“Those people knew the secret of preserving wood by boiling it in certain kinds of oil. They knew a great deal more that might well have been kept by the white man. But the type of Spaniard who came to these shores, as well as the wild barbarians who came before them, were all for gold.”
As he stood there beside this strange underground sea, with this relic of another age so close beside him, Pant found himself lost in revery. He was trying to reproduce through his mind’s eye the scenes that these silent waters might once have witnessed.
“What a unique picnic ground,” he said to Kirk. “One sees it still. Gleaming torches, moving like giant firebugs across the water; dark canoes gliding here and there; the joyous shouts of children that came echoing back.”
“Hello-o!” he shouted suddenly. Back across the water it came to him again and again. “Hello-o—H-e-l-l-o-o-o.”
“Perhaps there are fish,” he went on. “May be very large fish. Blind, because there is no need of eyes, but fine fish all the same. Can you see them, the little Indian boys fishing from their canoes? Can you catch the gleam of their campfires as they roasted their fish over the coals?”
He kicked the beach under his feet and sure enough, from beneath the dust of centuries he uncovered the ashes of a long burned out fire.
“You see,” he smiled, “I am a conjurer. I can read both the past and the future.”
“Then,” said the other boy with a little shudder and a doubtful smile, “tell us what happens next.”
“Next?” said Pant. “Why next we find a small room equipped with a table and some chairs. I have some work to do in such a place, in fact that’s what I came for. I needed a dark room. But this,” he spread his arm wide, “this is not a room; it is a whole hidden world.”
Turning without another word, the other boy beckoned to the great Carib, who had regained his composure, and together they skirted the shore of the lake to penetrate deeper into the hidden mysteries of the mountain.
Again the chamber narrowed. Again they were obliged to take to the bed of the stream.
This time, to Pant’s great joy, they emerged into a small room walled and pillared in spotless white.
“The very place!” he exclaimed. “To be sure, there are no real chairs or table, but that heap of fallen stalactites will take their place, and there is water in abundance. Have a seat. I will be through before you know it.”
Unwrapping his pack, he drew forth the fibre trays. These he filled with water. Having placed them upon a circular fragment of stalactite that offered a level surface like the top of a round table, he shook a powder into one, a second powder into another, and left the other crystal clear and pure.
After stirring the powder for a time, he drew forth a red cloth and wound it twice round the Carib’s lantern.
The effect was startling. At once the glistening white stalactites and stalagmites were turned blood red. The Carib struggled hard against the wild fears and superstitions within him, conquered in the end, to sit impassive, watching.
Opening his black box, Pant removed a square of film. Having dropped this into the first tray, he began rocking it slowly back and forth.
“A picture!” exclaimed Kirk. “Do you mean to tell me you have come all this way to develop a picture?”
“There was no other dark room. And besides,” said Pant, “this picture is important, the most important bit of work I have done in a long time. Upon its success hangs my good old grandfather’s entire fortune.
“You see,” he went on, as he continued to rock the tray, “through influential friends my grandfather secured a valuable concession, the right to gather chicle on a large tract of government land. This tract is bordered on one side by the holdings of the Central Chicle Company, a powerful and jealous corporation. This company is honest, but perhaps they are unscrupulous in their competition. Who can tell? Perhaps they would drive my grandfather to the wall if they could.”
Had not the red light hid it, he might have seen a crimson flush suffuse the other boy’s face as he spoke these words. It was lost upon him.
“Our tract,” he went on, “is bordered on the other side by land owned by an unscrupulous Spaniard.
“We received a map from England showing the boundaries of our holdings. It had not been in the office a week when it was stolen. Without it our hands were tied. If we attempted to work our concession without knowing the true unfenced boundaries we were sure to infringe upon the rights of our neighbors. If we did not they would claim we had, and would ruin us with claims for indemnities.
“If we did not have the map back within a very short time—” he paused to hold the square of film to the light. A little cry of joy escaped his lips. “It’s coming! I’ve got them! See those dark spots, three of them?”
The other boy nodded.
“Three men,” he said impressively.
He dropped the film into the developing bath to resume his story. “I told grandfather to wait, I would get the map. I went straight back into the bush where the crafty Spaniard has his camp. It was dangerous, but I know the bush. I was careful. I took my camera and a flashlight outfit with me. Fortune was with me. I came upon the Spaniard and two of his men examining the map at night. They were inside a bamboo cabin. I put my camera to a crack, opened the shutter, touched off a flash, and at once was away. That is how I came to the home of your Spanish friends. That is why I am here. And there,” he said, holding the film by its corners, “is the picture. And it is far better than I hoped for.”
The film was indeed a strong and clear one. The crafty faces of the Spaniards and the square map stood out in bold relief.
“Just a touch more,” he sighed as he dipped it carefully in the solution.
“You see,” he added in conclusion, “all we need to do is to get an enlargement made. That will give us a perfect map showing all the boundaries. What’s more, it gives us proof that they stole the map.”
“I am glad,” said Kirk, “that it was not the big American Company who stole it.”
“Oh, they wouldn’t do that,” said Pant quickly. “But why are you glad?”
The other boy did not reply. A moment of silence followed. Pant dropped his film into the washing tray, then began rocking it again.
Moments passed. Only the drip-drip of water in some distant corner of the cave and the all but inaudible rush of the stream disturbed the silence of the place.
“There!” Pant breathed at last as he dropped the film into the fixing bath. “We can have more light now. How would you like to take your man here and go into the chamber just beyond while I finish this job? No harm can come of it, and you might discover something of real interest.”
For a moment the younger boy hesitated. Then, as if struck by a sudden thought, he said, “Yes. Why not?”
A moment later Pant saw the shadows of his two companions in adventure moving jerkily along the gleaming walls.
“Like ghosts,” he thought. Something like a tremor ran down his spine.
He turned to attend to his film. When he looked again they were gone. Instantly he regretted his suggestion.
“Spooky business, being here alone in this cave,” he thought. “Dark and damp—sort of like a tomb. Who knows how many human beings have perished here? This cave is their tombstone and their vault. How still it is!” Listening, he thought he heard his own heart beat. “What would I do if they failed to return? Go in search of them, I suppose. And then?”
He did not like to think of exploring the place alone. All well enough with others, but alone? Well, anyway, one likes company in such a place.
The fixing bath was done with. For the final washing he chose a still pool at the side of the stream. As he dropped in the film, a tiny fish, startled from its place of hiding, suddenly leaped clear of the water. The effect on the boy was startling. He jumped backward, and nearly fell into the stream.
“Bah!” he exclaimed, quite put out at himself. “How absurd! Nerves. Have to find something to do.”
Having completed the washing of the film, he fitted it into a protecting frame, then closed two trays over it and bound the whole tight. He finished by repacking the kit.
This done, he allowed his eyes to wander here and there about the place. “Have a look,” he told himself. Instantly some object in a distant corner, quite well up on a broken ledge, caught his attention.
“Strange!” he murmured. “Doesn’t look quite natural. Unusual color. Have a look.” He started toward the corner, then paused. A curious tremor shot through him. It was as if he had been on board a ship that had rolled ever so lightly in a trough of the sea.
“Nonsense!” he muttered. “Nerves.” He again moved toward the corner.
At that very moment, as often happens when one stands facing some strange and mysterious phenomenon, Pant thought of one who was far away, his good pal Johnny Thompson.
He thought, too, of the strange message of figures and signs he had left in the office at Stann Creek. He wondered if Johnny had found it yet. If so, had he read it? Premonitions of some happening tremendous and terrifying were passing through his mind. If disaster overtook him here, would Johnny decipher the note? Would he come in search of him? Would he ultimately find him? So his thoughts whirled on.
It may seem a trifle strange that anything could have separated these good pals, Johnny and Pant. Fact is, only Pant’s discovery of a genuine blood relative, his grandfather, could have brought about such separation. Pant of course had become deeply engrossed in the work of building up the fortune of his white-haired grandsire. In this task Johnny had shown a lively interest until the concession with the priceless map enclosed had arrived. From that time on, it had seemed, nothing remained to be done save to round up a band of chicleros and get back into the bush. There a camp would be built and long weeks spent in gathering and boiling down the sap of the “chewing gum” trees. For this task Johnny had no taste. He must have adventure.
So on that bright tropical morning, little dreaming that the safe would be robbed that night and that adventure would be provided for all, he had cut himself a stout stick for dealing with snakes, had strapped a machete to his belt and had fared forth alone in search of adventure.
Had Johnny lived in Honduras twenty-five years, or even ten, he would have waited for the train. It wouldn’t go up for two days. But always, to the Central American, there is plenty of time.
But Johnny was new to the Tropics. He was in the habit of taking the best transportation he could get. The best this time was a pair of short sturdy legs which belonged to Johnny Thompson.
The road leads through a jungle. Here and there is a small group of struggling, insignificant banana plantations, but the jungle has so far succeeded in taking them back to itself that they, too, seem wild.
There is a certain joy to be had from a journey on foot through a tropical jungle. There is a glimmer of green, a fresh damp odor of decay, faint and pleasing as musk, and there always comes from the bushes and trees a suggestion of low, joyous music, made, perhaps by bees and birds, but nevertheless it is there, an indescribable music. Johnny had enjoyed all this until he had begun to feel the need of food and refreshment. Most of all, he wanted a drink. Any old drink would do. But there was no drink. The dry season was nearing its close. Everywhere the floor of the jungle was dry as the Sahara.
Had Johnny lived long in the jungle he would have stepped aside to break the stem of a certain plant, then to catch in the hollow of his hand the delicious water that came dripping out almost in a stream.
He hadn’t lived long in a jungle, so all he could do was to plod on.
When his desire for water had become intense longing, when his tongue seemed to fill his mouth and his throat clicked when he swallowed, he had found himself by a sudden turn to the right brought suddenly into the midst of an orchard of fruit trees.
“Forbidden fruit” is the name the natives have given these great golden balls. Johnny didn’t call them that. He had called them grapefruit. He hadn’t eaten grapefruit many times because he had found them bitter.
“Bitter!” he had said, making a wry face. “Bitter, and me dying of thirst!” At a distance they had looked like oranges.
“Oh well—” He had resigned himself to his fate. “Here goes!”
He had left the railway bed, then dropping on the moss beneath a heavily laden tree, had seized upon a great golden ball and had begun tearing away its covering.
Having quartered the fruit, he had made up a wry face and thrust a generous wedge into his mouth.
Instantly the wry face had vanished. A glorious smile took its place.
“Not bad,” he said, filling his mouth again. “Not half bad. Just need to get ripe, I suppose. Sugar would be an insult to such fruit as this. People in the States don’t know what it is.”
He had spoken to himself, but some one else had heard, for from somewhere above him there had come in a melodious voice:
“So you like forbidden fruit?”
“I—I beg your pardon!” Johnny was on his feet at once. “I—I didn’t mean to steal. See here, I’ll buy a quarter’s worth.”
He had looked up at the girl whose golden hair, golden freckles and dark green dress so completely blended with fruit and foliage that, until now, he had not seen her.
“Have you a donkey?” There was a suggestion of a laugh in the girl’s tone. “I don’t see any.”
“Why must I have a donkey?” Johnny looked his surprise.
“Because we sell them by the barrel. Fifty cents a barrel. Of course, for a quarter you’d only get a half a barrel. But even so, how are you going to carry them?” Shaking out her dress and laughing the girl had dropped to the ground.
Out of his little adventure in the grapefruit orchard had grown a new enterprise. Johnny suddenly decided to become a shipping agent. Madge Kennedy, who had turned out to be a Scotch girl, had insisted upon his accompanying her to the house to meet her grandfather, Donald Kennedy. The grandfather, a great gray-bearded man with a store of knowledge that could come only from long study and many years in the jungle, had proven a find indeed. Johnny did not soon tire of sitting on the broad veranda of the long one-story house, listening to the old man as he rambled on about bananas and grapefruit, strange tropical foods, Carib Indians, and the future of their little Central American Colony.
It had not taken Johnny long to discover, however, that these kindly people were really almost paupers in the midst of their abundance. Many carloads of the finest fruit in the world hung ripe on the trees. Why was it not being shipped?
When he had pressed them for an answer to this puzzling question, Madge Kennedy had told him that the fruit company had refused to accept their fruit. The reason, she supposed, was that her grandfather had two years before sold his crop to the owner of a tramp steamer. The great East Sea Fruit Company, which had a monopoly on the fruit trade of Central America, did not wish competition, and they took this method of punishing her grandfather.
“But say!” Johnny leaped to his feet. “I’ll find you a ship. There’s one anchored off Belize now. Jorgensen is the captain. He’s anxious enough for a cargo. Came all this way for a cargo of mahogany. The half-caste Indian woodcutters are on a strike. There is no mahogany to haul.”
“Oh!” Madge beamed upon him in sudden excitement.
“But then,” her smile vanished, “I know the ship. It’s no use. We have only a third of a cargo for her.”
“Finish up with bananas,” Johnny suggested.
“Whose bananas? Every grower has a contract to sell only to the Fruit Company.”
For a little time Johnny felt himself baffled, defeated. Then of a sudden an inspiration came. Many times he had watched the loading of bananas off the dock at Stann Creek.
“Six hands!” he exclaimed excitedly. “That’s it! Six hands! We’ll have a cargo yet!”
That very night, after telling Madge of his grand plan, he started for Guatemala City to see the man who owned the largest banana plantation in Central America.
For some little time fortune smiled upon him in his new enterprise. Arriving at Stann Creek in the dead of night he found a sailing boat preparing to leave for Porte Barrios. At this port he caught a train for Guatemala. High noon found him walking the streets of that ancient and most beautiful city of Central America.
The city’s beauty was lost upon him. His thoughts were centered about one man, Don del Valle, the richest banana grower in all that land. He at once went about the task of finding the man and securing an interview. Having discovered the dapper, black-eyed Guatemalan sitting in his garden sipping wine, he wasted no time on ceremony but, boy-like, launched at once into his project.
The astonished del Valle, who understood only a part of what was said and who was accustomed to inflict long periods of waiting and numerous delays, stared at him in astonishment for a time. Then he demanded:
“What is it that this mad boy wants?”
“Bananas! I want bananas!” Johnny exclaimed.
“Well then, go and buy them, as many as you like.” del Valle threw a handful of coppers at his feet.
“But I want many. Two-thirds of a ship load, twenty thousand bunches.” Johnny’s face took on an air of unusual seriousness.
“But I have no bananas to sell. They are contracted for, as you should know, by your great American company.”
“But not the six hands.” Johnny exclaimed eagerly. “I only ask for six hands.”
“Six hands!” the Guatemalan exclaimed in a fit of passion. “Six hands! Here, take this crazy youth to jail. I will prefer a charge of annoying a gentleman.”
The two native policemen, who were in reality the official guard of the great gentleman, sprang into action. Ten minutes later Johnny found himself inside looking out, and the window he looked through was heavily barred. So it was that Johnny Thompson came to be in jail.
It was at an early hour of that same night that Johnny, having wakened from some vaguely remembered dream, found himself rudely shaken by a strange convulsion beneath and about him.
“Ship’s pitching something terrible,” he told himself. “Must be a hurricane.”
“Ship?” something within him seemed to whisper. “Ship? When did you embark upon a ship?”
Vaguely he groped about in his brain for facts. The sensations that come to one just before he falls asleep are, more often than not, awaiting him when he awakes. Johnny’s had remained with him. They were earth sensations, solid earth, a place close and stuffy, and stone, solid stone, not shifting sea.
But there was now a strange rocking and shuddering, no mistake about that. There it was again! Zowie! What a lurch!
“Like a ship at sea in a storm,” he told himself. “No, not quite. More like a ship stuck fast on a coral reef, being beaten to pieces by the waves.”
The thought was startling. Again he attempted to sit up. This time he succeeded.
Light streamed down upon him, moonlight broken into little squares.
“Bars,” he thought. “Prison bars!”
Yes, now he remembered. This bed, not a bed at all, merely a broad ledge of stone left by the prison masons in lieu of a bed. Strange sort, these Central American prisons!
Then, as if to refute all this, there came again that horrible rocking shudder.
Struggling to grasp reality, Johnny’s eyes, roving the dark spaces about him, arrived at the crisscross iron bars of the window. To his vast astonishment he saw those iron bars, in a solid mass, literally torn from the masonry.
“I don’t know where I am,” he told himself, “but I won’t be there very long.”
With one thought uppermost in his mind, that of escape, he leaped for the window, gripped the sill, drew himself up, balanced for a second there in the moonlight, then dropped.
He landed rather solidly, not upon the tossing sea, but upon tossing dry land.
A moving figure loomed before him.
“A guard!” His quickened senses registered the thought.
“Strike first, and talk afterwards.” His head buried itself into the soft center of the moving object. With a grunt the man went down.
He wished the earth would stand still. It made him seasick, that rocking motion. They hadn’t had a reason for putting him in prison—not any real reason. He had done nothing except insist upon buying twenty thousand bunches of bananas. He had tried to do a great service to a splendid old man and a beautiful girl. He had reason enough for wanting to be out of prison, plenty of reasons. There was the girl, Madge Kennedy, back there in the orchard of forbidden fruit, and her grandfather, the aged Britisher who was so much of a man and so little of a business man that his orchards and banana plantations would never make him a cent unless some one took a hand. And there was old Jorgensen, good old salt water skipper, walking his deck night and day and staring gloomily at the Caribbean Sea.
The earth stopped rocking for an instant. An open court lay before him. He was beginning to realize that he was having a new experience. One of those frequent Central American earthquakes had broken loose. That was why a stone prison had seemed so like a ship on a tossing sea.
“Open places are best,” he told himself.
He had taken a dozen steps when there came a shock which sent him down like a ten-pin. At the same instant he touched an object lying near him.
He found it soft and yielding. It was a weeping child, a beautiful, black-haired, black-eyed girl of seven.
“There now,” he said, sitting up and talking quietly to her. “The storm will pass in a short while. We’re not shipping any water. She’s a staunch old barge. We’ll weather this little blow and never lose a mast or a yardarm.”
Since the girl was unquestionably Spanish, it seems probable that she understood not one word that he said. She did understand the steady comforting tone and the kindly touch of his hand. She stopped crying, cuddled down in his arms and, since it was now well into night, she fell asleep.
As Johnny sat there, a motley throng gathered about him. Like him, they came to this open spot for safety. Some, like himself, were fully dressed. Some were in pajamas. The mild moonlight was kind to these last. Some carried things in their hands, things they had salvaged from the doom of their homes. A parrot in a cage, an iron strong box, an alarm clock, a broom; these and many more things, somber, precious, ludicrous, had been brought into the open plaza.
Johnny’s mind began to travel back, to gather up the slender thread of circumstances that had brought him there. He traced it thread by thread. “To-morrow,” he told himself, “will bring something quite new.”
After leaving Pant to complete his photographic work, Kirk and his giant servant had passed from the small chamber to one very much larger. He had taken one of Pant’s flashlights. As he sent its gleam down the chamber he found it impossible to see the distant wall. The ceiling was low, so low that he was obliged to stoop at times to clear it. The stalactites and stalagmites were found in such numbers that they formed a veritable labyrinth.
“Mustn’t go far,” he told himself. “Might be difficult to find our way back.”
At that moment, as his flashlight painted a white avenue between two rows of natural pillars, he caught a strange yellow gleam a short way before him on the floor.
A few steps and he was at the spot. His hand was on the thing, an ornament of gold of elaborate design, when his foot struck something that crushed in like an ancient gourd.
One horrified glance, and he sprang back.
“A skull. A human skull!” he breathed.
One instant of horror, then he knew where they were, or at least thought he knew. They had found the final resting place of a race that had vanished from the earth.
A moment’s poking about in the dust convinced him that this was true. Human bones mingled with gold and silver ornaments, pots of bronze, strings of jade beads, and who knows what other priceless treasures from the past, formed a setting for a bit of drama at once shocking and intriguing.
Scarcely knowing what he was about, like some child in Fairyland, he began gathering up handfuls of the most attractive trinkets and thrusting them into the deep pockets of his knickers.
It was while he was engaged in this strange occupation that he felt the same curious sensation that had come to Pant.
“It—why, it’s like—” His heart raced wildly. “It’s as if the world had tipped a little!”
Instantly he heard the loud chatter of the giant’s teeth. In the midst of the chatter he caught the sound of an attempted chant, the Carib chant which they, in their darkness of mind, believe will drive away evil spirits.
The boy gathered no other trinkets. A moment passed, another and another. Every tick of his wrist watch sounded out in the dead silence of the place like the tolling of a funeral bell.
Then, of a sudden, pandemonium broke loose. The earth rocked. Huge stalactites came crashing down, to roll about the floor like barrels on the deck of a tossing ship. A grinning skull rolled at his feet. With his head in a whirl, Kirk knew not whether to stand or to flee.
“The earth god of the Mayas!” a terrible voice sounded in his ear. It was the Carib’s voice. The next moment a powerful arm encircled him and he was whirled through the dark.
His senses reeled. Only dimly could he realize what was passing. There was an earthquake. He was sure of that. They were common enough in Central America. They had been caught in a cave while an earthquake was in progress. What could be more terrible? The big black man, ever faithful to his trust, was attempting to carry him out.
* * * * * * * *
Pant, who had mistaken the first strange tilting of that portion of the earth’s surface on which he stood as no movement at all but a break of the imagination based on unstrung nerves, had moved with a rare showing of determination toward the curious object which lay on the rocky shelf. He had made it out as a small chest some two feet long and a foot deep. He had discovered that the top was thickly encrusted with dust, but the sides had the appearance of some beaten metal, stained and corroded by age. This much he had learned when the sudden shock of the earthquake came.
If the first movement had seemed like the sudden lifting of a ship by a heavy sea, the second was like the shudder and crash of a great ocean liner as she is thrown upon the rocks in a mighty storm.
The first shock left him well nigh senseless. The second brought reason back upon its throne. He thought at once of his young companion. He had brought him to this place and somehow he must see that he escaped from this awful thing that was going on.
Seizing his flashlight, he started forward. At once he thought of his water-proof package and of the precious negative it contained.
“I owe much to my grandfather. Can’t lose that,” he thought.
Groping his way back, he secured the package. Then, turning his face resolutely toward the spot where the other boy and his black servant had vanished, he pushed forward. He had gone a dozen paces, had barely escaped being crushed by a ponderous pillar of white crystal, when a sudden quake brought him to his knees.
Instantly he was up and fighting his way forward. And now his eyes fell upon the opening through which his companions had gone.
What was his horror when at that moment there came a crashing and grinding sound, dust filled the air until he could scarcely see; yet through it all one fact stood out clear and undisputable. The opening through which the others had gone was closed.
Next moment some object hurtling at him from the right, striking him squarely, sent him crashing to earth. There, bruised, half senseless, he all but gave himself over to despair.
Through the moment of hopelessness which overcame the boy shot one ray of light. This light, shining brighter and brighter, brought him courage to battle on. That light was the sudden realization that God, the one true God, the good, patient, just God, was still in his universe and that He still noted the sparrow’s fall.
The instant this fact was established, the boy’s mind grew calm. One calm thought led to another. What had struck him? Not a rock. That would have crushed him. What, then? What but a human being.
“The giant black!” he thought.
At that moment he caught a wavering gleam of light. It was in the direction of the cave’s entrance.
“The black,” he said again. “They escaped. Thank—thank God!”
Instantly he was away, following the light.
For a moment the rude shocks of the earthquake were over. Aside from the debris that had been scattered about, his progress was unimpeded, yet he made no gain on the feeble light that wavered on before him.
“Didn’t suppose that boy could travel so fast,” he told himself.
Instantly a thought set him shuddering. Had the black servant, overcome by a terrible fear of a heathen god, forsaken his young charge? How was he to know? For a second he hesitated, then redoubled his pace.
“Overtake him and force him to go back,” he told himself. “If—”
He hoped his fears were unfounded.
He came to the entrance of the great underground lake chamber, had passed it in safety and was skirting the shore of the lake, which was recovering from a great agitation, when the earth shudder began again.
Battling against the dizziness that seemed about to overcome him, stumbling, all but falling, he had fought his way forward until at last the great bulk of the black man stood out before him. Then, as the very universe appeared to reel, a great tidal wave from the lake came sweeping over him.
Strangely enough, at that moment there came into his mind a picture of his grandfather’s face. He thought of the water-proof package and the precious negative, and gripped them tight.
The tidal wave receded. It did not return. He found himself once more on solid ground and close by, not twenty yards away, was the black and his young master. This last onslaught had been too much for the giant native. His knees had given way beneath him and he had slumped to earth, murmuring incoherent things about the earth god of the Mayas.
As for Pant and Kirk, they knew no fear of Maya gods. They waited, and as they stood there they felt the rude shocks no more. The surface of the lake was again as placid as a pond beneath a silvery moon.
They made their way forward in silence until, with a little thrill of joy, the younger boy gripped his companion’s arm as he cried:
“See! The light! The light of the moon!” It was true. They had reached the entrance. A moment more and they were sitting in the shadows beneath the palms.
“See!” said Kirk at last, drawing from his pocket an object that gleamed in the sunlight. “A message from out the past.”
It was indeed an interesting collection he had gathered quite at random. A bracelet of gold set with jade, a small bronze god, grinning and terrible, a miniature silver goblet, and some other bits of jewelry of such odd design that one was not able to so much as guess their purpose.
“Sometime,” said Kirk, “we will go back for more.”
“I doubt if you will ever enter that chamber again,” said Pant. “I believe the earthquake closed the entrance to that particular chamber. But we will go back.
“Oh yes, we will go back,” he repeated a moment later. He was thinking of the strange chest that was all but within his grasp when the earth shudder came.
“But now,” said Kirk, “we must go down. Morning will soon be here. And think what the earthquake must have done to the old Don’s castle! Come!” he cried, shuddering with a terrible apprehension. “Our good friends may be buried beneath the ruins of their home—they may be dead!”
Closely followed by Pant and the great Carib, he sprang away down the ancient trail.
Just as the first faint glow of dawn lighted the shattered walls and yawning windows of the ancient Guatemalan jail from which Johnny Thompson had been so strangely released, the Spanish child in his arms stirred, then sat up to stare about her. At that moment a tall, dark Honduran came walking rapidly across the plaza.
“Don del Valle!” Johnny started. This was the man who owned a fifth of all the banana land in Central America, the man who had ordered him thrown into jail.
“What next?” he thought.
Not knowing whether to break and run, or stand his ground, he hesitated until the man was upon him.
“Hah!” the man exclaimed. “At last!”
Johnny was on his feet in an instant, prepared for flight. “He’s been looking for me,” his thoughts raced on. “Now he’s found me, he’ll find me another jail. He’ll put me in. If he can catch me. He can’t.” Yet for the moment he stood still. Why? Probably he did not know why, but it was well that he did not run.
“Where did you find the child?” This was the question the dark-skinned del Valle shot at Johnny. At the same instant the child Johnny had protected during the terrifying earthquake sprang into the Honduran’s arms. The man’s tone was not harsh as it had been the night before.
“Why I—” Johnny tried to think. “I really didn’t find her. She found—that is, we fell over each other, so we decided to camp here until the earth began standing still.”
“But you, my young friend? You are in jail. Is it not so?”
“I was in jail.” Johnny felt a creepy sensation running up his back. That had been a terribly uncomfortable jail. “The—the jail wasn’t safe,”—his face twisted into a quizzical smile—“so I came over here to the plaza.”
As he spoke the child was pouring words, soft melodious Spanish words into Don del Valle’s ears.
“I am sorry,” said the Honduran. “I was hasty. You should not have gone to jail. My child here, who was lost from us in the catastrophe, tells me you were her protector. You have returned me good for evil. Pardon. You wished to ask me something? Bananas, was it not? You should know that I have no bananas to sell, that they are all contracted for by your American fruit company.”
Johnny’s heart leaped. Luck was coming his way. Providence had sent him an earthquake to cast down his prison bars and a child to plead his cause. Before his mind’s eye came the faces of good old Kennedy, of Madge Kennedy and of Captain Jorgensen. He might be able to help them yet. At any rate he was not to go back to jail.
“But you don’t understand,” he found himself saying to the rich Spaniard. “It is only the six hands I ask. They are not contracted for. Two-thirds of a ship load is all I need.”
“Ah! Six hands you say.” Don del Valle stroked his beard. “It might be arranged.”
“But you are hungry!” he exclaimed. “The walls of my house are cracked, but it has not fallen. The great shudder is over, please God. My servants have cleared away the rubbish and put things to right. We will have coffee and hot corn cakes in the garden. After that we will talk of these six hands. Come!”
He led the way through streets strewn with debris. The child, flitting back and forth like a sunbeam, placed a confiding hand first in Johnny’s, then in her father’s brown palm.
In spite of the havoc wrought by the earthquake, Don del Valle’s garden was still very beautiful. The broken fragments of a great flower-filled urn had been cleared away. Two fallen trees still lay prone amid a blazing bed of flowering plants. In the background, in the midst of a luxuriant growth of strange tropical and semi-tropical plants, a path led to inviting realms beyond.
On a broad piazza they sat in rosewood chairs around tables of solid mahogany, munching hot corn cakes and sipping coffee. There was Don del Valle and his wife, a very beautiful Spanish lady. Besides Johnny and the little girl, there were no others.
“She is their only child,” thought Johnny as he noted how tenderly they cared for the dark-eyed girl. “What a privilege to show her a kindness.”
The talk ran on about matters quite foreign to business. They speculated regarding the extent of damage done by the earthquake and the area shaken by it.
“And have you many earthquakes in the United States?” asked the lady.
“I have never experienced one before,” Johnny replied. “Our land is very broad and flat. It has little backbone. Mountains are the backbone of the land. At times the backbone appears to shake up a bit.”
“Ah yes!” said the Don. “It is quite true. Our land is very much backbone, almost nothing else.”
Johnny was interested in everything that these people had to say, but was very anxious to get down to business. He had come to purchase bananas, twenty thousand bunches at least. There was need of haste. Skipper Jorgensen’s ship, theNorth Star, was lying before Belize in British Honduras without a cargo—at least it had been lying there three days before. There was no telling at what moment some one might offer him a cargo of cocoanuts, chicle, mahogany or a combination cargo of all. Then Johnny’s chance of helping Kennedy and his granddaughter by getting off their year’s crop of grapefruit would be gone.
“And that,” he told himself, “would be a great tragedy.”