CHAPTER X.
THE ONE-EYED QUESAL.
THE ONE-EYED QUESAL.
THE ONE-EYED QUESAL.
Seen in the bright light of the early tropic day the plateau upon which theGolden Eaglehad settled was certainly an ideal spot for a boy’s camp. It was in form a rough circle about a quarter of a mile in circumference. To the west the mountain-side shot up in a rugged cliff. To the east a deep canyon cut down to the valley below, clothed heavily with huge Manacca palms, plane and rosewood trees, here and there interspersed by a lordly mahogany grove. Huge ferns as big as rose-bushes in America shot up out of the rich dark soil, and from the tops of many of the trees whose names were unknown to the boys trailed magnificent orchids and lianas and parasitic plants of many varieties.
From below it would have been quite impossible to have sighted the camp and the mountain above was so rugged and precipitous that any attack or observation from that quarter would have been most improbable.As soon as it was light Harry, with the collapsable canvas bucket went to Frank’s spring and got a supply of water. This done he set about getting breakfast. In the meantime Frank had been skirmishing about for fruit, and by the time the fragrant odor of Harry’s steaming coffee-pot had diffused itself about the camp the elder boy returned triumphantly with an armful of bananas and dark-green bread-fruit. Harry selected two of the largest of these last and cutting them open set them on the hot coals to roast.
“Why, where on earth did you learn tropical cookery?” demanded Frank as he watched Harry deftly turning the appetizing looking slices.
“I watched the natives down at La Merced,” replied Harry, “you see I figured that when you are in Rome do as the Romans do, and that as the jungle is good enough to provide us with ready-grown loaves we ought to return the compliment by knowing how to cook them.”
Naturally enough the boys’ conversation fell on the mysterious bell-ringing of the night before.
“I can hardly believe that I didn’t dream it,” remarked Frank.
“But I heard it too,” rejoined Harry, “and there is no question that it was a bell and a good, loud-toned one at that.”
“Well, what a bell-ringer, let alone a bell, can be doing round here is inexplicable,” said Frank. “I took a good look around before breakfast while I was out getting the fruit and I can see no sign of any habitation or settlement that might account for it.”
“You don’t think it possible that it could be a trick to scare us?” asked Harry.
Frank laughed.
“I considered that too,” he replied, “I hardly think that it could be that. Anyhow it will take a good deal more than that to frighten us away. Seriously though I would like to solve the mystery.”
“Maybe the monkeys hold prayer-meetings,” laughed Harry.
“What’s the matter with forming the Chester Exploration Expedition and taking a climb up the mountain after breakfast,” he broke out suddenly.
“You’re on,” rejoined Frank, “I think it will be perfectly safe to leave camp for a while anyhow and we may make some important discoveries.”
Accordingly an hour later the boys were making their first plunge into the practically unknown fastnesses of the Cordilleras of Nicaragua. Each carried a canteen full of water, a supply of roasted bread-fruit and several soup tablets besides matches in waterproof boxes and their revolvers and rifles. Of course a pair of field-glasses, and the axe also formed a part of their traveling equipment.
With all this paraphernalia it was hard work clambering up the rugged mountain-side more particularly as when their course required them to plunge into the jungle, they found their way impeded by huge snake-like creepers that hung from the trees and crawled over the ground in every direction. They had been climbing steadily for about an hour when Harry uttered an exclamation of delightful surprise.
“Look, Frank,” he cried, pointing to a magnificent bird that flashed through the jungle ahead of them. Both boys gazed admiringly at the marvelous splendor of its plumage. It was about the size of an eagle and its back was covered with a shimmering glossymantle, so to speak, of emerald green. Its waistcoat was of a deep rich carmine and its long curved beak a bright yellow.
“Why,” cried Frank as, with a harsh unmusical cry, the bird vanished, “that’s a quesal.”
“A quesal?” demanded Harry much mystified.
“Yes, I was reading about them in that book on Nicaragua I got to read on our voyage down here,” rejoined Frank.
“They were the sacred birds of the ancient Toltecs who decorated their temples and religious houses with pictures of them,” he went on. “To lay hands on them meant death to the sacrilegious person so doing and the priests used to have great colonies of them in the groves round their temples.”
“You are as good as an encyclopedia, Frank,” laughed Harry, “I’d like to get a shot at one of them, Toltecs or no Toltecs. Or better still to have one alive. Just think what they’d say at home if we brought one back in a cage.”
Frank smiled.
“I’m afraid, Harry,” he said, “that even if we did catch one we could do nothing like you propose with it. A peculiarity of the quesal is that it will not live in captivity. Not even an hour it is said. The human touch kills them immediately.”
The boys steadily pushed forward, although as the sun climbed higher the heat of the dense tropical forest that covered the mountain-side at the point they had now reached became most oppressive. Suddenly there was a loud grunting sound from a few feet ahead and a herd of small brown animals dashed away. Not before Harry, however, had got his rifle to his shoulder and brought one of them down with a skilful shot.
“A wild pig,” he announced triumphantly, turning over the animal he had brought down with his foot. Compared to a domestic porker the wild swine didn’t look much bigger than rabbits, but the boys hailed the one Harry had shot as a welcome addition to their larder.
“If we only had some apple sauce,” sighed the epicurean Harry.
“Why don’t you wish for mustard?” laughed Frank.
Harry’s pig weighed about thirty-five pounds, and so he carried it without much effort over his shoulder till they reached a clear space on the mountain-side, where they could cache it and easily find it on their way down.
“Now, if only no ocelots or jaguars come around we’ll have roast pork for supper to-night,” he remarked as he laid down his burden.
“I’ll show you how to fix that,” said Frank. With a few blows of his axe he lopped off some low branches from a near-by tree, and placed them in a circle round the carcass.
“That’s a dodge, Blakely told me about,” he announced when he had finished. “Any animal thief that happens along wouldn’t touch that pig now for the world. They see the branches and figure out that it is some kind of a trap.”
From time to time as the boys mounted higher, they stopped and carefully turned their glasses on the valley below. Somewhere in its apparently uninhabited sweep they knew that Rogero and his army and Estrada’s troops were maneuvering, but nothing that they could see gave them any inkling as to the exact whereabouts of the troops.
“We shall have to make a scouting trip in theGolden Eagle,” said Frank with determination, as after they had scoured the valley for the twentieth time, they admitted that it was hardly worth the trouble.
“Yes,” agreed Harry eagerly, “and the sooner the better.”
They stopped for lunch shortly after noon, without having made any progress in discovering anything about the mysterious bell or who its ringer could have been. Although Frank’s pedometer showed that they had covered several miles, they had not even come across the semblance of a footpath or any other indication that they were not the first human beings to explore the mountain-side. Lunch despatched they agreed to proceed as far as a battlemented cliff that shot sheer up ahead of them for two hundred feet or more, cutting off any view of the mountain-top, and then turn back. If they had found nothing by that time to throw any light on the bell-ringer or the instrument on which he performed, they decided that it would be waste of time to keep on.
At the foot of the cliff its beetling height was even more impressive than when seen at a distance. It shot up, naked of tree or bush, like a huge wall. There was not foothold for even a mountain goat on its smooth gleaming surface.
“Well,” said Frank, as the boys gazed up to where its summit seemed to touch the blue sky, “here is where we stop short. Not even a fly could get up that.”
As he spoke, Harry who had been poking at the smooth surface of the obstruction with the axe, gave a sharp exclamation.
“Did you say that the quesal was the sacred bird of the Toltecs?” he demanded in a tone of suppressed excitement.
“Yes,” replied Frank. “Why?”
“Why?” repeated Harry, “just look up there and tell me what you make of that?”
He pointed to some half-obliterated markings on the surface of the cliff about thirty feet above where the boys stood. There was no doubt about it—the markings, though dimmed by time and in places almost obliterated altogether, unquestionably formed a rude exaggerated outline of the bird they had seen that morning.
“Well, what do you think of it, Frank?” demanded Harry impatiently, after his elder brother had gazed at the spot for some time.
“Simply this,” replied Frank calmly, though his heart beat faster, “that we are very near some sort of Toltec temple, or ruin or even the lost mines themselves!”