The Glyphs/Chapter 12

I confess that when we made ready to leave the island on the following morning, I did so with something not unlike regret. Wardy, too, must have felt the same, for he suggested that we take a last look at that stolid image into whose secrets we had blundered. As for the others, Benny seemed glad to go, Ixtual was unfathomable, perhaps imbued with confidence that he would return after we outlanders were banished forever, and Juan was as imperturbable as any mule he ever packed.

We stowed our belongings, now so much smaller in bulk, on the raft and made our way back to the mainland, where without waste of time we recovered our beasts and despite their protests loaded them with their burdens. We took a final look at the esplanade, and headed out into the great highway that, notwithstanding its very gradual rise, was trying and hot and hard as it lay in all its whiteness under the morning sun. The poor burros sweated and panted as with dogged steps they thrust themselves forward upon their absurdly delicate legs while their tiny hoofs clattered on the stone. Higher and higher we climbed. Hotter and hotter shone the sun. The city, drowned by verdure, lost shape beneath us and became a sea of green, the distant island in its lake a mere dot. Memory was invoked to define the details of the great temple in which we had lived; for now it became but a blotch of white piled in tiers. But steadily the great twin peaks grew until at last we halted in the black and yawning opening that like the distended mouth of a dragon waited for us to enter.

“Hadn’t we better make a camp here in one of the guardhouses?” I suggested; but for the first time in our strange adventure Doctor Morgano became the emphatic dictator.

“No, no!” he said and in the same Spanish tongue that I had almost inadvertently used. “We must not. We are still in the land that was once sacred to a great race, and—please let us pass through without halt. No, we shall not rest until we are on the other side. It is more sensible that we stop there than here, before we—let us proceed.”

I saw that Ixtual appeared inordinately grateful to him. I knew it from the strange look in his eyes—a look of great relief and, I think, of reverence. Of this I am certain, that it was Ixtual who shouted to the mules, gave an order to Juan to advance, and then himself ran ahead as if eager to lead us, or compel us to leave that shrine of his ancestors.

So we opened the gateways from that land which we had been the first human beings to enter for centuries, took a final look at all it had disclosed and that we were leaving behind, and plunged into the darkness. I admit that a vague and totally inexplicable sorrow invaded my mind at the thought that I should never see it again.

Once more we emerged from the heart of the mountain and looked out across the great jungle barrier that separated us from men of our times and habits. Once more we installed ourselves in the guardhouses we had occupied while striving to learn the way through the high hills. The tins thrown about that told of provisions used were like reminders of some past period in which we had lived, camped, and eaten as hungry explorers. We made our beds in the same spots. Again, Wardy took out and caressed his rifles, and stared downward at that dense and impenetrable jungle in which crept other black jaguars like the one he had slain and dressed for a trophy.

“By Jove! By Jove!” he muttered to me. “I had forgotten that I came out here for some shooting and—I’d forgotten all about it, I tell you! Funny, isn’t it?”

To tell the truth, I didn’t think it was. I have but little imagination; but living there behind those great, impassable hills in the midst of a deserted city builded by a race long dead had somehow made me forget many old habits and desires, although I felt like an intruder, adventuring into an unknown world when invading it.

“I came after treasure,” I insisted stolidly. “If we find it I shall be quite well satisfied.”

Wardy looked at me curiously.

“I wonder! I wonder if you will,” was all he said as he moved away to give some instructions to Benny. And now, after years, I too wonder, but understand what he meant. It takes time for certain things to force their way through some men’s heads, but in time they usually do. Is that recompense or punishment?

I never learned what the doctor said to Ixtual on the following morning when, rested by a good night in a good camp, we were ready to begin our last exploration. I do know that he called him outside and talked earnestly to him, gesticulating now and then, and evidently overcoming some objection that the taciturn Maya had against us. I shall always believe that Ixtual regretted having guided us, but, having pledged his word, remained true to us, and accepted us. But evidently the doctor influenced the Indian to his own views. Indeed the doctor became suddenly the actual commander of our expedition and evidenced it by his attitude. He said that inasmuch as we had been so long without fresh meat of any kind he thought it wise for Ixtual and Benny to take the rifles and try to kill one of the small deer that were to be found in the foothills, and that Juan must remain behind and guard the animals and the entrance. He next observed that besides an emergency supply of food and water, Wardy and I should carry each an empty pack bag because if anything of archæological interest were found he might ask us to carry them out.

Both Wardy and I understood, from the fact that the doctor spoke in Spanish, that his words were meant for the ears of Ixtual, Juan, and Benny as well as our own, and made no comment. Our little outfit was made up, and we entered the great secret way after closing its stone gate behind us.

We had walked some distance before the doctor stopped and, as if apologizing for having assumed an air of authority, said: “It was necessary, more than you two dream, perhaps, to keep from the others, and especially Ixtual, the knowledge that we are now seeking treasure. I have never told you my full impressions of the Maya Indians through whose settlements we must pass before the coast can be reached; but of this be sure: Our lives would not be worth a centime if they knew that we had either found treasure, sought treasure, or carried treasure with us from here.”

“You had to take some sort of outlandish oaths that time Ixtual took you away to” I began interrogatively, and he silenced me.

“You must ask no questions concerning that night, my friend, either now or ever. I did pledge myself.” There was dry emphasis on the pronoun. “But—neither of you were compelled to take an oath. I pledged myself in your behalf and am answerable for your conduct. Further than that I can answer nothing. Evasion, you may call it, but not exactly a perjury. The scientific results, however, would have justified, in my conscience, even the latter. But this remember for the sake of our lives, that no one must know that we have sought treasure. You have been with me merely as assistants in a great research which I was permitted to undertake because the superstition of an all-but-dead race made it see in me a new messiah and—but I forget! I can speak no more,” he concluded with an unmistakable show of mental harassment, which Wardy and I respected. “Come!” said the doctor, and again plunged ahead.

We came to the point where the secret roadway was cut by the opening through which Wardy and I bad first entered it from beneath when in considerable more distress of mind than now, and through it Morgano turned.

“This will merely lead us down to that hole beneath the shelf of rock where I first landed; the place above the chasm,” I said, thinking that our leader might have made a mistake.

“I know,” he replied quietly, still advancing. “We must go to that very spot.”

We came to it at last and turned to the place where the two flights of steps branched upward, each, as we had learned, leading to the great stone pillars that had once supported the suspended bridge, and stopped.

“This must be the place,” he said, and took from his pocket a leaf torn from his notebook which he consulted under the light of his torch. He read it slowly to himself, and then flared his light about him as if his eyes were seeking some certain mark.

“Ah,” he said softly, “this is it!” and pointed at a small tablet apparently carved into the face of the living rock. “According to the key tablets in the temple it required the presence and efforts of three high priests to either enter or emerge from the secret passages leading downward.”

“Admirable plan!” said Wardy. “Kept any one man from looting the company vaults. Sort of a safe-deposit system, eh? Shows they didn’t thoroughly trust one another when it was built.”

“Perhaps,” was all the response the doctor made regarding that particular, and again consulted his paper as if to make certain that he had made no mistake. “Hallewell, you go up the right-hand flight of steps and stand on the fifth from the bottom. Wardrop, you go up the left-hand flight and stand on the seventh from the bottom. Neither of you must leave there until I call. Now, we shall see if my interpretation was correct.”

I felt the stone give slightly beneath my feet, and would have leaped from it had it lowered an inch more, but was restrained from removing my weight by the thought that past experience of antique mechanisms had invariably proved that they were based on counterbalances. Wardy afterward told me that his experience and thoughts were the same. Beneath us, where Doctor Morgano was stationed, we heard a dull, grating noise, as of long-unused levers shitting, then there was a sharp click, and his voice called us downward. The apex containing the tablet, that mass of seemingly undisturbed and natural rock in place, a mass that must have weighed many tons, had shifted upward, exposing an opening fully the size of an ordinary commodious doorway. Steps led downward from it and on either side was a huge chambered recess filled with great levers and carefully adjusted weights, some of which swung slightly like great pendulums barely disturbed. Beams of stone that in themselves weighed many hundredweight crossed in intricate but orderly array, all designed by some ancient master engineer who must have been a genius of equilibration.

Before venturing farther Wardy asked: “Hadn’t we better make certain that we can get out by blocking this door open?”

“I doubt if it could be done with anything at hand,” replied the doctor, “and, furthermore, I think I have correctly interpreted the directions for opening it if it did close. No, I think we can safely risk its remaining open. Come, let us go downward.”

We descended at least a hundred steps, then entered a natural rift or cavern that steeply inclined for a considerable distance the foot of this incline we came to a tunnel made by man, a second flight of a hundred steps, then to another turning that led into a second cleft whose floor was steeply inclined for a considerable distance before it reached a level where the character of the walls on one side altered. It was as if there had originally been an arched groove made by nature that had on its outer, or open side, been walled in with enormous blocks of carefully cut stone. It ran nearly a half circle and was ventilated by narrow slits. Looking into these with our electric torches we saw that the wall must have been at least ten feet in thickness, and we surmised that on the other side was the floor of the chasm, fully four hundred feet below the place where the bridge had been suspended.

Another door barred our way, but it was left half open. We wondered why, for it also was supplied with a locking mechanism. We pulled it open without difficulty, entered, and paused in astonishment.

We stood in a great chamber whose floor, sides, and arched roofs were actually made of bricks of gold, shining dully and reflecting the rays of our electric torches. In the center of this chamber, seated in state, was an exact replica in gold of the god Icopan, resting, as did the god of the temple, with its hands on its knees and its head bent slightly forward as if scrutinizing any who entered. The sole difference was that this image was but fifteen feet in height, and its eyes and ornaments were of roughly cut gems. Yet its eyes, a pair of rose-cut diamonds of large size, flashed reflections from the light of our torches and here again the effect was malignant, or accusing, as one might imagine. Wardy and I had been staring upward as if fascinated by those eyes, when we heard the doctor’s voice.

“This explains why the door was left open,” he said, and we saw that he was stopping above something at the foot of the statue.

We advanced to his side and saw that, chained with a chain of gold that had evidently been welded about its waist was the skeleton of a man. Engraved deeply into a tablet attached to the chain was the record of the man’s misdeed, which the doctor was deciphering.

“It gives the man’s name and the date when he was brought here for punishment,” he said, then paused and read some more and again spoke aloud. “He was one of the keepers of the treasure, and this temple, and evidently betrayed his trust, for the last sentence is: “Here, chained to the feet of the great god Icopan, with food and water for but one period of the moon, he is left to meditate over his sacrilegious sin of theft.’”

“Ugh! Nice sort of death,” said Wardy. “Probably the poor devil couldn’t stand association with so much wealth without wanting some of it. But why the open door?”

“To prevent him from smothering to death. This place is doutbless [sic] airtight. Moreover, this date is important, as it is—let me think—ummmh—it would be just about three months before the last priest died of the plague there in the Great Temple, and they were too occupied with death to ever return and lock the door to this place.”

I’m not, as I have said, at all imaginative, but I stood there for a moment trying to conjecture this poor wretch’s temptations, crime, and slow and suffering end. I could fancy his being in a panic of fear when on every hand the Mayas, young and old, were dropping dead, preparations for deserting the Sacred City under way, and some opportunity thrusting itself upon him for at least providing for his own future in case he, too, fled with the others. Alone he probably could never regain entrance to this underground storehouse, being but a sharer of the secret and but part possessor thereof. What had he stolen? It could not have been gold, for that would have been too heavy to carry, and again it was probably of far less value to the ancient Maya that jewels, which must have been rare. It stimulated my thoughts in a new direction.

“We might dig out this idol’s eyes and that necklace he has set in his chest, and get away with at least a few bricks,” I said, determined that I would not leave that entire store of wealth behind and go forth empty handed. “What do you suggest, doctor?” I asked, turning my light toward the savant.

He was leaning against the base of the image and, with his electric torch held under his arm, studying his notebook. He did not immediately answer, but now turned and walked to the door. He bent over and counted the rows of golden tile from the bottom upward until his hand stopped at the twelfth row. Then he carefully counted along that until he had reached what must have been about the thirtieth in that line, and putting the heel of his hand against it threw his weight forward. Nothing happened. By the light of his torch I could see that he was nonplused.

“It should move,” he said. “Perhaps I counted incorrectly.”

Again he repeated his count, beginning at the door, and again he achieved no result. He pressed all the surrounding bricks, while Wardy and I stood solicitously behind him. He again consulted his notes and said: “Twelfth row from the bottom, the thirtieth from the door on the side of the sun. That would mean the left-hand side according to the Maya term. Perhaps it’s the opposite side in this case.”

Hopefully we went to the opposite side and repeated the performance, and again accomplished nothing.

“Dear me!” said the doctor, suddenly sitting down on the lower step of the pedestal bearing the image, and removing his hat and scratching his head, while Wardy proceeded phlegmatically to trim the wick of the lantern he carried. “Dear me! I must have been careless in copying the tablet up in the head of the great effigy, or else careless in copying down the translation from my memoranda. You see—I was so much more interested in the other tablets than in those pertaining to treasure that I How stupid of me!”