Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 1 (1925-01).djvu/67

66 Then he turned again to the wonder-world about him. In the center of the wall opposite the entrance was an opening, draped with a curtain of gold mesh so finely wrought that he crumpled it in his hand like a piece of woolen cloth, yet it was so heavy that he knew it for purest gold.

Through the opening he stepped into the holy place of the temple, and as he did so he cried aloud with wonder and delight. He had been prepared for treasure, but his wildest dreams had not pictured anything half so wonderful as the sight that now greeted his eyes.

Against the opposite wall a great gleaming golden disk, so wide that Martin's two arms outstretched could not have spanned it, made a shining background for the great altar, wrought of solid gold, which stood before it. On the altar itself, in the center, stood a great brazier, of a workmanship so fine that Martin gasped as he looked at it, and in the brazier a fire burned, fed automatically from two little reservoirs of powdered wood. Everything upon the altar was gold—lamps, vessels of all kinds, wrought with such skill and such richness of design that any one of them was worth a king's ransom.

The light from the fire in the brazier was reflected a hundred times from the dazzling surface of the great golden disk, the symbol of the sun god, and Martin's eyes began to burn and his head to ache as he ran from one thing to another in an excitement that was rapidly mounting to a delirium. He laughed aloud again and again, as he spread his cape out in the center of the floor and began to pile vessel after vessel in a heap in the center. He chose swiftly here and there, trying to select the heaviest and therefore the most valuable. All the time he was talking to himself as he worked, running to and fro, tearing golden figures from their niches and ravishing the altar of its golden treasure. He did not notice that his head was pounding with pain and that his eyes burned like twin flames, He was not conscious of his body at all; he saw only this golden treasure—gold, gold, gold, everywhere. He piled it up until upon the floor he had a heap which three men could not have lifted.

Still there remained twice as much more. He ran to the great golden brazier and tried to lift it from its place. He staggered and almost fell, and for a moment a terrible nausea, overcame him. He leaned against the altar, panting for breath, and gradually his legs crumpled under him and he slipped down upon the floor, with his head upon the edge of the pile of treasure.

"Been working too hard—overstrained myself!" he gasped, and then a cry of agony burst from his lips as the pain gripped his vitals, twisting him about on the rocky floor while the sweat poured out upon his blanched forehead.

HILE he lay thus the curtain at the doorway lifted and the old Uilca stepped softly into the room. Martin was too far gone now to feel either surprize or dismay at this interruption; strangely enough the very gold itself no longer seemed important to him. A film was drifting over his eves; he did not care that the priest was rapidly replacing each golden vessel in its accustomed place, nor protest when the pile which he had gathered so feverishly a little while before was completely depleted.

A last spasm of agony burst over him. He cried aloud. "Help! Help!" then shuddered and lay still.

The priest stood looking down at him, and his eyes were full of pity, though his lips were stern.

"Alas!" he murmured. "There is no help for the one who drinks from the guardian spring. White man's madness—ever it leads to sorrow and to death."