Page:Weird Tales v02 n01 (1923-07-08).djvu/4

Rh last. Poling through a channel too narrow for the sweeplike paddles, they floated out on the lake of the island.

That it was the place told of by their guide, Kuyambira-Petro, there could be no question. But in the first glance it seemed less like a sheet of water with an island in the midst, than an immense flat plate of burnished gold, and, rising out of it—a pyramid of red flame.

"There is a broad water," Petro had said. "There is an island. On the island is a strange power and some stone houses."

Had Kuyambira-Petro been taken to view the wonders of modern New York, his report on returning to his native Moju River village would have been much the same—and about equally descriptive.

Here before them, piled terrace upon terrace, constructed of rock that seemed literally aflame in its sunset colors, towered a monstrous mass of masonry. Even from where the canoe lay they could appreciate the enormous size of those blocks which formed the lower tier.

Surrounding the pyramid at water-level, extended a broad platform of golden-yellow stone. Immediately above that rose a wall, red-orange in color, thirty feet high, without any apparent breach or means of ascent. Set well back from its upper edge were the first tier of Petro’s "stone houses."

They were separate buildings, all of like shape, the end walls slanting inward to a flat roof. Eight tiers of these, growing gradually smaller toward the top, completed the pyramid. The whole effect of the ponderous artificial mountain was strangely light and airy.

Above the truncated, eight-sided peak, there seemed to hover a curious nimbus of pale light. In the general glare, however, it was easy to suspect this vague, bright crown of being merely an optical illusion.

On board the canoe, the explorer-naturalist, Bryce Otway, turned a painfully sunburned countenance to Waring, war-correspondent and writer of magazine tales.

"It’s there!" he breathed. "It’s real! You see it, too, don’t you? And, oh! man, man, we'll be the first—think of it, Waring!—the first to carry back photographs and descriptions of that to the civilized world!"

"Rather!" Waring grinned. "Take one thing with another, what a story!"

The other three, the young yacht-owner, Sigsbee, the little steward, Johnny Blickensderfer, more often known as John B., and Mr. Theron Narcisse Tellifer, pride of Washington Square in New York City, each after his own fashion agreed with the first speakers.

They had toiled hard and suffered much to reach here. Sigsbee’s motor-yacht, the Wanderer, they had been forced to leave below the first rapids. The canoe journey had begun with four caboclos, half-breed native Brazilians, beside the guide, Petro, to take the labor of paddling.

Every man of these natives had succumbed to beri-beri, inside the first week. The epidemic spared the white men, doubtless because of their living on a different diet than the farina and chibeh, or jerked beef, which is the mainstay of native Brazil. Having come so far to solve the mystery of the Rio Silencioso, the five survivors would not turn back.

Rio Silencioso—River of Silence indeed, flowing through a silent jungle-land, where no animal life stirred or howled, where there was only the buzz of myriad stinging insects to heighten rather than break the quiet of the nights. Others before them had tried to conquer the Silencioso. None had ever returned—none, that is, save the old full-blood Indian, Kuyambira-Petro. His story had interested the party of Americans on the Wanderer, and, though the guide himself had perished, brought them at last to this strange lake and pyramid.

Reluctantly, merely because even a half-mile of further paddling under the noon sun promised to be suicidal, the heavy stone used for an anchor was dropped to a gravel bottom six feet below. Preparations were made for the mid-day meal and siesta.

From where they lay, the lake appeared as a nearly circular pool, sunk in the heart of this surviving bit of what had once been a great chapadao, or plateau, before a few thousand years of wet-season floods had washed most of it down to join the marsh and mire of Amazon Valley. The outlet by which they had entered formed the only break in its shores. It was probably fed by springs from below, accounting for the crystal purity of its waters and the clean gravel of its bottom. Reflected from the shallow depths, the heat proved almost unbearable. Yet no one felt inclined to complain.

"Gehenna in temperature," as Tellifer, the esthete of the party phrased it, "but the loveliness of yon mountain of pyramiding flame atones for all!"

Sprawled in the shade of awning and palm-thatched cabin, they panted, sweated, and waited happily for the hour of release.

Around four-thirty came a breeze like the breath of heaven. The waters of the lake stirred in smooth, molten ripples. Across them moved a canoe-load of eager optimists. The vague haze of white glare that had seemed for a time to hover above the pyramid had vanished with the passing of the worser heat.

On the side which faced the river outlet, the thirty-foot wall, which formed the first tier, boasted neither gateway nor stair. Since it seemed likely that the ancient builders had provided some means of ascent more convenient than ropes or ladders, the canoe turned and circled the pyramid’s base.

On closer view, the flame-colored wall proved to be a mass of bas-relief carved work. In execution, it bore that same resemblance to Egyptian art which marks much work of the ancient South and Central American civilizations. The human figures were both male and female, the men nude, bearing platters of fruit and wine-jars, the women clad in single garments hanging from the shoulders. The men marched, but the women were presented in attitudes of ceremonial dance; also as musicians, playing upon instruments resembling Pan’s pipes of several reeds.

As Tellifer remarked, it seemed a pity to have spoiled what would otherwise have been a really charming votive procession, by the introduction of certain other and monstrous forms that writhed and twined along the background, and, in some cases, actually wreathed the dancers’ bodies.

"Sun-worshippers!" scoffed Waring, referring to a surmise of Otway’s regarding the probable religion of the pyramid’s builders. "Centipede worshippers—hundred-legger devotees—or do my eyes deceive me? Hey, Otway! What price sun-worship now?"

"Don’t bother me!" Otway’s voice drifted back happily from the prow. "I’m in the land of undared dreams come true."

Part way around, in that plane of its eight-sided form which faced the west, they found what they were seeking. It was a stairway, fully a hundred feet wide at the base, leading from water-level to the very height of the pyramid, with broad landings at each tier. Where its lowest tread was lipped by the lake, enormous piers of carved stone guarded the entrance. It was a stair of gorgeous coloring and Cyclopean proportion. Its grandeur and welcome invitation to ascend should have roused the exploring party to even greater jubilance.

Strangely, however, none of them at first gave more than a passing glance to this triumph of long-dead builders. In rounding the pyramid, indeed, they had