The Web of the Sun (Adventure Magazine, 1922)/Chapter 6

T REQUIRED ten, perhaps twelve, minutes for Gogoma's information that no man had ever escaped from Motobatl really to register on Lassiter. A sort of shocked questioning formed in the New Yorker's mind. He felt he had not heard distinctly.

“No man ever got out?”

“Your kinsman failed, señor.”

“And no one else tried?”

“No one.”

Lassiter stared at the head set down in the immense shoulders. The promoter drew in a breath to ask if there were any way to communicate with New York. The query was too idle. He let the air out softly.

The ponderous brown man waddled on into a grove of immense trees. It was really a jungle partially cleared of undergrowth. In some places were park-like clearances canopied with leaves, hung with and columned by those huge and grotesque boles into which trees contort when forced by the perpetual stimulus of an equatorial sun.

Here a paddlewood flung out radial but tresses twenty or thirty feet from the huge core of the tree. There a kind of palm piled up a series of swollen nodules. A banyan drove a hundred piles into the earth; a ceiba flung out a hollow circle of wood that preempted the space of a city lot. A hot, green smell filled the air, bird shrieks and the whine of insects. Gnats flew into Gogoma and drowned themselves.

For about an hour the great fleshy blob of a man led the way among the foot paths and at last paused before a huge tree so much like a baobab that Lassiter believed it to be one. The vegetation about the tree was worn smooth, and a kind of mud oven stood to one side. Red peppers and some big drying calabashes were hung up on the outside.

The place smelled of garlic. A fairly large hole, squared into a door by human labor led into the hollow trunk. Gogoma drummed on this entrance and waited. Came a shuffling from the interior and a moment later a baggy old woman appeared in the opening.

Gogoma made a gesture of salutation; the fat of his arm swayed and dripped.

“A kinsman of yours, Prymoxl. He has come to inquire about your grandfather, who was his great-grandfather.”

“A kinsman—” She looked at Lassiter out of rather fine old eyes set in a sadly withered face.

“A cousin of yours, your primo."

“How did he get here?”

“Over the cliff, as your grandfather came, Prymoxl, and he already speaks of going back as your grandfather spoke—you can talk to him yourself. I commend him to your care.”

The woman approached Lassiter curiously, and when she came quite close, he saw, after all, she was not aged. She had the withered sagginess of women whom the tropic sun has forced into intense fruition, and swifter. Indeed, in her decay, she retained traces of her fugitive blossoming.

Her eyes were finely set; her ears maintained their delicacy of design; her hair was more finely spun than that of the unmixed Indians. All this, no doubt, harked back to that Spanish ancestor who dropped by a miracle into Motobatl a hundred and fifty years ago, and today gave Lassiter a spurious claim to her kinship.

The old woman shrugged as Lassiter appraised her shapelessness.

“I am afraid, señor, you will find little of your blood in my veins.”

“Kinship lies in the heart, señora," flattered the agent of the Stendill lines.

It pleased her.

“I am a Spaniard here.” She tapped her withered breast. “Do you see in me the sister you seek, primo (cousin)?”

There was a kind of raillery in her cackle.

“I only hope I am not disappointing, señora."

The old crone quacked in laughter, came closer with that familiarity a sense of kinship lends, seized his arm and drew it about her waist.

“Behold us, Gogoma,” she paraded in ironic gaiety, “brother and sister from a line of brave men and beautiful señoras!"

She shook with laughter at her own satire, and the American perceived with surprize that his shapeless companion was again about to become a mother.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Sister Prymoxl,” quoted Birdsong with comforting intent.

The old baggage ceased laughing abruptly at this kindly meant apology for her ugliness.

“Primo, your criado (servant) is insolent.”

Gogoma smoothed her temper over with a massive gesture.

“I begged you to preserve your wonderful beauty, Prymoxl, just as I ask you to preserve Tilita's loveliness. She is as like her beautiful grandmother as two

He wagged his fat jowls and said in a different key:

“What I came for, señora, was to show you your kinsmen. I have them a sleeping place, and you can send their fare.”

The crone turned with the duty of a kinswoman in her manner.

“Surely, señores, my daughter Tilita will bring your cena (supper).”

Lassiter began the usual protest; Prymoxl smothered it with the usual generosity. It was no trouble. The pot was boiling. Tilita would be curious to see her fair, tall kinsman. She would need some excuse for coming to see the señores. She was a pretty child, quite a

“How many children have you, señora?”

She cast up her fine black eyes at the leaves and fell into a calculation. After some computing and silent nods of the head, she

“This will be my sixteenth, señor.”

Lassiter did a little problem of his own. She had been married sixteen years. So she was thirty or thirty-one years old—this ancient creature, while he, Lassiter, her youthful kinsboy, was thirty-nine. There was something grotesque about it. To say something he

“Do they all live with you, señora?”

“Only one is here in Motobatl, primo.”

The agent dropped his small talk and became alert. “Where do the others live?”

“My others—my thirteen—” the hag glanced at Gogoma, then raised her eyes to the glitter of light high up in the baobab top—“why my fourteen little ones are in the sun, primo.”

“The sun,” repeated Lassiter blankly.

“Si, primo, my fourteen niñas (babies) are in the sun.”

This queer statement left the promoter out of the small change of conversation. He couldn't get his mind back to trifles. Gogoma told the hag where he meant to bed his guests, and the four men presently made their adieus.

HE place Gogoma had in mind proved to be a paddlewood tree not far from Prymoxl's abode. Its radial buttresses looked like a dark cone spread under a cloud of verdure. Nearer they saw that thin partitions divided the space around the trunk into eight triangular cubicles. Gogoma evidently had passed, word by the hunchback of the newcomers' arrival, for these cubicles were already furnished.

Mats of yellow nipa cloth were over the earthen floors. Jars carved out of the porous lava sat full of water, and a slow transpiration kept the liquid chilled. Hammocks swung across the acute interior angles of the triangles.

Overhead, on top of the thin buttresses, stretched another roll of matting that could be loosed by pulling a string and would roll down and form a roof. Even a jar of flowers, on a little table, garnished each of these al fresco apartments. The whole ensemble held a Japanese simplicity and charm.

Gogoma introduced his guests to their compartments with much polite quivering on his part and many protests of satisfaction on theirs, and presently took himself off, looking like nothing so much as a huge jelly man that had spewed out of the tap root of some tree in this fantastic forest.

The Stendill agent chose the cubicle on the western side of the tree in order not to be awakened by the morning sun. Birdsong and Nunes piled their Bible packs in the colporteur's cubicle which lay toward the south.

As Lassiter made his little house-keeping arrangements, he could hear his companions talking through the thin partitions.

They were discussing whether Gogoma was the man who had killed their mules. The Colombian thought he was, and that he had said there was no way out of the crater in order to prove an alibi. Birdsong thought that Gogoma may have been miraculously translated to the rim to slay the mules in order to bring down the blessings of the gospel on Motobatl. Nunes cleared his throat at this. Birdsong inquired rather sharply if he doubted God could perform this miracle.

“No doubt He could,” agreed the Colombian after a pause, “but it is easier for me to believe the old yellow bag's a liar. You see, Señor Birdsong,” he added apologetically, “I've seen so many more liars than I have miracles.”

“Then how did Gogoma get down that cliff right under our eyes, with his horse too?”

This rather empty discussion was interrupted by a girl coming through the forest with a platter balanced on her head. It sat her polished black hair without assistance from her hands, which were engaged with two jars. The thing most observable from a distance was the grace of her carriage, and a tight-fitting bodice of such luminous green that it seemed it must originate its own brilliance.

Closer, the Stendill agent saw that her face was of the vivid Spanish type, a sallow paleness against jet hair. Her cheek bones were rather high, and her lips were as scarlet and her eyes as black as her jacket was luminous.

Lassiter got up out of his hammock, knowing quite well it was Prymoxl's daughter, and annoyed with himself because he had forgot her name. He stood on the nipa mat, thinking hard, trying not to subject the girl to the slight inhospitality of having to make herself known, when Nunes came out of the southern cubicle making a deep bow.

“Señorita Tilita,” he gushed, “allow me to present my fortunate comrades, Señor Don Carlos Lassiter, Señor Don Ezekiel Birdsong, and lastly, your servant, Dom Pedro Porforio Balthasar Nunes, late muleteer of Quito, now by the grace of the Virgin, a fellow citizen of Motobatl with yourself—allow me to relieve your burden.”

He was quite close to her when he finished this harangue, replaced his sombrero and lifted the platter from her head.

The girl seemed rather abashed at such an ornate introduction. She said simply:

“I am Tilita—”

Then glancing from one to the other, she asked of

“Are you my kinsman, señor?”

Nunes laughed:

“No, señorita, this caballero has not a drop of Spanish blood in his veins. Now I am of Castillian descent, I am your real”

It had been Lassiter's intention all along to disaffirm the extraordinary kinship thrust upon him by Gogoma. This seemed a most natural opportunity. Therefore, he rather surprized himself a moment later by bending over the girl's hand, pressing it warmly and saying—

“I cannot express how pleased I am to greet my prima.”

When Birdsong was presented he greeted her as “sister Tilita,” so the girl must have received a mixed idea of her relationship.

HE mestizo girl placed her platter on the little table ip Lassiter's cubicle, and the three men sat on the nipa rug eastern fashion. The plat du jour was a baked fish garnished with some sort of transparent red berries of just the required sourness. Maize bread accompanied the fish. Around this were grouped tamarinds, kumquats, bread fruit, melons and a jar of cow-tree juice, that queer sap that reproduces exactly a very rich dairy milk.

It was Tilita's task to collect this sap for seven families living near Prymoxl's baobab. Bearing jars of arbol de vaca sap on her head had given the girl her splendid fluent walk.

“Where are the cow-trees?” inquired Lassiter.

“Down by the lake, primo, near the web of the sun.”

“What is that?” inquired the promoter curiously.

“The place of sacrifice to the sun, primo.”

Lassiter paused in peeling a tamarind with an odd sense of pleasure in the fact that this vivid girl worshiped the sun. The faith seemed to complement her shining green jacket which was made of feather-work.

Birdsong put down a calabash of cow-tree milk and straightened.

“Sister Tilita,” he began in his solemn drawl, “I hope you do not offer sacrifices to the

The girl's dark eyes widened.

“Señor, I could not refuse my gifts and prayers to one who gives me life and food and

Birdsong arose.

“My dear sister,” he cried, “the true God has sent you a messenger—just wait a moment” He turned and started for his own cubicle.

This turn of affairs disturbed Lassiter oddly. He got to his feet with a word of excuse to his hostess and followed the colporteur. He found him getting into his Bible packs. The Stendill agent stood by, a little at loss what he wanted to do. He cleared his throat and began

“Eh—Birdsong, don't you think we'd better go over this matter carefully before beginning your work?”

The colporteur looked up at him astonished.

“You!”

“Y-Yes, don't you think we'd better plan this carefully before starting our actual missionary campaign?”

“That's not what Philip told the Ethiopian, Brother Lassiter.”

“Perhaps not. I—I don't exactly recall what Philip did tell the Ethiopian, but this Tilita is a girl. She might get a garbled account of what you tell her, spread it and prejudice a great many important persons against the true religion to start with.”

“The Good Book says a little child shall lead them, Brother Lassiter.”

“Yes, yes, that may be true,” agreed the promoter, annoyed by the ease with which Birdsong sniped him with these quotations, “but doesn't it say—lemme see, doesn't it say something about taking counsel together—” He looked appealingly to Birdsong to pilot him through unfamiliar waters.

The, colporteur hesitated—

“Well, the Bible does say take ye counsel one with another—” he laid down his packs uncertainly—“I want to do what's right, Brother Lassiter.”

The Stendill agent drew a breath of relief—

“I know you do, Birdsong—so do I,” he added as an afterthought.

Charles Lassiter was surprized at the sudden opposition that had risen up in him against Birdsong's attack on the girl's faith. In reality, it was the artist in the promoter striving to prevent Birdsong from spoiling the picture. The thought of this warm, vivid girl kneeling to a tropical sun was a harmony in violent values. It warmed Lassiter's heart like a draft of rum.

As the two returned empty-handed to the dinner, Lassiter was saying a little

“We'll go over these plans carefully—this is a day of specialization—want to make a success”

As they walked into the western cubicle. Nunes was showing the girl the withered spot on his neck and was saying:

“—and my dying thought, señorita, was that a beautiful arbol-de-vaca gatherer was stooping over me, lifting me, pressing me to her bosom with fiery kisses when my camarado beat off the vampire with a club and saved my life!”

Tilita shivered and touched the withered spot with the tip of her finger.

“How fortunate for you, señor!”

“Fortunate! Fortunate!” cried Balthasar, leaning toward her. “Señorita, to continue such a dream of such a girl, I would give the vampire the last drop of my blood. I never forgave my camarado for waking me. I wish now some

“Oh, señor!”

“Indeed I do!”

Tilita's face was flushed when the Americans interrupted the tête-à-tête. A little later the girl took her platter and jars to go home. Balthasar sprang up and relieved her of all her burdens and went with her.

Lassiter watched them walk away with clear-cut distaste. It seemed odd that the girl did not see through the absurdity of Balthasar's tales and the grossness of his flattery. He attributed to the girl his own sensitiveness. In fact, a man always sees a reflection of his own qualities in any woman he admires. A man's love is about two-thirds self-esteem.

The satisfying dinner and the hush of noon sent the promoter back to his cubicle and into his hammock. Lassiter had been too long in South America not to have adopted the luxury of the siesta.

When he returned into the hammock he saw the hooks were of silver, and the ropes of the same silken colloidal material that was used by their assailant on the rim of the abyss. Another cord of the same stuff was attached to the bole of the tree. He was to use this to swing himself. He took it and began to oscillate gently.

He meant to think out the endless conundrums his situation imposed upon him.—Where were Prymoxl's fourteen children?—Had Gogoma or any of his men climbed up on the cliff to slay their mules?—All of this suggested there was a secret road out of Motobatl.—He was vaguely ashamed of having stopped Birdsong in his effort to proselyte Tilita.—He yawned.—If there were no escape from Motobatl, such a girl as Tilita would greatly ameliorate

Overhead stretched the green gloom of the paddlewood, through which penetrated a ray or two of noon-tide fulgor. He stared hazily up into the green caverns. The leaves nearest him were green-black against luminous yellow-greens farther aloft.

An insect hummed somewhere, and presently he saw it above him. It was a steely blue fly that poised so steadily he could see the articulations between its head and thorax and abdomen. It lowered itself very gently until it touched a tassel of the hammock spread over Lassiter's breast. Then it flashed upward with a zing, as if the devil of insects had pounced at it. This odd play aroused a sleepy curiosity in Lassiter's mind. This changed to a thought of Tilita kneeling to the sun. Next moment he slept.

HEN the promoter awoke, the sun was deep in the west. Weariness from his climb and a good dinner had kept him asleep longer than usual. He turned out briskly, with an odd sense of having some sort of engagement. He washed his head and neck in the water and arranged his tie by peering down at his reflection in the jar. He was meticulous with the tie. A little later he set out at a brisk stride toward old Prymoxl's baobab.

When he came in sight of the crone, she was sitting in front of her tree home with a mass of vicuna wool under her arm, spinning it into thread. She worked automatically with her eyes fixed in the direction of the declining sun. Lassiter was quite upon her before she observed his coming. Then she turned with a little start out of some reverie.

“Ah, primo,” she mumbled, “it is you.”

“Are you alone, señora?” 

“Oh, no, primo, I was just watching my niñas go to rest.”

“Your niñas?”

“My fourteen.”

“I thought they had gone”

“They are in the sun, primo.” She fixed her eyes on the sunset again. “I know they are signaling to me now with their little hands.”

As Lassiter listened, the old woman's faith translated itself into his sympathy. She was really watching her fourteen children sink to rest in a world of gold. They were as real to her as his own person standing beside her. He started to ask her how they had died when she continued:

“I am an old woman, primo, and my beauty has gone, but I had no heart. Sunrise and sunset meant nothing to me until my niñas were taken from me.”

There came a pause. In his heart, Lassiter was surprized and moved at the naturalness and simplicity of the old crone's faith. It seemed neither strange nor exotic, but a most natural tenet for so simple a soul. Presently he inquired the way to the arbol de vaca forest. Prymoxl pointed the path toward the lake and returned to her maternal brooding on the sunset. Lassiter walked on quickly, and with a certain sense of buoyancy and pleasure that was unwonted.

Within half an hour the American had reached the lake, a considerable expanse of water with three or four reedy islands dotting its surface. Far down the lake one of those reed boats, or bolsas, such as Lassiter had seen on Lake Titicaca, trailed a long golden “V” across the purple mirror. In the sunset, the naked torso of the fisherman looked like a little copper figure leaning back and forth at the oars.

Toward the extreme east, the lake narrowed to a stream and flowed apparently straight into the eastern escarpment of the crater.

The whole scene, the lake, the duplication in its depth of the encircling palisades, and the glittering peaks beyond, brought the promoter a keen sense of his own frustration. What an ironic end for his expedition—imprisoned by the magnificence he sought!

A point of royal palms extended from the forest to the water's edge some little distance down the beach, and Lassiter strolled toward them, attracted by the nervous beauty of the trees. When he rounded this point, he saw straight on ahead of him, carved in the face of the eastern rampart, the façade of an enormous temple.

He stood looking at it quite astounded. It was the teocalla, the temple of the sun, of which Gogoma had spoken-. The whole mile-high cliff had been wrought into a vast columniation, crowned by an immense entablature. The natural stripe in the crater had been seized on by the architect and carved into a frieze of colossal proportions.

The interior of the cliff evidently had been hollowed by immense labors because the façade was penetrated by circular-rayed windows, thus introducing the sun motif into architecture. Between the vast columns arose a maze of heroic figures, foliage, geometrical designs in high relief. It reminded Lassiter of the triumphal sculpture on the heights of Baghistan in Persia, or the cavern temples of Elephanta in Bombay harbor. However, this was on a mightier scale than those heroic works.

Only when Lassiter moved toward the did he fully realize its dimensions. He was more than a mile distant, yet the vast façade seemed to tower over his head. It arose in the sunset, a golden miracle. As he moved toward it, his utter inability to exploit this wonder in the currents of world travel filled him with gall. It sickened him. Right before his eyes stood the coup of all modern tourist agencies.

It meant millions, ease, luxury— The promoter flung out his arms in a kind of rage at his own helplessness— If he could just get one word to New York— He blew out his breath like a sick man and stood staring at the vast temple with a sagging face.

RESENTLY he became aware that some one was walking down the sand behind him. He turned and saw Balthasar Nunes and Tilita leading a young vicuna lamb by a cord. The girl evidently had seen Lassiter's gesture and heard his groan, for she called in a concerned

“Primo, what is the matter?”

Only after several moments did the promoter collect himself sufficiently to reply that it was nothing.

Tilita came over to him with sympathy in her eyes and the curve of her lips:

“Señor, I see the sunset brings sadness to you also. No doubt you have loved ones

She glanced toward the setting sun.

“I was thinking—” And then he grew ashamed of the covetousness of his thoughts and

“Are you going to the temple?”

“Si, señor."

“I will go with you.”

Tilita assented by a movement and turned to Nunes for the leading string of the young vicuna.

The Colombian stared, puzzled, at the maneuver.

“But, señorita, I thought you said no man could accompany you to the sacrifice!”

Tilita looked at Nunes surprized:

“I said only a kinsman, señor. He is my primo.”

''“Primo! Primo!”'' cried Balthazar with an amazed face. “Why he is not half so much a primo as I!”

“But he is! My madre said so!”

Nunes turned to the promoter.

“Señor, you are not going to poach on my preserves in an affair del corazon on such a pretext as being a primo!”

“My dear fellow,” said Lassiter in English, and rather amused, “I am doing nothing. I am simply standing

“Yes, but you permit it!” snapped the Colombian in the same tongue.

“But she wouldn't have let you go with her anyway,” smiled Lassiter.

“You can tell her you are not her primo!”

“And cause a señorita to lead her goat for herself? Do you think I am so unmanly?” Lassiter reached for the leading string, and it was surrendered him.

The Colombian whirled on his heel.

“Voy, señor, you insult me before my inamorata—and call yourself ''mi amigo! Mio Dios! What sort of a friend is it that seizes—that seduces your querida! Carramba!”''

Lassiter preserved a straight face with an effort.

“What are we going to do with this lamb, prima?” With a faint accent on the “prima” for Balthasar's benefit.

“It is to feed my brothers and sisters, primo.”

“Oh—the fourteen?”

“Si, primo,” said the girl solemnly.

The fitness of the girl's faith gave Lassiter a queer but intense satisfaction. It seemed as decorative mentally, as, physically, were the curves of her body or her fluent step. Nunes and his irritation faded from the promoter's mind.

They followed the sandy beach with the vicuna making little runs past them and being drawn up short by the cord. A small headland of stone broke the swing of the sand and projected out into the lake three or four hundred yards ahead of them. A stony, irregular path led from one of the entrances of the teocalla down to this head land.

This headland seemed to be Tilita's objective. When, presently, they walked up the little rise, Lassiter saw that it extended two arms out into the water and formed a small stony bay. Stretched over the bay, the New Yorker was sharply surprized to see a kind of fireman's circular net.

The whole inlet of water was not more than twenty-five feet wide. The net was moored to the rocks that formed a rough crescent about the bay. The supporting guys were glued to the stones and converged to a center like the spokes of a wheel.

Upon these guys were laid the woof of the net or hammock, circling round and round in ever increasing whorls. A certain geometrical precision about the hammock impressed Lassiter that great care had gone into its construction.

“Is that the web of the sun, prima?” asked the man curiously.

“Si, primo.” (Yes, cousin.)

“Now what do we do?”

“When the sun dips behind the cliff, primo, toss the lamb into the hammock.”

“Won't it fall out?”

“No, it will stick.”

Then Lassiter observed the glister of bird-lime on the central cords of the netting, similar to Gogoma's humming-bird trap. Such elaborate paraphernalia interested Lassiter. Then he turned to the girl and with a certain feeling of intimacy, began to delve into the intricacies of her curious faith.

“How will your brothers and sisters get the lamb, prima?”

“The boat of the sun will swim under the lake and take my offering,” explained the girl simply.

Lassiter continued his attentive attitude and the girl continued.

OU see, during the day, the sun climbs over the heavens on a great cord, such as you see in the web. By night it slides down behind Motobatl and sails under this lake and comes out in the teocalla. Now if my brothers and sisters in the sun are hungry, our sacrifice will vanish as the sun passes under the lake; but if they are not hungry, it will remain and the priests will eat it because it is holy meat.”

The New Yorker repressed a smile at this naive method of replenishing the sacerdotal table.

“When you toss the lamb in, primo,” went on the girl gravely, “kneel at once by me with your back to the hammock and your face to the sun and pray.”

“Yes, señorita.”

“That is very important,” she assured, large-eyed. “If you should see the god come out in the net, you would die.”

“Yes, prima.”

Tilita looked at the dipping sun.

“Now, primo”

And she knelt on the stones.

The American picked up the lamb with a queer sensation, at this, the first religious rite he had ever performed in his life. The pet vicuna lay in his arms and began nuzzling at his poncho after the fashion of lambs.

The little animal's trust sent a faint repugnance along his nerves at sacrificing it to Gogoma's table. He glanced around. The watery smell of the lake at evening, the deep orange note of the sunset over cliffs, and peaks and temple, the kneeling girl, brought a sort of wistful melting into Lassiter's breast.

There was no other human creature in sight except the small dark figure of Nunes far up the sand. They were alone. As the sun disappeared, Lassiter turned and tossed the lamb into the center of the net. The lime gripped it in a twisted attitude and held it immovable. It rested quietly, without a struggle. The man turned and knelt at Tilita's side.

He could faintly hear the girl whispering her vesper prayer. Her face wore the ecstatic expression that he had seen on the faces of Catholic girls in the Venezuelan cathedrals.

At that moment he heard a ripple in the water behind him. Surprize and curiosity pulled him about when Tilita's hands caught his face, covered his eyes and held his head against her shoulder. Her palms were small and firm and smelled of milk.

She held him in a flattering captivity for ten or fifteen seconds. Then came another rippling behind them. She loosed him with a shuddering breath. Her face was chalky against her black hair.

“Oh, my dear cousin,” she shivered, “how you frightened me! If you had moved, Pachacamac would have snatched you from me!”

Lassiter stared at the bloodless face. He arose a little nervously and helped her up. Then he looked into the web of the sun. It was empty. The lamb was gone.

When he raised his eyes, he saw darkness covered the mighty face of the teocalla, but out of its rayed windows poured a brilliancy as if the sinking sun had risen again inside the cliff. A veritable fountain of light beat outward from the interior. The round windows glared down on the man and the woman in the falling darkness. In a few minutes the light winked out as swiftly as it had sprung into being.