  Pant’s knees trembled a little as his feet splashed in that bubbling stream that coursed its way through the dreadful Maya cave. It had been strange, the entering of this supposedly haunted cave, with companions. How much more awe inspiring to be entering it alone! He wondered about those companions of that other adventure. Who was this son of a rich man? What had brought him into the jungle? Where was he now? As these and many other questions crowded his mind, he made his way cautiously through the outer passages to find himself standing once more on the shore of that curious inland lake which had filled their minds with curiosity on that other visit and so inspired them with fear. He found everything as it had been. The placid surface, sending back a glowing reflection of his light, broke into a thousand ripples as he waded knee deep in its icy waters. “Clear,” was his mental comment. “Can see my toes. What a marvelous reservoir for supplying a city’s drinking water! What a pity there is no city near!” He had waded back to the glistening sands of the beach when, of a sudden, he found his being vibrant to a great expectancy. “What can it be?” he asked himself. Instantly the answer came. “The canoe! The canoe on the shore,” he told himself. Strange how one’s nervous system responds to outer things that his mind does not recall. “But of course,” he assured himself as he neared the spot, “the thing won’t give me the shock it once did. We know now that it has been there for two hundred years. “But wha—” His gaze covered a space far in advance of him, many yards beyond the spot where the canoe had stood. “Gone!” he muttered, stopping dead in his tracks. “The canoe is gone!” Who can say which shock was the greater, the first sudden discovery of the canoe that other time, resting on the beach of this underground lake, or the present astonishing revelation that had come to him? For a moment he experienced great difficulty in restraining his feet. They appeared ready to carry him back to the entrance. Something within him, an echo of the ancient superstition of his ancestors perhaps, seemed to be insisting that after all this cave was haunted by the spirits of beings who perished long ago and it was they who had ridden away in the mysterious canoe. For a moment he wavered. Then reason triumphed. “It was Kirk,” he told himself. “He has returned with his giant Carib, and for some reason or another has rowed the canoe to some other part of the lake. “Only question is, would the thing float after all these years? “Perhaps,” he thought, “they did not row it away. That giant of his may have put it on his back and carried it outside. What a treasure for some museum of antiquity!” The thought that some one had been in the cave since he left it was disturbing. Could it be that Kirk and his Carib, or whoever it may have been, had made a thorough search of the place and had carried away the box of beaten silver. His heart sank at the thought and he hurried on, reproaching himself for having waited so long before returning. Yet he had been needed every moment at the chicle camp. It was a great season. The trees were prime, the rainfall abundant. He and his grandfather, with the faithful Caribs, had been working day and night. One long, low, palm-thatched shed was already piled high with bricks of chicle. “By and by the season will end, then we will have won,” he told himself not realizing that the chicleros’ battle is never won until his bricks of chicle are aboard a steamer bound for the United States. Then, and not till then, are his worries at an end. Pant had dared snatch a day for this adventure. And here he was. Hope vied with fear for a place in his heart as he hurried over the sand toward the entrance to the treasure chamber that might yield a great fortune or offer blank and broken walls to his eager searching gaze. He climbed the water washed rocks with his heart thumping lustily against his ribs. He entered the small chamber above with the feeling of one who enters some ancient temple at night. With one quick swing he swept the walls with his keen eyes, then with a low murmured, “Gone!” he sank upon the wet rocks. Courage and hope conquered disappointment. Rising to his feet, he found himself ready for a more thorough search. Back behind a tumbled pile of broken bits of rock, thrown in a heap by the earthquake, he caught the dull gleam of some object that was not rock. With breathless eagerness he attacked the jagged pile. Ten minutes later, with a cry of triumph on his lips, he lifted the beaten silver box from its hiding place. “Strange!” he murmured. “Still locked. Scarcely a dent in it.” Holding it before him, he shook it vigorously. A rattling sound was the response. His heart raced wildly. Mopping the perspiration from his brow, he began studying the fastenings that held the cover to its place. There were seven of these. Six were mere clasps that lifted in response to a pry of his clasp knife blade. The seventh, a true lock, resisted vigorously. A sharp blow from the small axe that hung from his belt, severed this and the lid flew up, to reveal such a glistening nest of pink, blue and white pearls as is given to few eyes to see. “Pearls!” he murmured, scarcely daring to believe his eyes. “A thousand pearls. A king’s ransom!” Then chancing to remember a story he had read as a small boy, he said, “I wonder if they will turn to rough stones and worthless leaves when I reach the sunlight.” This thought troubled him little. The pearls were real enough. Once the six clasps were back in their places, he felt sure enough of being able to bring the box and its contents to the light of day. “But when I have done this,” he thought to himself, “to whom will they belong? To me?” This problem he considered long and earnestly. The land on which he had found this treasure was wild and rough. No one laid claim to it. But there was the story of the first Don and his beaten silver box of pearls. Was this the box? Were these the pearls? Did they belong by direct inheritance to that last of the Dons who lived now at the foot of the mountain? “Seems probable,” he told himself. “But after all,” he concluded, “the real question now is not their ownership, but how are they to be brought safely from this heart of a jungle to the centers of civilization where a thousand pearls may be offered for sale in safety and with a reasonable hope that one may find a buyer. The old Don could never do this. It must be my task.” Having come to this conclusion, he bound the box in a stout brown canvas bag he had brought for the purpose, then began retracing his steps over the way that led to the outer air and sunshine. Hugging the treasure, he made his way into the chamber of the underground lake. Many and strange were the sensations that passed over him. At times he seemed to hear the cry of terror that escaped the giant Carib’s lips as his mind became possessed with fear for the earth god of the Mayas. Unconsciously he found himself looking back, as if expecting to be followed and overtaken by some unseen force that would wrest the treasure from him. Such was the spell of the Maya cave. At times he fancied that the earth beneath his feet was beginning to tremble and shudder as once it had. He redoubled his speed. But in the end, he knew that this was pure fancy. The water that glimmered at his side was as still as a forest pool at midnight. He fell to wondering about the canoe that had stood so long by the water’s brink. “Who can have been here? Who could have taken it?” he asked himself. As he asked himself this question, his foot struck some object that, in the silence of the cave, gave off a dry and hollow sound. Leaping back, he threw his flashlight upon the spot. “A paddle,” he murmured, “from the ancient boat.” “Strange they didn’t take that with them,” he thought after a moment spent in examining it. “Oh well, since they did not, I will. It is elaborately carved and mounted with metal. Looks like gold. A splendid keepsake.” Having picked up the paddle, he threw the light of his torch about him in every direction. Off to the right, further up from the beach, some other object cast dark shadows on the sand. An exclamation escaped his lips as he came close to it. “A broken bit of a canoe!” he whispered. Then like a flash it all came to him. “No one has been here,” he told himself. “The canoe has not been carried away. It was wrecked by the great wave caused by the earthquake.” For a moment he stood gazing upon the bit of ancient wreckage. Then, suddenly realizing that it was growing late, that it was already dark outside the cave, he hurried on. Darkness had indeed fallen when he reached the outer world of the jungle. This did not trouble him much. He had flashlights and a lantern. There was a trail leading directly to their camp. He would be there in two hours. “And then,” he thought, “what am I to do with this box of pearls? There are men enough in this wild land who would split my head open for much less than this. They must not know.” As he made his way through the underbrush, now listening to the distant bark of a crocodile and now catching the puh-puh-puh of a jaguar, he pondered the problem of concealing the treasure and of bringing it safely to the outside world. At last he hit upon what seemed a brilliant idea. The box was the shape of a brick of chicle, only smaller. When he got to camp he would stuff the box with dried palm leaves so it would not rattle, then he would wrap it round and round with other palm leaves. Having done this, he would remove one of the two bricks of chicle in a gunnysack beneath the storing shed and put in its place the beaten silver box. “I will mark that sack with a bit of green thread woven in and out of the rough fibre. It will be safe enough until I can decide what to do with it. Does it belong to me, or to the old Don? Guess I better talk it over with my grandfather. He will know what is right.” When he arrived at camp he found everyone asleep but one Carib watchman. As soon as he made himself known to the watchman, he inquired for his grandfather only to learn that at present his grandfather was away, but was expected back in the morning. When, an hour later, he lay down to rest, the beaten silver box with its priceless contents lay in a coarse gunnysack beside a brick of chicle worth fifty cents a pound. And about it, above, below, on every side were other sacks of chicle. “I must not let it get out of my sight,” he told himself. “I must—” At that he fell asleep. The journey of the day had been long, his curious experience exhausting. He slept well; too well. When he awoke, the sunlight sifting down through the palm leaves shone upon his face. His first waking thought was of the beaten silver box. Hurrying into his clothes, he fairly raced to the storing shed. There his eyes fell upon that which left him standing motionless, speechless, struck dumb, paralyzed with fear. “Gone!” he whispered feebly at last. “The whole pile of chicle at that end is gone, and the silver box with it!” “The chicle is gone!” he exclaimed to his grandfather a moment later when that old gentleman came into the shed. “Yes,” his grandfather smiled. “Monago and his band of Caribs came in with me at dawn from the north corner of the tract for some supplies. I sent them with four pit-pan loads of chicle down the river. They will bring up supplies. The chicle will be shipped at once. I received word yesterday that the chicle supply was short and that ours should be rushed through to meet the demand.” “Gone!” the boy whispered as he crept away for a few moments of quiet thought. |
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