  Late in the evening following his startling adventure in the ancient Maya temple, Johnny tapped at Jean’s door. “Hist!” he whispered. “Go get Rod and come to my room. Got something to show you.” A few moments later, in the privacy of Johnny’s room, lighted only by a flickering taper, the brother and sister stood before a mysterious something which stood upon a stool and was covered by a cloth. “See!” Johnny exclaimed as he lifted the cloth. They started back in surprise and wonder. Made of pure gold, with a jewel gleaming from his hand, the Maya god, an awesome creation, stood before them. Determined that his adventure in the temple, which had come so near being a tragedy, should not be without its reward, Johnny had dared to take the god from the place of its long concealment. He had succeeded in bringing it from the corridor to the bush where he had hidden it until he could smuggle it safely through the darkness. “That,” he said in an awed whisper, “is the only ancient Maya god ever discovered; he is the god of the rising sun. There are no such gods in the museums of the world. This one, aside from the gold and the jewel which seems to be a roughly cut diamond, is priceless as a curio and as an example of ancient art. And that,” he exclaimed as he wrapped the cloth about it and hid it in a dark corner, “makes me all the more anxious to get away from this hidden city of wild people.” “You’re not thinking of taking the thing with you!” exclaimed Roderick in dismay. “Of course we shall!” Jean looked at her brother in utter disgust. “What do you think?” “Think!” exclaimed Roderick. “I think it will get us into a great deal of trouble.” “Trouble? Who cares for trouble?” “I am going to the chief the first thing in the morning,” said Johnny. “I’ll try to tell him or his daughter, by maps and signs, all about my camp on Rio Hondo and the urgent need of my getting back there. The princess likes us. She’ll do anything she can for us. Somehow we must escape.” * * * * * * * * To be drifting down a strange tropical stream at night is enchanting, haunting, and mysterious enough; but to be drifting down that same stream with your eyes so completely blindfolded that you only know it is night because you have been told so, surely this is the most mysterious of all. Johnny Thompson, Jean and Roderick were passing through just such an experience. For hours, many hours, seeing nothing, now led by the hand, now drifting in a dugout, they had traveled. Where were they going? Home? Going to some more remote corner of the Central American jungle where there was no danger of their being discovered? Not one of the three could so much as guess. They only knew they were going somewhere and were on their way. Such a strange way, too; over paths that were so overhung with vines and palm leaves that It had turned out strangely, his resolve to have it out with the old chief about allowing them to return to the Rio Hondo. First, by the aid of many small sticks and stones and a tiny artificial stream, he pictured to the young princess his coming up Rio Hondo in search of mahogany, his early success, defeat, a second venture, the treachery of Daego, the probable condition of his camp at the present moment and the need for his speedy return. He had watched with much concern the face of the chief as his daughter presented the cause to him. That she was telling much, perhaps a great deal too much, he guessed from the changing expression on the old man’s face. A frown was replaced by a smile. This was followed by a look of surprise, if not of consternation. “She’s not telling about Rio Hondo,” Johnny had whispered. “What do you think?” “Yesterday. The hidden corridor,” Jean had whispered back. “That’s exactly it!” Johnny exclaimed. At once he regretted having entrusted the girl with his mission. “If she tells too much she may get us into greater trouble,” he whispered to Jean, and at that moment he thought of the golden god. “Of course,” he whispered to Jean, “it’s mine by right of finding. These people did not build this ruined temple, nor did they make or inherit the god. It’s been lost for centuries. Can’t tell about their queer ideas and customs, though.” Had that plea of the princess gotten them into trouble, or was it getting them out? This was the question which Johnny asked himself over and over as they drifted, blindfolded, down that river in the night. It was strange, fascinating, weird, this eternal drifting, drifting, drifting on into the night. Now the sudden brush of a palm leaf told him they were traveling close to the bank; now a mad forward plunge followed by low exclamations, told of rapids; and now the distant bark of a dog somewhere on land suggested a cabin and some few scattered inhabitants. They were quite a goodly company, this Maya band which escorted him from their city to some unknown destination. Johnny, with his white companions, rode in a large pit-pan. There were other crafts. From time to time he caught the sound of their dipping paddles, heard their low cries of warning as one boat came perilously near another. Twice they had made camp. At such times as this, blindfolded though he was, Johnny was able to estimate the number of men. “About a hundred,” he had said to Jean. “Quite a band,” she had agreed. “Wonder why so many?” “Who can tell?” The princess was with them. He heard her voice from time to time. The old chief, too, perhaps. He could not be sure of that. Wondering dreamily how it all would end, and wishing with all his heart that Jean at least was out of it all, he fell into a doze. From this he was awakened by a sudden movement of the boat. It was as if the hand of a giant had seized the prow and suddenly turned it through a quarter of a circle, then had given it a powerful shove. For a second the boy’s head whirled. “Wha—what has happened?” Jean whispered. Johnny chuckled. “We’re in a larger river, much larger. In fact, it is a great river, and something tells me——,” his words came swift and eager now, “that it is the good old Rio Hondo!” “Johnny, it can’t be!” “It could be, and is!” said Johnny emphatically. “I haven’t ridden that old river for nothing. She has a way of teasing and tossing your dugout while she whirls it forward that no other river ever had. “Besides,” he added with another chuckle, “I can smell the water. It actually smells black.” “What’s that?” the girl exclaimed suddenly. “Sounds like thunder,” said Johnny. * * * * * * * * It was thunder, the forerunner of a storm. It was not a local storm, either, but one of those wide sweeping storms that tear at the timber on all the headwaters of a great river. Pant, at the edge of his camp, where he was assisting in shooting the last of the mahogany logs into their boom, heard it and his face grew thoughtful. The hour of great suspense came at last. Their boom was loaded. They were ready to go down the river. Daego had not yet led his men to the attack. “We’ll get away in the darkness,” Pant said to his Carib foreman, fairly dancing about in his eagerness to be away. “We’ll give old Daego the slip.” Tivoli’s only reply was a sweep of the hand toward the blackening sky. As if in answer to his signal, there came crashing down upon them one of those sudden storms that are known only in the tropics. “We’ll get away under cover of the storm,” said Pant. “That will be better still.” “You don’t now these tropical storms,” said Tivoli. “All night in the rain fifteen men must work; fifteen men must rest, sleep beneath canvas in hammocks. Even with fifteen men we may not save the raft, tied up right here. You do not know the tropics. There will be water in the river, water in the sky. Which is river? Which is sky? You cannot tell. The river will rise like a tide. There will come down snags, great trees, palm trees, mahogany, yamra, black tamarind, santa maria, many, many snags. All night long, at the edge of the raft, we must fight these snags away. There will be no sleep for Tivoli tonight, and perhaps no logs for Mr. Johnny Thompson after that, either.” Tivoli was right. Such a storm as this was! Nothing of the kind had ever been witnessed by the boys before. Flash after flash of lightning, water in sheets, in streams, great avalanches of water that one could all but swim through. Rolling thunder vied with the increasing roar of black waters. And after that came the snags! And how those Caribs did work! All night, till the clock hand stood at three, they labored. Then the water began to subside. Then, exhausted, they threw themselves upon the bare logs and slept. “At dawn we are away,” muttered Tivoli. * * * * * * * * All that night, regardless of the lightning that set the water all agleam, in spite of the deluge of rain that fell, the Mayas and their blindfolded captives drifted silently down that broad river which indeed was Rio Hondo. Awnings of cloth, cunningly treated with the juice from the bark of the wild rubber tree, protected them from the rain. They were safe and dry. The river carried them onward. What more need they ask? * * * * * * * * At dawn, as a matchless sunrise painted the east red and gold, there appeared above Pant’s raft on the broad river a black line, a line not of drift logs, but dugouts, dories and pit-pans. Each craft was loaded with men, and as the sun sent its rays shooting across them they waved their hands and let forth a bloodcurdling shout. In each uplifted hand there gleamed a long bladed machete. “They come!” said Tivoli in response to Pant’s call. “Let them come. See that all the men are wakened quickly.” |
|
