Hearts of Three 34
Many seconds they listened ere they heard it strike.
“Even that may not be the bottom,” Leoncia suggested. “It may have been
struck against some projection from the side and even lodged there.”
“Well, this will determine it,” Francis cried, seizing an ancient musket
from among the bones on the floor and preparing to drop it.
But the old man stopped him.
“The message of the sacred knots is: _whoso violates the nothingness
beneath the feet of Chia shall quickly and terribly die_.”
“Far be it from me to make a stir in the void,” Francis grinned, tossing
the musket aside. “But what are we to do now, old Maya man? From the
mouth of Chia to the ear of Hzatzl sounds easy——but how?—and what? Run
the sacred knots with thy fingers, old top, and find for us _how_ and
_what_.”
For the son of the priest, the peon with the frayed knees, the clock had
struck. All unaware, he had seen his last sun-rise. No matter what
happened this day, no matter what blind efforts he might make to escape,
the day was to be his last day. Had he remained on guard at the
cave-entrance, he would surely have been killed by Torres and Mancheno,
who had arrived close on his heels.
But, instead of so remaining, it entered his cautious, timid soul to
make a scout out and beyond for possible foes. Thus, he missed death in
the daylight under the sky. Yet the pace of the hands of the clock was
unalterable, and neither nearer nor farther was his destined end from
him.
While he scouted, Alvarez Torres and José Mancheno arrived at the
cave-opening. The colossal, mother-of-pearl eyes of Chia on the wall of
the cliff were too much for the superstition-reared Caroo.
“Do you go in,” he told Torres. “I will wait here and watch and guard.”
And Torres, with strong in him the blood of the ancient forebear who
stood faithfully through the centuries in the avenue of the mummy dead,
entered the Maya cave as courageously as that forebear had entered.
And the instant he was out of sight, José Mancheno, unafraid to murder
treacherously any living, breathing man, but greatly afraid of the
unseen world behind unexplainable phenomena, forgot the trust of watch
and ward and stole away through the jungle. Thus, the peon, returning
reassured from his scout and curious to learn the Maya secrets of his
father and of the sacred tassel, found nobody at the cave mouth and
himself entered into it close upon the heels of Torres.
The latter trod softly and cautiously, for fear of disclosing his
presence to those he trailed. Also his progress was still further
delayed by the spectacle of the ancient dead in the hall of mummies.
Curiously he examined these men whom history had told about, and for
whom history had stopped there in the antechamber of the Maya gods.
Especially curious was he at the sight of the mummy at the end of the
line. The resemblance to him was too striking for him not to see, and he
could not but believe that he was looking upon some direct
great-ancestor of his.
Still gazing and speculating, he was warned by approaching foot-steps,
and glanced about for some place to hide. A sardonic humor seized him.
Taking the helmet from the head of his ancient kin, he placed it on his
own head. Likewise did he drape the rotten mantle about his form, and
equip himself with the great sword and the great floppy boots that
almost fell to pieces as he pulled them on. Next, half tenderly, he
deposited the nude mummy on its back in the dark shadows behind the
other mummies. And, finally, in the same spot at the end of the line,
his hand resting on the sword-hilt, he assumed the same posture he had
observed of the mummy.
Only his eyes moved as he observed the peon venturing slowly and
fearfully along the avenue of upright corpses. At sight of Torres he
came to an abrupt stop and with wide eyes of dread muttered a succession
of Maya prayers. Torres, so confronted, could only listen with closed
eyes and conjecture. When he heard the peon move on he stole a look and
saw him pause with apprehension at the narrow elbow-turn of the passage
which he must venture next. Torres saw his chance and swung the sword
aloft for the blow that would split the peon’s head in twain.
Though this was the day and the very hour for the peon, the last second
had not yet ticked. Not there, in the thoroughfare of the dead, was he
destined to die under the hand of Torres. For Torres held his hand and
slowly lowered the point of the sword to the floor, while the peon
passed on into the elbow.
The latter met up with his father, Leoncia, and Francis, just as Francis
was demanding the priest to run the knots again for fuller information
of the how and what that would open the ear of Hzatzl.
“Put your hand into the mouth of Chia and draw forth the key,” the old
man commanded his reluctant son, who went about obeying him most
gingerly.
“She won’t bite you——she’s stone,” Francis laughed at him in Spanish.
“The Maya gods are never stone,” the old man reproved him. “They seem to
be stone, but they are alive, and ever alive, and under the stone, and
through the stone, and by the stone, as always, work their everlasting
will.”
Leoncia shuddered away from him and clung against Francis, her hand on
his arm, as if for protection.
“I know that something terrible is going to happen,” she gasped. “I
don’t like this place in the heart of a mountain among all these dead
old things. I like the blue of the sky and the balm of the sunshine, and
the widespreading sea. Something terrible is going to happen. I know
that something terrible is going to happen.”
While Francis reassured her, the last seconds of the last minute for the
peon were ticking off. And when, summoning all his courage, he thrust
his hand into the mouth of the goddess, the last second ticked and the
clock struck. With a scream of terror he pulled back his hand and gazed
at the wrist where a tiny drop of blood exuded directly above an artery.
The mottled head of a snake thrust forth like a mocking, derisive tongue
and drew back and disappeared in the darkness of the mouth of the
goddess.
“A viperine!” screamed Leoncia, recognising the reptile.
And the peon, likewise recognising the viperine and knowing his certain
death by it, recoiled backward in horror, stepped into the hole, and
vanished down the nothingness which Chia had guarded with her feet for
so many centuries.
For a full minute nobody spoke, then the old priest said: “I have
angered Chia, and she has slain my son.”
“Nonsense,” Francis was comforting Leoncia. “The whole thing is natural
and explainable. What more natural than that a viperine should choose a
hole in a rock for a lair? It is the way of snakes. What more natural
than that a man, bitten by a viperine, should step backward? And what
more natural, with a hole behind him, than that he should fall into
it——”
“That is then just natural!” she cried, pointing to a stream of crystal
water which boiled up over the lips of the hole and fountained up in the
air like a geyser. “He is right. Through stone itself the gods work
their everlasting will. He warned us. He knew from reading the knots of
the sacred tassel.”
“Piffle!” Francis snorted. “Not the will of the gods, but of the ancient
Maya priests who invented their gods as well as this particular device.
Somewhere down that hole the peon’s body struck the lever that opened
stone flood-gates. And thus was released some subterranean body of water
in the mountain. This is that water. No goddess with a monstrous mouth
like that could ever have existed save in the monstrous imaginations of
men. Beauty and divinity are one. A real and true goddess is always
beautiful. Only man creates devils in all their ugliness.”
So large was the stream that already the water was about their ankles.
“It’s all right,” Francis said. “I noticed, all the way from the
entrance, the steady inclined plane of the floors of the rooms and
passages. Those old Mayas were engineers, and they built with an eye on
drainage. See how the water rushes away out through the passage.—Well,
old man, read your knots, where is the treasure?”
“Where is my son?” the old man counter-demanded in dull and hopeless
tones. “Chia has slain my only born. For his mother I broke the Maya law
and stained the pure Maya blood with the mongrel blood of a woman of the
tierra caliente. Because I sinned for him that he might be, is he thrice
precious to me. What care I for treasure? My son is gone. The wrath of
the Maya gods is upon me.”
With gurglings and burblings and explosive air-bubblings that advertised
the pressure behind, the water fountained high as ever into the air.
Leoncia was the first to notice the rising depth of the water on the
chamber floor.
“It is half way to my knees,” she drew Francis’ attention.
“And time to get out,” he agreed, grasping the situation. “The drainage
was excellently planned, perhaps. But that slide of rocks at the cliff
entrance has evidently blocked the planned way of the water. In the
other passages, being lower, the water is deeper, of course, than here.
Yet is it already rising here on the general level. And that way lies
the only way out. Come!”
Thrusting Leoncia to lead in the place of safety, he caught the
apathetic priest by the hand and dragged him after. At the entrance of
the elbow turn the water was boiling above their knees. It was to their
waists as they emerged into the chamber of mummies.
And out of the water, confronting Leoncia’s astounded gaze, arose the
helmeted head and ancient-mantled body of a mummy. Not this alone would
have astounded her, for other mummies were over-toppling, falling and
being washed about in the swirling waters. But this mummy moved and made
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