Jean had kept up the call for three minutes when, after holding up a hand for silence, the Indian girl lifted the stout stick as if it were a fairy’s wand and pressed it against the top of the stone door.
Amazed, stupified, the brother and sister stared in silence as the great rock began to fall back.
Back, back, back it moved until it lay flat upon the floor. At that dramatic moment, smiling like a fairy prince released from an enchanted prison, Johnny stepped over the threshold, free.
Could Johnny be pardoned if he embraced his fair deliverers? Well, he must be, for that is exactly what he did, both of them, and the action seemed to him a part of a beautiful ending to a horrible dream.
As they turned once more toward the rock that was a door, they saw it was again rising slowly, and with a silence that suggested great power.
“Come on,” said Johnny with a shudder. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Yes. We must,” said Jean, leading the way.
As she glanced back from time to time, Jean saw that Johnny walked as one who is lame, or who carries a heavy burden on his hip. Being a person of unusual judgment, she asked no questions. As they left the outer opening and made their way through the bush to the outer air, Johnny was rather longer than the others in emerging. When he did appear he had lost his limp. Again Jean read the signs, but asked no questions.
The night following the capture of Daego’s pit-pans, Johnny’s ghost behaved very strangely. On this night, as on many other nights, Pant crossed the river to discover, if possible, some further details regarding Daego’s plans and to ascertain more accurately the strength of his forces. Their quota of logs would soon be filled. They must then make up their raft within the boom. This must be towed down the river. Would Daego, with his depleted forces, dare attempt to take over the camp before that time came? Once the logs were afloat, would he manage in some way to break the boom? These were vital questions.
On this particular night Pant did not join Daego’s men. Instead, he hid in a low clump of palms; close enough to catch the conversation of one small group.
“Reckon ole ghost walks agin to-night?” said one.
“Yea, bo! He’ll walk.”
“’Tain’t’ no harm come to us, not yet.”
“You all hain’t sayin’ ’t’ain’t goin’ t’ happen?”
“Hain’t sayin’ nothin’.”
“Oh, look ayonder. There it are.”
Sure enough, there was the ghost. With his waving gown all gleaming yellow with light, his shining red eyes, his dark face and his lugubrious rattle accompanied now and then by a piercing wail, Johnny’s ghost seemed more fearsome than before.
The chicleros grew suddenly silent. Even the sighing palms ceased to sigh and the last scream of a parrot died a sudden death.
It was an awesome moment. In that moment a strange thing happened. Instead of hovering there above the palms, the ghost began to rise. As he rose the dull rattle, as of bones in a coffin, increased in volume, and the wail, high-pitched and terrifying, rose to a piercing scream.
Then, more terrible than all, as he rose higher and higher, his red eyes grew dimmer, his glowing robes melted into the floating clouds, his scream sounded fainter and fainter.
“Oh, my Massa!” groaned the black man who but a moment before had professed little fear of the ghost. “Oh, my Massa!” he wailed, rolling on the ground in his agony of fear. “Oh, my Massa, he’s gone! It’s his last warnin’. He’s gone up. Now death and disaster sure do come!”
As if in proof of this, there came from far in the distance the dull roll of thunder.
As for Pant, he hastened to his dugout and paddled rapidly across the river. His mind was in a whirl. What had happened? He wanted to know, needed to know, badly indeed. Not so badly, however, but that he had time to pause and listen as the dip-dip of paddles sounded over the hushed waters of Rio Hondo. As he waited and watched black streaks passed down the river.
“Three of them,” he exulted. “That last trick was best of all. Three boat loads. Must have carried ten men each.”
As he came near the cabin that had been Johnny’s office, and in which so many strange doings had come off of late, he spied a dim light there.
On looking in he saw a single candle burning on a work bench. Slumped down in a rude chair made of packing boxes, was old Hardgrave.
At first the boy thought him asleep, but upon hearing footsteps the old man stirred, then looked up.
“It’s you, Pant,” he said slowly. “So it’s only you.”
Then of a sudden, sitting straight up, as if recalling bad news, he groaned:
“Pant, he’s gone!”
“Who’s gone?”
“The ghost—Johnny’s ghost is gone. Left us tonight. Left us cold.”
Pant stared at the old man for a moment. “Can it be,” he thought to himself, “that the mere mechanical creation can seem to its creator to take on real life and a personality?”
To Hardgrave he said quietly: “I saw him go. It was weird, I can tell you. And I shouldn’t take his going too much to heart. Fully thirty of Daego’s men went down the river just now. This last was too much for their superstitious minds.”
“Thirty! Did you say thirty?”
“Fully that many.”
“Then, Pant,” the old man sprang to his feet. “We’ll beat ’em yet, Pant. We’ll fight! We’ll fight!”
“Of course we will,” said Pant.
Late in the evening following his startling adventure in the ancient Maya temple, Johnny tapped at Jean’s door.
“Hist!” he whispered. “Go get Rod and come to my room. Got something to show you.”
A few moments later, in the privacy of Johnny’s room, lighted only by a flickering taper, the brother and sister stood before a mysterious something which stood upon a stool and was covered by a cloth.
“See!” Johnny exclaimed as he lifted the cloth.
They started back in surprise and wonder. Made of pure gold, with a jewel gleaming from his hand, the Maya god, an awesome creation, stood before them.
Determined that his adventure in the temple, which had come so near being a tragedy, should not be without its reward, Johnny had dared to take the god from the place of its long concealment. He had succeeded in bringing it from the corridor to the bush where he had hidden it until he could smuggle it safely through the darkness.
“That,” he said in an awed whisper, “is the only ancient Maya god ever discovered; he is the god of the rising sun. There are no such gods in the museums of the world. This one, aside from the gold and the jewel which seems to be a roughly cut diamond, is priceless as a curio and as an example of ancient art. And that,” he exclaimed as he wrapped the cloth about it and hid it in a dark corner, “makes me all the more anxious to get away from this hidden city of wild people.”
“You’re not thinking of taking the thing with you!” exclaimed Roderick in dismay.
“Of course we shall!” Jean looked at her brother in utter disgust. “What do you think?”
“Think!” exclaimed Roderick. “I think it will get us into a great deal of trouble.”
“Trouble? Who cares for trouble?”
“I am going to the chief the first thing in the morning,” said Johnny. “I’ll try to tell him or his daughter, by maps and signs, all about my camp on Rio Hondo and the urgent need of my getting back there. The princess likes us. She’ll do anything she can for us. Somehow we must escape.”
* * * * * * * *
To be drifting down a strange tropical stream at night is enchanting, haunting, and mysterious enough; but to be drifting down that same stream with your eyes so completely blindfolded that you only know it is night because you have been told so, surely this is the most mysterious of all.
Johnny Thompson, Jean and Roderick were passing through just such an experience. For hours, many hours, seeing nothing, now led by the hand, now drifting in a dugout, they had traveled. Where were they going? Home? Going to some more remote corner of the Central American jungle where there was no danger of their being discovered?
Not one of the three could so much as guess. They only knew they were going somewhere and were on their way. Such a strange way, too; over paths that were so overhung with vines and palm leaves thatthey must be constantly dodging to avoid them; now on a small stream where the danger of being caught by vines and dragged overboard was still greater, and now out upon a wider stream where from time to time a sudden burst of sunlight warmed their faces, they traveled on and on. For Johnny especially, the short portages made on foot were extremely difficult, for always he carried his pack on his back. He dared not trust it to another. In its very center was the golden god of the rising sun.
It had turned out strangely, his resolve to have it out with the old chief about allowing them to return to the Rio Hondo. First, by the aid of many small sticks and stones and a tiny artificial stream, he pictured to the young princess his coming up Rio Hondo in search of mahogany, his early success, defeat, a second venture, the treachery of Daego, the probable condition of his camp at the present moment and the need for his speedy return.
He had watched with much concern the face of the chief as his daughter presented the cause to him. That she was telling much, perhaps a great deal too much, he guessed from the changing expression on the old man’s face. A frown was replaced by a smile. This was followed by a look of surprise, if not of consternation.
“She’s not telling about Rio Hondo,” Johnny had whispered. “What do you think?”
“Yesterday. The hidden corridor,” Jean had whispered back.
“That’s exactly it!” Johnny exclaimed.
At once he regretted having entrusted the girl with his mission. “If she tells too much she may get us into greater trouble,” he whispered to Jean, and at that moment he thought of the golden god.
“Of course,” he whispered to Jean, “it’s mine by right of finding. These people did not build this ruined temple, nor did they make or inherit the god. It’s been lost for centuries. Can’t tell about their queer ideas and customs, though.”
Had that plea of the princess gotten them into trouble, or was it getting them out? This was the question which Johnny asked himself over and over as they drifted, blindfolded, down that river in the night.
It was strange, fascinating, weird, this eternal drifting, drifting, drifting on into the night. Now the sudden brush of a palm leaf told him they were traveling close to the bank; now a mad forward plunge followed by low exclamations, told of rapids; and now the distant bark of a dog somewhere on land suggested a cabin and some few scattered inhabitants.
They were quite a goodly company, this Maya band which escorted him from their city to some unknown destination. Johnny, with his white companions, rode in a large pit-pan. There were other crafts. From time to time he caught the sound of their dipping paddles, heard their low cries of warning as one boat came perilously near another. Twice they had made camp. At such times as this, blindfolded though he was, Johnny was able to estimate the number of men.
“About a hundred,” he had said to Jean.
“Quite a band,” she had agreed. “Wonder why so many?”
“Who can tell?”
The princess was with them. He heard her voice from time to time. The old chief, too, perhaps. He could not be sure of that.
Wondering dreamily how it all would end, and wishing with all his heart that Jean at least was out of it all, he fell into a doze.
From this he was awakened by a sudden movement of the boat. It was as if the hand of a giant had seized the prow and suddenly turned it through a quarter of a circle, then had given it a powerful shove.
For a second the boy’s head whirled.
“Wha—what has happened?” Jean whispered.
Johnny chuckled. “We’re in a larger river, much larger. In fact, it is a great river, and something tells me——,” his words came swift and eager now, “that it is the good old Rio Hondo!”
“Johnny, it can’t be!”
“It could be, and is!” said Johnny emphatically. “I haven’t ridden that old river for nothing. She has a way of teasing and tossing your dugout while she whirls it forward that no other river ever had.
“Besides,” he added with another chuckle, “I can smell the water. It actuallysmellsblack.”
“What’s that?” the girl exclaimed suddenly.
“Sounds like thunder,” said Johnny.
* * * * * * * *
It was thunder, the forerunner of a storm. It was not a local storm, either, but one of those wide sweeping storms that tear at the timber on all the headwaters of a great river. Pant, at the edge of his camp, where he was assisting in shooting the last of the mahogany logs into their boom, heard it and his face grew thoughtful.
The hour of great suspense came at last. Their boom was loaded. They were ready to go down the river. Daego had not yet led his men to the attack.
“We’ll get away in the darkness,” Pant said to his Carib foreman, fairly dancing about in his eagerness to be away. “We’ll give old Daego the slip.”
Tivoli’s only reply was a sweep of the hand toward the blackening sky. As if in answer to his signal, there came crashing down upon them one of those sudden storms that are known only in the tropics.
“We’ll get away under cover of the storm,” said Pant. “That will be better still.”
“You don’t now these tropical storms,” said Tivoli. “All night in the rain fifteen men must work; fifteen men must rest, sleep beneath canvas in hammocks. Even with fifteen men we may not save the raft, tied up right here. You do not know the tropics. There will be water in the river, water in the sky. Which is river? Which is sky? You cannot tell. The river will rise like a tide. There will come down snags, great trees, palm trees, mahogany, yamra, black tamarind, santa maria, many, many snags. All night long, at the edge of the raft, we must fight these snags away. There will be no sleep for Tivoli tonight, and perhaps no logs for Mr. Johnny Thompson after that, either.”
Tivoli was right. Such a storm as this was! Nothing of the kind had ever been witnessed by the boys before. Flash after flash of lightning, water in sheets, in streams, great avalanches of water that one could all but swim through. Rolling thunder vied with the increasing roar of black waters. And after that came the snags! And how those Caribs did work!
All night, till the clock hand stood at three, they labored. Then the water began to subside.
Then, exhausted, they threw themselves upon the bare logs and slept.
“At dawn we are away,” muttered Tivoli.
* * * * * * * *
All that night, regardless of the lightning that set the water all agleam, in spite of the deluge of rain that fell, the Mayas and their blindfolded captives drifted silently down that broad river which indeed was Rio Hondo.
Awnings of cloth, cunningly treated with the juice from the bark of the wild rubber tree, protected them from the rain. They were safe and dry. The river carried them onward. What more need they ask?
* * * * * * * *
At dawn, as a matchless sunrise painted the east red and gold, there appeared above Pant’s raft on the broad river a black line, a line not of drift logs, but dugouts, dories and pit-pans. Each craft was loaded with men, and as the sun sent its rays shooting across them they waved their hands and let forth a bloodcurdling shout. In each uplifted hand there gleamed a long bladed machete.
“They come!” said Tivoli in response to Pant’s call. “Let them come. See that all the men are wakened quickly.”
The battle of Rio Hondo will probably never be recorded on the printed pages of the history of Honduras or Mexico, but to the last day of his life it will remain indelibly stamped on Pant’s memory.
As he caught the white gleam of machetes against the morning sky, many searching questions invaded his mind. He was about to engage in a battle that might mean the death of some faithful Carib. Was there yet an opportunity for parley, for compromise? No! It was too late. Yet, in their previous actions had there been blunders? Had he been too hasty? Could the fight have been avoided? These questions he could not fully answer; all he could say was that he had believed himself to be acting for the good of all.
“As for compromise,” he told himself stoutly, “there can be no compromise with evil. This man Daego hesitates at nothing that he may gain a little more wealth, wealth for which he has no need. The men we must fight have sold their souls to him.” Having thus put himself at peace with his own mind, he set calmly about the task of posting his men.
The purpose of the raiders was to break up his raft. If they could but sever the encircling boom, his logs would be set free, each to find its separate way to the ocean. They would then be lost to him forever.
One anxious glance he cast toward the approaching boats. One thing he feared most of all,—firearms.
“He wouldn’t dare,” Pant told himself, as no rifle or pistol appeared in the uplifted hands. “A fight between crews is one thing; wholesale slaughter quite another. The laws of Great Britain are strict, her officers tireless.”
His eyes gleamed with a touch of pride as he surveyed his small army of defense. What stalwart fellows they were! How their dark arms gleamed in the sun! From the belt of each hung a machete. These they had been ordered to use only as a last resort. By the side of each, grounded like a rifle, was a stout six-foot mahogany pike-pole. He had taught them the last trick of offense and defense with these weapons.
So they waited as on came the invading host. In the hands of some he saw the white gleam of sapodilla axe handles. With these axes they would attempt to loosen a chain of the boom or chop a log of it in two. Others balanced heavy sledges on the edge of their boats. With these they hoped to sever the chains. Their machetes were for defense. They waved them to intimidate the Caribs.
“Not so easily done,” Pant smiled grimly as his Caribs sent back a ringing cry of defiance.
“Don’t let a man of them board us,” was the last word Pant passed along the line. “If they gain a footing on the raft we’re lost. If one gets aboard, double on him and pitch him overboard.”
As the dark line advanced it spread out fan-shape; then, with every wild-eyed Spaniard of them all splitting his lungs in a savage yell, they shot their crafts alongside.
With drawn machetes they leaped for the first mahogany logs that lay against the boom. But what was this? As they swung their machetes threateningly, they received a rain of blows that sent many a machete whirling through space to find its watery grave beneath the black waters.
Against such an offensive they were not able to stand. Seizing their paddles, they backed away to a respectful distance, there to hold a council of war.
The result of this council Pant read as if it were an open book. With machetes sheathed, but with axes and sledges at hand, the enemy spread out to advance upon the raft from every side. By this Pant judged that they hoped to scatter his men and to effect a break in the boom that would not only set his logs free, but throw his Caribs into the river, there to fight for their lives against pitching, grinding logs and lurking alligators.
One move he had not anticipated became apparent soon enough. The instant their boats touched, as the Caribs rushed at them with their mahogany pikes, the Spaniards who were not armed with sledges and axes did their best to seize the pikes and wrest them from the Caribs. In this, here and there, they were successful, and always in the corner where this occurred, the tide began to turn. It was one thing to prod and beat a Spaniard; quite another to be prodden and beaten by him. In the meantime, keen oars flashed here and there. There came the disheartening chop-chop of axes and the thud of sledges that told that at any moment the boom might be broken, the battle lost.
Heroic work was going on at every point. Outnumbered almost two to one, the Caribs fought valiantly. With their wild shouts forever on their lips, they seized fresh pikes when one was lost and fought with renewed vigor.
Tivoli, their chief, seemed everywhere at once. His great strength served him well. Here, where a sledge was battering dangerously at a chain, he made a mighty thrust, swinging his pike sidewise at a Spaniard’s head. The sledge splashed into the water. Danger at this point was at an end. Here an axe swung in air to meet with Tivoli’s well aimed pike and go spinning through air to join the sledge.
But for all this, the battle was going badly. Here and there a chain was badly battered and in several places a log of the boom was half cut through. Seeing his men outnumbered where ten Spaniards crowded a single dugout, Pant, whose slight strength had lost him his pike at the very onset, seized a pike aimed at his head and, gripping hard, executed a flying pole vault right over the heads of the enemy and into the booming waters.
The result was all that could be hoped for. The Spaniard, who still clung to the pike, was dragged half out of the dugout, whereupon that unstable craft promptly capsized, pitching ten lusty attackers, axes, sledges and all, into the river.
Tivoli, too, lost his pike. Angered at this victory on the part of an enemy, he watched his chance and when the Spaniard swung his pike to one side, with bare hands and unarmed, Tivoli rushed at him and rained such blows on his head as drove him to drop his pike and leap into the river.
This much for scattered conflicts. Victory here and there along the line; more than one Spaniard in the river; but for all that, here and there the boom was being dangerously weakened. The battle was going badly.
“Only a matter of time,” thought Pant, as he struggled back to the raft. “A half hour; perhaps less. Then our work is all undone!”
* * * * * * * *
Just as the storm came to an end and morning broke, Johnny Thompson, still blindfolded and riding among the Mayas, felt his boat swerve sharply to the right and enter a small creek where overhanging branches swept the awnings over the boats.
They had not gone far up this stream before their boat bumped the bank and they were helped to disembark.
Imagine their surprise and joy when someone, very short, very laughingly tugged away the cloths that blinded them and permitted them for the first time in two days to see.
“See!” exclaimed the princess, for it was she who had unbound their eyes. “See what a beautiful world we have brought you to!”
It was indeed a beautiful world. All a-glitter with raindrops flashing in the sun, palms and giant tropical ferns had never seemed so lovely as now.
Birds sang their best. Even the screaming parrots, that they might not be entirely out of harmony, appeared to soften their discordant notes.
But into this symphony there crept a wildly disturbing sound. Dim, indistinct, yet unmistakable, there came the noise of battle.
At the first sound of it, Johnny Thompson glanced wildly about him. Then, having sighted down the creek a familiar bend in the river, he exclaimed:
“It’s Daego. The battle is on! They are not a mile from here. I must go!”
Seizing the prow of a boat, he pushed it into the stream, sprang in, seized a paddle, and would have been away, single-handed, to enter the conflict.
They dragged him back. The old chief tried to learn, from Johnny’s wild flinging arms, what it was all about. In the end he appeared to understand, for, after instructing his men to look to their weapons, he ordered them into their boats. Once more the Mayas, a hundred strong, swept down the river, grim, silent, determined.
So it happened that a second time that day Pant saw the river above his raft lined with boats.
“Friends or enemies?” he thought. “Let them come. Without aid we lose. More of the enemy cannot matter.”
As for Daego’s men, they watched the on-coming fleet with consternation. Daego had no men up the river. They knew that. Who, then, were these?
As the fleet came closer, a figure standing in the prow of the foremost boat became plainly visible. He was waving his arms and shouting wildly. It was Johnny.
One of Daego’s keen-eyed Spaniards was the first to recognize him. With a wild cry of fear he dashed for his pit-pan.
“There is the man who has died,” he shouted. “His ghost has been seen many times above the treetops. Now he comes back. He is a ghost. Who are these with him? They have gleaming spears. They, too, are ghosts.” So he thought, and prepared to flee.
So thought they all. To a man they dropped oar, maul, pike, pole or machete, and turned to flee.
When Johnny’s boat bumped the raft there was not a Spaniard within gunshot.
But what was this? As he turned about to look at his companions in the boat he saw only Roderick and Jean. By some skillful trick of boatmanship or swimming, the Maya paddlers had left the boat. Now, some distance away, the Maya princess was waving them farewell as the remaining boats went speeding back up the river.
“That’s funny,” said Johnny.
“How—how strange and ghost-like!” murmured Jean.
“Nothing ghost-like about this,” said Johnny, as he patted his pack which held the rare Maya god.
The joyful reunion that followed was cut short by the pressing business of getting the log boom started down the river. The motor boat was brought around, the Carib sail boats hitched on behind, and they were away.
Hardgrave, who knew Jean’s father and the location of his camp, advised her and Roderick to go with them down the river. This advice was not unwelcome, especially to Johnny, who felt that he could never see too much of the bonny Scotch girl.
They had made their slow way down two-thirds of the distance when a strange procession caught up with and passed them. Motor boats, launches, flatboats, and pit-pans moved by. Each was loaded to capacity with the strangest cargoes. Here were four tractors on a flat-boat; there many wheels that might have belonged to cannons, but did belong to logging wagons; here a pit-pan loaded high with great vats and kettles that had once held the boiling sap of the sapodilla tree. So they drifted by. It was like the passing of a defeated army. And so it was. The defeated king of the Black River was leaving the Rio Hondo forever.
Two weeks later, with his treasure of red lure safely piled at the waterfront in Belize, Johnny met his millionaire friend, Roderick Grayson, at the dock as a United Fruit steamer’s launch came in. Three days later, in Johnny’s room at the hotel, Grayson met the Governor of Quintanaroo and together they drew up contracts which were to mean much, not only to Quintanaroo and Grayson, but to Johnny and Pant as well. In each contract it was agreed that Grayson’s company was to pay the boys a royalty, a wee bit of a royalty on their entire output and, though the percentage is small, the output is destined to be large, and there is no reason to believe that the two boys will lack for funds for travel and adventure in the future.
The rare Maya god found its way to a museum in London. The proceeds from its sale Johnny insisted upon dividing with Jean. There was talk of spending the whole of it in a visit to London and the Old World by Jean and her family, accompanied by Johnny and Pant.
At about this time, however, Johnny chanced to wander down to the breakwater, where little boats anchor, and there he met a strange seafaring man who had a strange tale to tell. And right there began one of the most unusual adventures that ever befell Johnny Thompson. You will find it all written down in our next book, “Forbidden Cargoes”.
Mr. Snell is a versatile writer who knows how to write stories that will please boys and girls. He has traveled widely, visited many out-of-the-way corners of the earth, and being a keen observer has found material for many thrilling stories. His stories are full of adventure and mystery, yet in the weaving of the story there are little threads upon which are hung lessons in loyalty, honesty, patriotism and right living.
Mr. Snell has created a wide audience among the younger readers of America. Boy or girl, you are sure to find a Snell book to your liking. His works cover a wide and interesting scope.
Here are the titles of the Snell Books: