The Glyphs/Chapter 10

Doctor Morgano stood to one side with his arms folded as if either intensely bored, or considering some mental problem pertaining to ancient forms of worship. Ixtual having partially regained his senses, suddenly threw himself on his knees before the doctor and bent forward until his head touched the pavement. The archæologist abstractly said something in the Maya tongue and, discovering the need for pacifying Ixtual lest the latter go insane, reached over and gently assisted him to his feet. He talked to him in a fatherly sort of way and then said in Spanish:

“Perhaps, it is best that you and the Arab and Juan return to the raft and bring up the provisions and find a place in the outer circle that will do for our quarters. Forget the gods, my son. They do but forgive if you believe you have done them wrong. They are very merciful, otherwise there would be no gods. Go. We shall come later.”

And so, strangely pacified and returning to his normal senses, Ixtual with Benny and Juan accompanying him as if eager to escape, hurried away. Benny went hurriedly with a long, swinging, graceful stride that made me think he had reverted to the burnoose and flowing robes of the desert. Juan was crossing himself, and I have an idea was muttering prayers; but Ixtual, as if obedient to a command, never looked back.

“The poor Indian is upset,” said the doctor. “I can’t imagine such folly, but I suppose that”

“That bally old idol did look as if it was alive; but of course it was all some sort of trickery,” growled Wardy.

“Trickery?” the doctor and I spoke in unison and considerably surprised by his words.

“Why, yes. Trickery! Didn’t you see it open its eyes and glare at us? By Jove! There was something uncanny in the way they scowled and flashed at us, wasn’t there?”

“You haven’t gone balmy, too, have you?” I demanded. “What are you talking about? Rubbish!”

“Rubbish, nothing! If neither you nor the doctor saw that thing’s eyes glare, you must have been looking at something else. I tell you I saw them. It wasn’t as if they opened, but as if they had suddenly come to life and the old chap was pretty sore about something.”

“Ha! We must investigate this,” said the doctor, turning and almost running back into that inner chamber.

We stood looking at that great effigy for some time but could observe nothing unusual about it beyond that majestic and impressive workmanship which I had already noted.

“You see, Wardy,” I jeered, “its eyes are just as they were when we first saw them.”

But as if doubting his own senses, or at least very dissatisfied, Wardy took out his monocle, carefully cleaned it, and frowned upward at that impassive idol. He stepped sideways for a few paces as if to see whether the change of position produced the effect, tried the other side, fell back, then again moved forward.

“I’ll swear I couldn’t have been mistaken,” he murmured. “I saw it too plainly, and was just going to speak when Ixtual went off his crumpet. You were standing about where you are now. I was just about here. The doctor had started up there to Hold on! I believe I’ve got it.”

He shouted the last words and then laughed.

“Doctor,” he said, “would you mind doing just what you did before—if you can remember what it was?”

The savant for an instant blinked as if bewildered by the effort of memory, rubbed his chin, and then said: “Oh, yes! I recall that I was interested in getting to where I could read that tablet above the altar. From where I stood I could not see it. I must look at that now. Whether the eyes of this image shone or not are of the very least importance; but I must see that tablet! Perhaps it is of great scientific value. Who knows, my friends, but what it may contain the very key to that ancient form of worship! We will defer the investigation of your—ummmh—hallucination, and I will continue my great work.”

And with that, as if dismissing us to our own researches, he again advanced toward the image. I was on the point of retorting somewhat sarcastically to his speech, but was silenced by a swift gesture from Wardy which the archæologist did not observe. The doctor, as if forgetting us entirely, again climbed upward to the pulpit and again, finding the tablet too high above his head for close inspection, stepped forward and lifted his hands upward to clutch a projection by which he might lift himself up. And then, for the first time, I saw the eyes of the idol blaze as if filled with wrath! I admit that the sight was terrifying to me, so what must have it been to those superstitious minds that had witnessed it before?

“Stop! Stand where you are!” roared Wardrop in a voice so loud that it resounded thunderously in that space. “Stand just as you are, doctor, and don’t move until I get up there.”

He ran forward and climbed up beside the doctor and bent over and marked with a piece of chalk the outlines of the astonished savant’s feet.

“Keep your eyes on those of this bally image, Hallewell,” he shouted to me, and I kept my gaze steadily thereafter upon the glowing lights above. Somehow they seemed less terrifying and less intent, under the caustic, practical admonitions of this big, practical Englishman who conducted the investigation.

“Now, doctor, come over here,” I heard Wardy say, and there was the sound of movement, and the eyes of the image were again dull and lifeless, as if once more brooding over the past ages.

“They’re dark again!” I cried. “You were right, Wardy. You were right. It is nothing but some sort of mechanical trickery.”

“Of course I’m right,” jubilated the giant. “Have another look. I’ll work it myself!” and then he stepped over, placed his feet in the spots he had marked, and again the light glazed forth above us.

“Which foot is it? Let’s see,” he called, and stood on one foot and then the other to learn that it required pressure on two spots, upon which the doctor had unwittingly stood, to produce the effect. “You come up and stand on ’em, and give me a chance to look,” Wardy called to me, and I took his place while he, highly triumphant, stood beneath and watched the effect; but the doctor, caring nothing for our investigations, had climbed upward until he could see the tablet plainly, and now called down: “The tablet is to the god Icopan, supreme over all the Maya world, sacred to the Maya religion; a god of gods; presumably the god of the sun, and for the first time known to modern civilization. We have made the greatest discovery of its kind that has been made in hundreds of years!”

“I suppose,” said Wardy, still intent on his own find, “that on days when they had something to tell the roughnecks—for instance, that the fat old god here was exceedingly sore about something they had done—the high priest got ’em here and then pressed the button. Some effect—what? Scared ’em stiff, I’ll bet!”

“What on earth is the sense in talking to a pair of narrow-minded, unappreciative, irreverent numskulls like this?” howled the doctor, throwing his hands and arms in the air and shaking them like a pair of agitated tentacles. “Here am I, Doctor Paolo Morgano, the greatest discoverer of the age, distinguished internationally for my erudition, lecturing to a pair of impractical, illogical beings who have found and play with a mere toy!”

That we both laughed did not appease his frenzy, and he threatened to leave us in a state of mad exasperation.

“My dear doctor,” said Wardy apologetically, “we can’t all be practical and gifted like you. I beg your pardon. And so, I’m certain, does Hallewell. You were saying that this was the great god What’s his name? Please tell us. We are most interested!”

And, mollified, Doctor Morgano again enthused over his glyph, while we stood patiently waiting for him to conclude, which he did when he had run down like a clock.

“Now,” he finished cheerfully, “it is certain that the high priests who guarded such a holy of holies as this must have lived in its immediate proximity. I doubt not that, day and night, some of them stood watch by the entrance, over which there were probably hung huge curtains to protect it from the ordinary scrutiny. We may be certain that when those curtains were parted it was on the rarest and most important of dates. Perhaps these came but once or twice within a generation; perhaps on set days when an appeal was made to the god for rain to save the burning crops, or to allay floods that threatened national calamity. You must try and realize that from the Maya viewpoint you are in the presence of the supreme god of the universe.”

He paused impressively and then, as if completely satisfied by the deportment of his audience, said: “We will now explore the surrounding chambers where, doubtless, the keepers of this shrine lived.”

He headed the expedition and Wardy, lagging behind, whispered: “By Jove! If Thos. Cook & Son knew about him they’d give him a contract for life.”

But our investigations proved the doctor wrong in his surmise. The entire series of inner chambers, looking out from between their massive columns, were devoted to lesser gods. They were like the abodes of supernumerary divinities. There were haymakers and rainmakers; fish gods and gods that restrained the serpents; gods that increased families and gods that restrained their exuberance; gods for almost everything and, as a rule, they weren’t exactly prepossessing. Most of them were, indeed, rather ugly. I conjectured that those who appealed to them were ruled by fear rather than affection. And yet I tell you that the pavement in front of some of these was worn into hollows where the knees of devout thousands had knelt!

“The priests must have lived somewhere close by,” said Doctor Morgano, perplexed and dubious as if he had proven a false prophet. “That, we know, was invariably the custom. There must be some place where those who guarded the god lived.”

“Maybe it was through that narrow door in the center—the one over there that we missed,” suggested Wardy.

“Ah, the one I believed an exit,” said the doctor. “Very well. We will try that one.”

We entered a corridor, followed it for some distance, and then debouched into what had apparently been a communal room; for from its spaciousness led many doors. One after another we entered. They were alike, austere, small, more like cells than human habitations. They were uniform—always the same, with the same narrow but long window opening out to the afternoon sun and presenting a magnificent vista of distant mountain and intervening jungle, bordered always by the waters of the turquoise lake. Always there was the same stone bed, the single shelf of stone, and the solitary niche with a basin of stone cut therein as if to enable its user to perform the simple ablutions of a simple life. In none of them was there a decoration, nor a decorative object. In all were those simple heaps of dust telling of long-decayed garniture. And then we came to the greater cell that in a measuse [sic] explained all.

“This one looks as if it had been something more than a cell in a monastery,” said Wardy, who was now leading the way. “This is getting rather slow. Too much like looking for an unfurnished flat in London. All look alike. All empty.” Then there was a moment’s silence and an exclamation, “Hey! What’s this? Come here, you fellows!”

Morgano and I obeyed his call and entered a room larger than those we had peered into, a room with four window openings. In the middle of it stood Wardrop with a human skull in his hand.

“There seems to be several of them here,” he said as we stopped and stared at him. “I picked this one up because it happened to be the nearest. Take a look around you, and you’ll see what I mean.”

With no very happy curiosity I looked and saw that the remains of at least a dozen men were in that death chamber. I felt their presence. I stood as one in a charnel house, although these remnants of skeletons were merely the bones of men whose souls had passed for hundreds of years. But the doctor, heedless of the gruesome relics, moved about the room like a hunting dog that scents game. He stopped and then squatted down beside one heap that was immediately in front of a central window. He hastily clutched something from the pavement and examined it. I saw that it was another stone tablet on which were sculptured, shallowly, as if the writer were in haste, a message. Doctor Morgano was dusting it with great care, and studying it, as if the man who had done the work and who now lay at his feet but a collection of half-eroded bones was nothing of interest. He seemed puzzled by some of the characters, held the long, narrow tablet up to the window where the sun, now past its meridian, was staring through, and with a grunt of annoyance said: “I’ll have to consult some notes to read this. What a pity that I haven’t them with me. They must be down in my portmanteau. I must get them.”

“I’m rather glad to hear that,” said Wardy in a most matter-of-fact voice. “I’m hungry. And as far as I can see, we haven’t discovered anything at all to eat. This will keep, won’t it, until afternoon?”

The doctor looked as if his feelings were hurt, and then, somewhat reluctantly, but still hugging his precious slab of stone, followed us out and down the hillside.

We found our three companions waiting for us in front of a building in the “Horseshoe Plaza”—as we called it, irreverently—and on our approach Benny, who was the cook for the party, hastened away to the quarters they had decided upon for our camp. We had to urge the doctor to join us in the very good camp meal that Benny laid upon a stone table in what had evidently been a refrectory well provided with stone benches. The doctor had found his notes and was himself again. But it was not until we had finished that luncheon that he imparted to us his information. And even then he waited until we three were alone in the room. He apologized for his delay by saying, “I thought it might be as well, considering the way our men have acted, that I waited to read this until they were all absent. It is a highly important record. It deals with the tragic history of a once noble race. It is in a way the solution of a question that has engrossed the minds of archæologists for centuries. It supplies one of the most vital blanks in the chain of”

“By the will of the gods we, the last of the keepers of the sacred place, are to die. And by the will of my brothers who guard the last fires on the sacred altars, I, the priest of records, am to strive to finish my task before the great plague which has already laid its hand upon me, ends my mortal life. Of all those of our once great people who dwelt by the borders of the sacred lake, and of the priests of the Holy Island, all are fled, or dead, save we who, with fidelity, abide to the last in this room. We who have been initiated into the secrets of the Mountains of the Sacred Gods have, obedient to the inspired ancient commands, cast loose the great bridge above the chasm that the sacred temple of the god Icopan may remain inviolate until it is HIS WILL that it again be visited. We, his priests, have no knowledge of how long the great god Icopan may choose to rest. The key tablets to the deep treasure chambers of the sacred god have been left in his possession and care guarded by his feet.”

“What’s that? What’s that he says about the key tablets?” I interrupted, and the doctor lifted his eyes and glared at me as if shocked by some profanity.

He read that part over again and then mumbled ahead with his translation. It told how this priest and that one had been stricken by this unknown plague and died. It must have been deadly swift, for according to the record a man lived not more than three or four hours after the first symptom manifested itself. The last sentences of the tablet were rather interesting:

“My own time has come and I am the last alive. The marks are on me, and my heart struggles. This is the last of the soft stones at hand and, write rapidly as I can, I grow too weak to add more than that the treasure chambers are sealed with the great seal which to break save by will of the great god Icopan means”

The doctor laid down his paper and said: “That is all. Now from this I have learned a most interesting geological feature, which is that the ancients had here on this continent certain stone formations probably like those in the deeper caverns of Bourre in France which the Romans worked. A stone which, when removed from the earth was of a cheeselike softness, but that hardened rapidly when exposed to the air. That accounts for the profuse decorations, records, and sculpturing that we have seen. I believe that a similar stone is quarried, shaped, and used in Somersetshire, England, to this day, and is known commonly as. This stone, a yellow limestone from the Lower Oolite, although it hardens from exposure, cannot possess the durability of the stone so lavishly utilized by the Mayas. In geology there are several distinct variations in the composition of”

I made an excuse to get outside. I thought I knew as much about geology as was either practical or good for me. It is disastrous to know too much; but when I returned a half hour later Wardy was serenely asleep in his corner, and the doctor was still talking learnedly.

“Isn’t it about time we investigated that idol’s feet?” I asked.

“Oh,” said the doctor slowly, facing me. “I had forgotten all about that part of the tablet. Perhaps we should take a look for what are called the key tablets. They might—ummh—might be of great historical interest.”