The Glyphs/Chapter 9

At some time, when the road was at its best, it had been bordered with low walls and deep gutters. Where the growth had broken the walls and in places filled the gutters with an accumulation of débris, the watercourses had cut new channels and here and there the jungles had actually cut completely across the road; but for the greater part it was in good condition. On either hand were still visible the marks of intensive agriculture or horticulture in the shape of fairly preserved terraces, indicating that the population had at one time been so dense as to necessitate the use of every foot of arable soil. Here and there through jungle openings could be seen ruins of what had been stately homes, and nothing save his intense desire to reach the shores of the lake restrained the doctor from halting to investigate these.

“If ever we turn him loose in here,” Wardy muttered to me with a grin, “we’ll never catch him again without a lot of work; so if he says anything we must do all we can to keep him moving. Eh?”

“He’ll not stop until he reaches those temples, or whatever they are,” I said. “But after that”

“The biggest job will be to get him to leave. We may have to run a blockade and starve him into submission,” Wardy finished hopefully.

“Not with all that stuff growing wild around here,” I remarked, pointing to a grove of wild banana plants.

But as for the doctor, he rode silently ahead with his nose turning from side to side, birdlike in quickness, for all the world like some old rook seeking a nesting place or something to steal. As we approached the shores of the lake we discovered, to our gratification, that the drive widened and at the edge of the water it formed an esplanade so broad that not even the jungle had been able to mar it. Moreover, there were rows of fine, solid buildings facing the lake as if keeping watch over the island in the center. So well constructed were these that most of them appeared intact. Many of them had been two storied, and several had imposing porticos upheld by monolithic pillars. The roofs of stone were almost as perfect as on the day they had been built, save that nearly all were green with moss, and on some, where by chance vagrant seeds had lodged, stunted trees had found growth as if bent on covering man’s handiwork. We halted and looked about us.

“We had better seek a house that is best preserved,” said Ixtual, breaking the silence that had fallen upon all of us.

“Sounds sensible,” said Wardy, and we dismounted and began our explorations.

“That one over there seems the largest,” said Benny, pointing to one near by, and we moved toward it.

The steps leading up to its porch were hollowed in the center, as if worn by generations of feet, and one of the big stone pillars was cracked but still strongly supporting its burden of weight. The doctor was in advance and would have boldly entered had not Benny called to him:

“Is it not better to be careful lest there be poisonous serpents within?”

And the doctor hesitated with ridiculous quickness, being forever in terror of anything that crawled. But Benny’s fears proved groundless, for in that house we found nothing—positively nothing—alive. A strange feature this, when I come to think of it; for we entered other houses that were alive with venomous serpents, centipedes, and tarantulas. I observed that in these latter cases the walls of the houses, or the roofs, had given way and that the first marks of ruin might have been the signal for the advance of living jungle and desert pests. But the house we entered was still immune.

We stood in a large living room with stone window seats on which were fragments of rubbish that the doctor believed had at some time been cushions, although how he arrived at that conclusion I can not say. To me they were mere heaps of dirt and mold where rain had beaten through in wet seasons. A table of inlaid stone, one of a very few we ever found, and indicating that probably the customary household furniture was of wood, stood in the center of the room. Several carved stone projections, the ends of which were hook-shaped, suggested that at some time tapestries had been hung thereon as wall coverings. Bronze fixtures in the wall evidenced some method of holding lights. Upon a stone shelf were excellent examples of Maya ceramics. Over each of which the doctor rhapsodized. The floor was of inlaid stones of diverse colors formed into a pattern which seemed curiously prevalent in all the Maya decorative designs and was still, after all those ages, intact.

“Knew how to build for keeps, didn’t they?” said Wardy to me, pointing up at the stone rafters overhead that were like the wooden beams of an old Dutch tavern. “No jerry contractors in those days!”

“They certainly knew how to handle stone,” I agreed as we turned through a doorway leading to another room, leaving the doctor behind to fondle the jugs and vases on the shelf.

We found here a room that was nearly bare, and a door leading outward into a paved court, proving that the patio system of architecture was not confined to either the ancient Egyptian courts or to modern Spanish construction. This was bordered by about a dozen rooms, some of which were mere cubicles, and one larger than the rest in which were stone ovens, a huge bronze caldron, and in its exact center under a pile of broken stuff that might have some time been a chimney, what was evidently a fireplace for cooking. The court was rapidly reverting to the jungle, being open and exposed save for the surrounding porticoes.

We returned to the front of the building and found a staircase of stone up which we ascended with doubtful steps. We came into what might have been the sleeping chambers; for in each room we found carved cornices and decorations. In one room we found pathetic relics of some long-dead feminine industry—a few bronze knitting and crocheting needles not unlike those used by the mothers of our time, and in another on a ledge some tiny pots turned from marbles of different hues, proving that even in those far-off days femininity delighted in artificial adornment. A few more odd vases, some heaps of rubbish, accumulations of dust here and there, some lichen,, and that was all.

Despite the protests of the doctor, who wished us all to sift the rubbish we shoveled from the rooms, we fell to making them habitable for our needs, and by nightfall were comfortably ensconsed in our new quarters, commandeered from dead owners.

“I feel like one of the last men on earth,” declared Wardy that night when, after a meal, we walked out along that wide stone esplanade.

“And I, like one who is desecrating something, or trespassing—I’m not certain which,” I replied.

“What interests me most is what lies over yonder,” declared the doctor, pointing toward the mysterious island that, bathed in the summer moonlight of the tropics, shone clear, white, and still, in the midst of waters that were as unmoved as if cast from brilliant glass. We turned and looked at the monolithic stone residences facing the esplanade. The blackness of their windows and doorways were like calm, inscrutable eyes, watching our every movement and scorning us for the brevity of our lives while theirs were numbered by centuries.

“I don’t like it, sir,” wailed Benny in Arabic to Wardrop. “They are ghosts.”

“Nonsense! They are merely tenements to let,” Wardy rejoined; but I think I caught an inflection in his voice which indicated that he, too, had not entirely missed that peculiar feeling of superstition. Moreover, I noted that all of us seemed under some restraint of silence, that conversation lagged; that not even the sometimes voluble doctor had much to say, and that I for one was glad when we turned in.

On the following morning the doctor was apathetic. I first saw him in the bright sunshine out in front of this residence we had commandeered, staring, as if fascinated, at the island and its buildings that somehow seemed the key of all mysteries. It was as if he had lost all interest in that research which was accessible.

“We must get over there! We must!” he exclaimed when I spoke to him. “But how are we to do it? I must say that as a man in charge of an expedition, you have proved singularly shortsighted.”

“What’s the matter now?” I demanded. “What have I forgotten?”

“You should have brought a boat,” he said in all seriousness. “What are we to do without a boat?”

“Build a raft, man,” I replied in no very good humor. “It’s not more than a mile across to that island.”

“Sapristi! Wonderful! I never thought of that! A raft—that’s the thing!” he shouted with an enthusiasm that convinced me he had expressed the truth.

“All right!” he exclaimed again. “Come on. Let’s build it and get across there. How—how does one build a raft? I never saw one.”

He learned how, all right, in that forenoon when, under the sage advice of Ixtual, we cut logs of a lightness that would float, and sweated and dragged and hauled them out of that poisonous wilderness where heat, gnats, thorns, vines, and an occasional snake made the job anything but a holiday. But no one worked harder than the doctor, after all, so complaints are unwarranted. Fortunately, I had brought three or four of the simplest tools with us, including an auger; we had spikes, and by that night we had our raft completed, after which by lantern light inside our quarters we laboriously hewed out our sweeps.

When we awoke, prepared to venture, a gentle breeze was blowing so favorably for our purpose that we stepped a crude mast and with tent canvas for sail made our final preparations to embark. We loaded food and supplies aboard, left our animals in their improvised stalls with sufficient food and water to last for at least two or three days, barricaded them in lest some jaguar scenting prey emerge from the wilderness, and, for the first time in days as merry as a party of boys, cast off. No argonauts in quest of adventure ever set sail with more ardor. True, our voyage was not long, but it flavored so much of assailing the unknown that it was enjoyable. From some recess of his brain Wardy elicited an old piratical song that he bellowed hoarsely as he and Benny labored at one of the long sweeps. The breeze assisted us mightily and our raft made great progress.

“There’s a quay ahead to the right,” called the doctor, who alone did no work and had an unobstructed view from the bows of our raft.

“Aye, aye, sir! Point to starboard it is!” bawled Wardy, as if he were taking orders.

And slowly we crept forward until it was decided best to lower our sail and inspect what lay ahead of us. We had hoped vaguely, I think, for some sign of human occupation; but there, even more than on the mainland, was lifelessness. A broad and noble quay ascended from the water’s edge by a splendid and impressive flight of a hundred steps, very like some I had seen in Odessa. On each side were ornate columns covered with hieroglyphics and surmounted by huge bowls that may have been used for fires or for plants. We remained uncertain which, although the doctor said he doubted not that they had been used for both. We moored our raft and landed.

“Now,” said the doctor briskly, “I must decipher these inscriptions at once.”

“You can stop here if you wish,” said Wardy, “but as for me, I’m going to see if there’s a pub, or a cinema show in this place. By the way, what’s its name? Have you found that out yet?”

The doctor somewhat sulkily said he hadn’t, and then decided that perhaps he might accomplish more by remaining with us. So together we climbed that long flight of steps, then halted at the top overcome by the stateliness of our surroundings.

The tops of the steps were flanked by two great obelisks and beyond lay a horseshoe-shaped plaza a full hundred yards across. It was entirely bordered by one great low, massive building with a deep portico in front supported by columns that were square and were completely sculptured with hieroglyphics. The columns were without capitals and the roof deep and flat, giving an impression of great solidity. The edge of the roof was without cornices, but this, projecting beyond its supporting columns, was also entirely sculptured with historical scenes. The portico was fully thirty feet in depth. The entire plaza was paved with a mosaic so smooth and firm that not even a seed of grass had found lodgment thereon, and, cleaned by wind, sun, and dew, it was as if it had been garnished for our coming. At the upper end of this great space, and directly opposite us, where in a horseshoe would be found the Central caulk, the structure assumed greater importance not unlike the Pantheon save that we could see through its center where a great arch opened toward whatever lay behind.

“There’s glyphs enough on those columns, Doctor Morgano, to keep you busy for a year,” said Wardy, not without a slight tinge of irony. “And just take a look at the sculpture on the edge of that roof! Battles, priests, vestal virgins, plain hoi-polloi and proletariat; kings, iduanas, chiefs, and high muck-a-mucks by the thousand. But not a horse in sight. Nothing but bullocks, llamas, and”

“Llamas? What? Where?” demanded the doctor in a frenzy of excitement, and then on these being pointed out said, gravely: “Most important discovery! Most important! Shows the possibility of this civilization and that of Peru being akin. I congratulate you on this very important find.” And then he rushed over to Wardrop and seized his hand and shook it vigorously. “In my notes you shall have credit for this, sir. You shall, on the word of Paolo Morgano!”

"Er—er—thanks!” replied Wardy, somewhat overcome. “Hadn’t we better get on with the work?”

Ixtual, impatient with delay, followed by Benny, had already started away from us toward the main building and archway, and we followed, the doctor in the rear and constantly looking over his shoulder, as if fearing that those records upon the columns might vanish. He moved with great reluctance while the others led with impatient eagerness. Through the archway we came to a long narrow quadrangle, paved like the great place we had first invaded and surrounded by buildings which were evidently either minor temples or the abode of priests, guards, or priestesses.

The great avenue led onward to spaces where isolated buildings lifted themselves somberly from smooth rocks so destitute of soil and moisture that all the original vegetation with which it may have been clothed had died for want of nourishment.

We decided the island must originally have been a barren mass of rock cut and shaped and terraced to suit its occupants’ tastes, and there were evidences that in its past days of glory artificial gardens had been cultivated with an extraordinary amount of labor and care. But for these we had at that moment scant thought, for the great road now led upward to the peak we had seen from the mainland, the peak that proved to be partly artificial and partly natural and which was crowned by the greatest structure of all, the one that we afterward referred to as the Great Temple.

The reason for the peculiar and beautiful whiteness of this hill was now visible; for, from bottom to top, it was overlaid, as were the Egyptian pyramids when originally constructed, with marble so smooth and perfectly joined and fitted as to form practically a solid shell. But here no vandals had stripped it away or marred its symmetry. It was intact, impregnably defying the elements and time.

We gazed at it in awe, thinking of the hundreds of years required for its making; of the tens of thousands of men who had toiled upon its creation in those distant ages when this was the most densely populated and most highly civilized portion of the earth.

“This,” said Ixtual to me with a wave of his hands and arms, “was the work of my people. And yet white men call us today ‘poor Indians!’ and deride us, and—hire us as laborers. To such low state have my people fallen. And this”—and again he made that eloquent, impressive gesture—“tells of what we were!”

Steadily we ascended, pausing now and then to look back on the roofs of temples and buildings beneath, and at the watchful and far-lined row of buildings across the lake from whence we had embarked on our raft. Wardy and I once picked out the place from which we had first sighted this island, and fancied we could descry the opening of the great cavern from which the white highway sprang. Miles distant it now was, but we felt that we knew it well. The twin peaks in all their grandeur, towered high above us all as a lasting landmark; as if they still stood sentry though all men they had watched and guarded were dead,

And so, in time, ever climbing, we reached to the Great Temple. We came to the great flat place whereon it stood, a square made on the mountain top, paved, guarded by stone walls, and on whose four sides the multitude of a people might have assembled when priestly kings wished to speak, or when unkingly priests might wish to preach. An enormous structure it was and doubtless still is, impressive for its size alone, impressive again because it appeared the embodiment of power, of rule, of organization, and of the ideals of a race. We had called it the Great Temple, and unwittingly we had named it well. For on earth there are but few such monuments as this to races, living or lost.

We entered it as might men overawed by its prodigious significance. Our alien boot heels ringing upon its sacred floors sounded profane. Its great arches and groins and spaces seemed to frown upon us pygmies who had thus dared to enter it after all its long rest in solitude. We drew closer into a group as if seeking the strength of human companionship in this peculiarly dignified awfulness of desertion. Colossal stone statues of dead emperors, priests, rulers, and kings frowned upon us; scores of them sitting in state as we walked through toward the center of this Valhalla. And there, in the very center of all, in a spacious place where lesser gods were represented, we found an effigy, idol, or presentation, as one may decide, of what was probably Icopan, supreme god of the Maya race—perhaps of the Aztecs, of the Quichuas, and so on down to those Incas of the southern continent for whom, alike, this may have been the sacred shrine, the mecca of their faith!

Upon a base twenty feet high and fifty square towered that unequaled image, seated, squat and stern, and the sun rays of its crown were full eighty feet above us. It leaned forward in the attitude of that famous piece of sculpture by Rodin, “The Thinker.” It looked down upon us, and in its somber face and contemplative stare there seemed the mystery of all the ages combined; the aloof wisdom and sternness of a veritable divinity. It sat beneath a circular opening in the apex of the domed roof as if enthroned in a place upon which the sun might shine. It was as if we, unannounced, stood at the feet of a living god.

For a moment we stood spellbound and then Doctor Morgano, as if unable to restrain his curiosity, sprang forward, and upon a structure not unlike a pulpit, where, I suppose, the high priest of the Mayas stood when delivering an edict. I saw that he was intent on reading a single glyph above it, and he turned his back toward us and lifted both hands as if to catch a projection and pull himself upward for a better view. His fingers were almost catching hold when there was a single scream as of a man in terror, and Ixtual had thrown himself upon the stone pavement, groveling, crying, and uttering what I surmise were appeals for pardon. Somehow his cries broke the spell and I ran to him and lifted him up, solicitous for his sanity. Wardrop hurried to my assistance and caught his other arm.

“Stop it! Stop, Ixtual!” he shouted, his great voice roaring and rebounding from the hollows about us. “Don’t be a fool!”

And then he lifted and shook him as a terrier might a rat. Suddenly he laid him down again and then, bending forward above him said, in a quiet voice: “We’d better carry him out. The poor devil has fainted. Give us a hand, Hallewell. This won’t do at all.”

I hastened to assist him, and we bore the Maya out to that broad terrace, where from a pocket flask we trickled brandy down his throat until he revived, and, weak and helpless, sat up and leaned his head in the hollow of my arm.

Was it superstition, or something else, that prevented him from ever again entering the Great Temple? I cannot answer. But this I know, that he never did. And if it was merely superstition inherited, why was it that from that hour neither Beni Hassa Azdul nor Juan, the humble muleteer, could ever again be induced to step beyond these frowning portals? Again I cannot answer. But, again, they never did. It seems incredible that a mere thing of sculptured stone should have such an effect upon men, yet upon these three the effect was produced and permanently remained.