connected with the buried treasure. He was on one of numerous
trips to Lake Guatavita. Riding alone, he reached the gloomy body
of water toward nightfall. Tethering his horse near the trail at the
edge of the plain over which he had ridden, he approached the lake on
foot, his mind penetrated by the absolute silence of the place. He had
come for no specific purpose except to examine further the old Spanish
cutting that gashes the great hill which originally rose, a solid wall
of rock, above the unknown depths of the waters. Through this narrow
cleft, on the instant that it was completed three centuries ago, a
mighty torrent had hurled itself into the valley beyond. As this torrent
subsided and the lake shrank to its present compass, a wide margin of
precipitous shore was left bare to the scrutiny of treasure seekers.
Even after the lapse of centuries this portion of the lake's basin
still shows the ravages wrought by the Spaniards. It remains a gaunt,
jagged surface of rock and flinty gravel, unclothed by tree or shrub--an
ancient sanctuary whose violation defies the repairs of time.
Raoul smiled contemptuously at these evidences of the rude labors of the
early Spaniards. With modern science to back him he would not attack the
problem in this way. He would pierce this ancient secret to its heart
by subtlety, not brute force. For the hundredth time he went over the
system of lines and levels by which he and David planned to tunnel their
way to the coveted prize, indicating to himself the various points from
which they proposed to start their work, and noting and comparing the
obstacles they would encounter by each route.
Thus occupied, Raoul slowly circled the lake, following the precarious
path that still remained along the edge of the old high-water mark--the
path upon which had marched the gaily vestured Chibcha devotees in the
pomp of their semi-annual festival, when the dancing waves radiating
from the heavily laden rafts of the Gilded Man and his court, washed
over their sandalled feet, and all was sunshine and joyous laughter,
glitter of gold and emerald offerings ready poised to be hurled, with
shouts of triumph, to the insatiable God in his crystalline caverns
below.
Scenes from the old legend flashed across the prosaic details of Raoul's
mining schemes, as he stood in the shadow of the majestic hill that
lifted its huge shoulders behind him. Not a ripple scarred the surface
of the sombre waters. The ancient God, it would seem, waiting in vain
the tribute that once was his, had grown angry and made of his Sacred
Lake a shrunken circle of dark and sinister meaning.
Into its silent depths, fascinated by the desolation surrounding him,
Raoul gazed intently. He would revive the old ceremony. He would bring
an offering to this hidden God--an offering bearing a menace, a demand
for the treasure that he felt already in his grasp. He seized a stone
from the many that were strewn at his feet. It was smooth, worn by the
streams through which it had chafed its way hither; he paused as he
weighed it thoughtfully in his outstretched hand. Then he threw it high
in air, over the center of the pool. The sound of the falling missile
plunging through the waters echoed sullenly along the towering walls of
granite. The weird effect delighted him, and again and again he cast
stones into the water, dislodging some of the more unwieldy rocks from
their resting-places and watching them bound and ricochet, with a
thunderous noise, down the precipice after the others.
In the midst of this fantastic play he was arrested by the cry of a
human voice. High, clear and sibilant it came; a word of command, as it
seemed, out of the empty space above:
"Silence!"
He thought it might be the rustle of the wind that had just sprung up
and was stirring the gnarled branches of the trees fringing the brow
of the hill upon whose precipitous slope he was standing. Carefully he
scanned the rocky pinnacles rising on either side of him. If it was not
the wind, the invisible being whose voice he had heard might be hidden
in one of the many clefts that furrowed the face of the hill behind him.
Again he heard the command. Silvery, unmistakably human; the peremptory
voice came from some one near at hand, a few hundred yards, it might be,
from where he stood:
"Silence!"
The tall, slim figure of a woman, clad in flowing white robe, with
dazzling arm stretched downward, flashed in sharp outline against the
dark hillside. She stood just above him, on a projecting shelf of rock.
Her eyes, calm and stern, were not turned toward Raoul, but fixed
intently on the lake, as if beholding--or expecting to behold--something
there that was hidden from all others.
Involuntarily Raoul bent his head to this singular apparition, scarcely
knowing whether it was a creature of his imagination, conjured out of
the strange fancies awakened by the lonely scene, or a real woman,
statuesque, beautiful.
Why was she here? Whence had she come? How address her? Vague questions
crowded upon him, giving place finally to the conviction that he was
an intruder and had unwittingly offended one whose rights here were
supreme. And then he yielded to a feeling of shame at being caught in
senseless boy's play.
"Pardon, Senorita," he murmured lamely.
"Ah," she sighed, a trace of irony in her voice; "it is I, a stranger
here, who must ask pardon for daring to interrupt you."
"Again--pardon," he said, moved by the seriousness, the bitterness in
her tone. "Surely, you are not a stranger to Guatavita, to Bogota?" he
added, not concealing his astonishment.
"My home is far from here," she said simply. "Four days ago I left it
for the first time to go to Bogota."
"And you visit the Sacred Lake on your way to the city!"
"My fathers sacrificed here," she said proudly. "I am an Indian, the
daughter of those who once poured their treasure into the lake which you
have defiled with stones."
"Sajipona!" called a harsh guttural voice from the trail that followed
the cutting made by the Spaniards in the mountain's side.
"Si, padre mio," she answered, slowly descending to the path upon which
Raoul was standing.
In the gathering darkness Raoul saw, just emerging from the cleft in
the rocks, the huge figure of a man, dressed, as all travelers are in
the mountains, in wide sombrero, capacious ruana, great hair-covered
leggings reaching to the waist, his spurred heels clattering on the
stones as he walked towards them. Two mules followed closely, the bridle
of the foremost held in his hand; behind these came a burro, loaded with
mountainous baggage which swayed from side to side as the patient little
animal picked his way along the treacherous path.
"Good evening, senor," said the man suavely, as if Raoul were some old
acquaintance whom he expected to meet. "It grows dark quickly. Moreover,
it is far to the city and the beasts are tired. We stop for the night at
La Granja. And you, Senor?"
"My horse is fresh, I will ride to Bogota."
"A stranger?" queried the man.
"An American."
"Ah!" Then, as if to atone for his surprise: "Bueno, in Bogota my house
is yours."
Only the sure-footed mules of the Andes could have threaded this
handsbreadth of a path in safety, and only a horsewoman of the lithe
grace and dexterity of this daughter of the mountains could have swung
herself with such slight assistance into the high, clumsy saddle as did
this girl addressed as Sajipona.
"Watch your burro, Senor," warned Raoul, viewing with some anxiety that
much encumbered animal wavering disconsolately on the brink of the
precipice. "He will slip into the lake."
"Eh, Senor!" grunted the man, vaulting heavily to the back of his mule,
at the same time spurring and then checking him with the reins. "He
knows his business, the canaille! Besides," he added, chuckling to
himself, "we carry no treasure for Guatavita. Since the days of Sajipa,
men pay no tribute here--they look for it instead."
"That is true," murmured Raoul. Then, addressing the departing
travelers: "May you have a pleasant ride, Senorita! And you, Senor; I
may see you in Bogota?"
"In the Calle de Las Flores, Senor," called the other briskly. "Ask for
Rafael Segurra; always--remember!--at your service."
Sajipa--Sajipona! The two names persisted in Raoul's thoughts as he rode
home that evening. Over and over again he passed in review the details
of his strange encounter with this mysterious girl who, in spite of
the exquisite fairness of her complexion, called herself an Indian and
claimed these old worshipers of the Lake God for her ancestors. Who
was she? Could it be that his search for the descendant of that almost
mythical line of monarchs had been so unexpectedly, completely rewarded?
He could hardly wait for the morning to make the inquiries that he
planned.
"Ah, yes," he was assured; "this Rafael Segurra is quite a man in
his way--a 'politico,' strong with the government. He lives far from
here--on a hacienda--no one knows where. And his daughter--he brings
her to Bogota? That is strange! The beautiful Sajipona! Who knows if
she really is Don Rafael's daughter! There is a mystery, a tradition
about her. Yes, some say that she has in her veins the blood of that
poor old zipa that the Spaniards roasted alive because he wouldn't tell
where he had hidden his treasure. Still, how can that be if Don Rafael
is her father? Ah, no one can be sure, Senor--their home is so far away.
But--she is very beautiful. And there are many, many lovers--so they
say."
The information, picked up from various sources, strengthened Raoul's
first impression, and from that time, he became a constant visitor in
the little house on the Calle de Las Flores.
VIII
A RIVER INTERLUDE
On the deck of the wheezy, palpitating river steamer, "Barcelona,"
toiling slowly up the turbid waters of the Magdalena, sat the usual
throng of passengers who are compelled to sacrifice two weeks of their
lives every time they travel from the seacoast to Colombia's mountain
capital. Fortunate such travelers count themselves if their lumbering,
flat-bottomed craft, its huge stern wheel lifted high above the
down-rushing eddies and whirlpools, escapes the treacherous mudbanks
which form and dissolve in this ever-shifting, shallow current, and
which not infrequently elude the vigilance of the navigator.
On this particular voyage, however, it is pleasant to record that the
"Barcelona," in spite of various temptations to the contrary, had
behaved in a most decorous manner, diplomatically avoiding the aforesaid
mudbanks, submerged treetrunks and the like and giving promise of an
early arrival at her destination in the Upper Magdalena.
In any part of the world except Colombia the progress of this steamer up
the river on this occasion would have been followed with the liveliest
interest from one end of the country to the other. News bulletins would
have chronicled every detail of her voyage; there would have been
editorial speculation as to the possible delays she might encounter;
predictions of the outcome of her snail-paced journey and, finally,
statements--bogus or otherwise--would have come every now and then
from the important personage who headed the list of the "Barcelona's"
passengers. For there was an unhappily important personage on board--a
personage who, much to his own amazement, had helped in the making of
history, and who was now on his way to report to the President of the
Republic the details of what he had done.
Some men, according to one familiar with the accidents common to
humanity, have greatness thrust upon them. General Herran was neither
born great, nor had he, of his own free will, achieved greatness. But it
had been thrust upon him. Without thought or act of his own he awoke one
morning to find himself famous. It was an unenviable kind of fame, won
in an opera-bouffe sort of way, and might, in some countries, have cost
the general his head. But in Colombia there was, happily, no danger of
this. Having lost his head once why should he lose it a second time, and
just because he had fallen a victim to the wiles of the Panamanians?
Here is the brief but important chapter of history in which General
Herran played a leading part. In the performance of his duty to quell
any and every uprising which might occur on the Colombian coast he had
gone with his army to the Isthmus, where, he had been told, something
like a revolution was in progress. At Colon he had been courteously met
on shipboard by representatives of this revolution. On their friendly
invitation, and without disembarking his troops, he and his staff of
officers had then been escorted politely across the Isthmus to Panama
where, much to their astonishment, they were promptly lodged in jail--a
climax which any one but this unsuspecting general might have foreseen.
During his absence his troops were sent back by the revolutionists to
Colombia--and thus, without the firing of a shot, the Republic of Panama
achieved its independence.