CHAPTER XVII--THE GREATER TREASURE
I held my breath and listened, thinking that I would hear other shots,as I had done before. But no sound came to break the stillness. Savefor the birds among the tops of the trees, and a big, solitary monkeythat swung himself from branch to branch, chattering as he went, I wassurrounded by the silence of the woods.
It was no news to me that I stood in the gravest peril. Such had beenthe case for many a day; and--as I have said--I had come to look uponlife as of little worth. Amos I knew to be somewhere in theneighbourhood; and I knew also that if he found me it would go ill withme; I should not live for long if I fell again into that great villain'sclutches.
And yet I did no more than shrug my shoulders. I had sublime faith inmyself, in my youth, and the Divine Providence that, so far, had kept mefrom the way of harm. I had my blow-pipe, too; and, if the worst shouldhappen, I could use it well enough to drive one of my feathered arrowsstraight into the heart of Amos Baverstock.
One learns, in the everlasting twilight of the woods, where danger lurkson every hand, to live for the moment only, to let the future look afteritself. And so did I now; for Amos was no more to me than the jaguarand the anaconda--brutes of prey, all three of them, and the mortal manthe vilest. Death in many forms and shapes was all about me--sharpfangs, the serpent's coils, poison, and disease. There was no need toscent from afar such dangers as might never come my way.
And so, once again, I turned my thoughts to the Red Fish, standing forthbefore me in the sunlight--a quaint and humorous-looking thing, had Ibeen able for a moment to forget its wonderful significance.
I sat and looked at it; it may have been for half an hour, or even more.And my memory took me back to that sunny August morning by the Sussexshore, where I had first heard Amos speak of the Greater Treasure of theIncas; and I remembered, word for word, what he had said: "Gold! It isthere knee-deep in a cavern, large as a cathedral." And here was I, DickTreadgold, in the very place myself, after a series of most strange andunbelievable adventures, thousands of miles from Sussex. My very name,I thought, was to prove a kind of analogue with my destiny and actions;for I was fated, so it seemed, to tread on gold.
And at that, I pulled out my fragment of the map, and looked at it,reading again and again the passage that had puzzled me so often:
"_The tail of the Fish. A blow-pipe from the nose of the Fish. Twenty yards across the Brook. Three feet, below the ground--a Ring._"
There, sure enough, was the tail of the Fish--or, at least, the upperpart of it, a sharp spur of rock protruding from the ground. I got tomy feet and approached, taking my blow-pipe with me.
"_A blow-pipe from the nose of the Fish._" That clause had alwayspuzzled me. It seemed possible that I should use my blow-pipe as a kindof measuring-rod; but I could not think in what direction I should placeit. Besides, the nose of the Fish was at least six feet from theground. And then I observed for the first time what I had not perceivedbefore; namely, that the body of the Fish was curved; and it was thisthat gave me the very clue I wanted. What if I were to use theblow-pipe as a plumb-line?
At all events, I would try. So I drove the blow-pipe into the softground, as near the perpendicular as I could judge, in such a mannerthat it just touched the tip of the Fish's nose.
I read my instructions again--though I already knew them by heart, andtried to guess their meaning. I crossed the brook, which in that placewas very shallow, the water reaching little above my ankles; and nosooner did I find myself upon the other side than I observed that mywooden blow-pipe and the sharp, upright spur of rock that formed theFish's tail were in the same alignment.
"_Twenty yards across the Brook_" could have but a single meaning. Sincethe Red Fish itself was not that distance from the water, twenty yardsmust be measured upon the other side; and this I at once resolved to do.
I already had an imaginary line, extending an indefinite distance. If Iheld to this line--or if, in other words, I kept my blow-pipeimmediately between myself and the Fish's tail--I could not go far wrongby stepping the prescribed twenty yards from the margin of the brook.
This I did, and, to verify my position, looked to see that I still hadmy two fixed points in line with one another. I had verged a little tothe left, but soon put this right by taking a short pace in the otherdirection. And then I repeated to myself the last sentence of myinstructions: "_Three feet, below the ground--a Ring_."
Down I went upon all-fours, and began to scrape up the earth in myhands. For the soil was soft, though now and again I hit upon a rock,which, without great difficulty, I loosened with my knife, to cast asideand continue with my work.
It was nightfall by the time that I had gained a depth of three feet ormore; but, by then, I had come upon a great, smooth slab of stone; andthis discovery set my heart so wildly beating that I was obliged toleave my task and rest awhile, drinking deeply of the water of thebrook.
In the moonlight I laboured still, and a slow business it was,displacing the earth a handful at a time, and scratching with the Indianknife that Atupo, the priest, had given me. I was hot and weary, and myfinger-tips were painful; and yet I could not desist, but worked on tillmidnight, to be at last rewarded. I came across a metal ring, fastenedto the slab, about eight inches in diameter. And when I had washed theearth away, bringing water in my quiver from the brook, I discoveredthat this ring was made of gold.
I tugged at it and pulled with all my might, but could not move thestone an inch; so back I went to my work again, grubbing with my hands,for all the world like a dog that smells a rat. Sheer fatigue at lengthquite overcame me, and I was obliged to lie down and rest, and fellsound asleep, though I had intended no such thing.
I awoke suddenly, at the first sign of daybreak, and went to the greathole I had made in the ground, and wondered at myself that I had done somuch. The stone slab, I saw, was almost clear of earth.
In less than an hour the great slab was free. I cut round the edges ofit with my knife, to loosen it, and then looked down upon my work, tosee how I might approach the conclusion of my task with the greatestprospect of success.
The stone slab was about three feet wide and twice as long. And thegold ring, I could not fail to notice, was much nearer one end than theother. As the handle is never to be found in the middle of a door, thisseemed to suggest that the slab opened upon hinges. It remained to beseen, however, whether or not I had the strength to lift it.
I tried more than once, and failed, though I moved the stone an inch orso. Finally, I went into the Wood and cut a length of liana, one end ofwhich I tied to the golden ring. And then I tugged with all my might;and the stone slab uprose like a derrick on a ship, attained a verticalposition, and there remained stationary and upright.
I stepped to the hole and looked down upon a narrow flight of steps allcovered with the earth that had fallen from above. Down these Ihastened, presently to find myself in utter darkness, so that there wasnothing for it but for me to return and look about me for some means ofmaking a torch.
I was now as skilled as any forest Indian in the art of making fire. Formonths I had journeyed without matches, tinder-box or magnifying-glass.I knew where to find touch-wood in the forest, and could strike sparksfrom pieces of flint. For an hour I laboured in the making of a torch,which I constructed of touchwood bound about by reeds. And whilst I wasthus employed I realised for the first time how hungry I was--for I hadeaten nothing for twenty-four hours, though I had consumed greatquantities of water.
And now I did a strange thing, in view of the fact that I have alwaysbeen somewhat impetuous by nature and was then but a boy in years.Though I was actually trembling with excitement, all eagerness to beholdthe interior of the vault that I knew to be at the foot of the steps, Iwent deliberately into the jungle in search of food.
Finding no living thing that I could kill but monkeys, I was obliged tocontent myself with wild nuts and berries; and then I returned to theRed Fish, drank again
from the brook, took up my torch and lit it fromthe fire that I had kindled. And then down I went into the vault, tofeast my eyes upon the buried Treasure of the Incas.
The stairway was at first so shallow that I must stoop as I descended;but presently I found myself in a little chamber, hollowed out of theliving rock, the walls of which were of the same red granite as thestrange stone above. And weird and almost magic did the whole placelook in the light of my burning torch.
For the very walls sparkled as with diamonds. Everywhere were littlegrains of felspar, mica, or quartz, which caught the reflection of thelight. And when I looked upon the floor I saw that Amos had been right.I trod upon bars of gold, all of the same length and size, and laid withsuch regularity and neatness that they might have been the palings of afence--or many fences--spread flat upon the ground.
How deep these ingots went I could not say, and was not then disposed toinquire, for my attention was attracted by an arched opening, like thedoorway of a church, on the other side of the room. Through this Ipassed, and found myself at the head of another flight of stone steps,much broader and wider than the others--a gigantic stairway thatdescended into the middle of a chamber so vast that my torch did no morethan throw a kind of halo all around me.
I rushed down these steps with a loud, glad cry, and below I hastenedlike a madman, here and there, passing along the walls, crossing atrandom that wide, gloomy subterranean room.
Everywhere was gold, stacked upon the floor, piled against the walls. Isaw golden chalices and cups, bracelets, rings and girdles; great jugsof gold and golden basins, besides bars and ingots that one might havecounted by the thousand.
I know not why it was, but the very sight of it made me dizzy, as Istaggered blindly about that wondrous place. At times I slipped andstumbled, and at other times I fell between those glittering stacks, tofind myself--as Amos Baverstock had said in my hearing--knee-deep in thevery stuff that has made the world as wicked as it is.
And then, at last, I sat down upon I know not what, save that it wasgold. The very sight that I had seen had exhausted me far more than allmy travels and privations. I felt sick at heart and weary. I lookedabout me with tired and dreamy eyes.
It seemed to me strange--now that I had beheld this wonder--that I hadendured so much for sake of it. How had it come to pass that men prizedso highly what after all is no more than yellow metal? Here was enoughof it, in very truth, to serve the needs of a nation; and here it hadlain for four hundred years--and the world was none the worse. Howlittle of this vast treasure would be enough for me, or even AmosBaverstock, in spite of all his greed!
It frightened me--and that is the truth of it. I could not think what Ishould do if all this precious wealth were mine. And then I wondered ifI had any right to call it mine just because it was mine for the momentto gaze upon, to regard in breathless bewilderment and fear.
You may behold that which you never own, as you may own that which younever see. Boy though I was, so much was clear to me as daylight. Norhad I any reason to suppose that I was the first to look upon thismarvel, since the fugitives from Cuzco, centuries ago, had carried itacross the mountains to hide it in this secret place. John Bannisterhimself, perhaps, had looked upon it, though he had never told me so. Ifit belonged to any living man, all this wealth was his.
I felt by now as if I were about to faint; and besides, my torch wasburning low. And therefore I got unsteadily upon my feet and walkedinto the little outer room, and thence ascended the steps in the broadlight of day. And there I stood breathing deeply, with my eyes closedand my mouth parched as if by thirst.
On a sudden I cast my burning torch into the brook before me, and fellupon my knees and prayed to God. I prayed aloud, as if the living treesand running water and the red stones about me could all hear my prayer.And it was the Lord's Prayer that I had learned at my mother's knee;for, boy though I was, I felt that which I had looked upon was the verypith and kernel of all temptation to which, since Eden, humanity washeir.