CHAPTER III--THE MAP
I expected every moment to be caught, to be jerked forth from myhiding-place like a landed fish. In the course of their searching theymust sooner or later move the sleeping-bag, and I would be exposed.
It occurs to me that fear must be one of the strangest of emotions; forI can honestly say that, now that I was in this hopeless and perilouspredicament, I was no longer afraid. Certain that I must fall into thehands of Amos Baverstock, equally uncertain of what then would be mylot, I was resigned to my fate; I was long past apprehension. I stillthought of Bannister, and wondered concerning the map for which Amos andForsyth were looking, but for myself I now cared not a snap of thefingers what became of me; and this attitude of mind I preservedthroughout the next eventful moments, else I had never acted as I did.
For Amos never found me on his own account. No doubt he would have doneso in a very little time, had not Forsyth, almost at once, struck uponthe very map for which the two were searching.
"What's this!" exclaimed Forsyth. "It seems the thing we want."
"Where?" cried Amos, who, I judged, snatched it from the other's hand.
"That's it!" he almost shouted. "The parchment map copied from thatmade ages ago by Villac Umu, the High Priest of the Incas of Peru.Bannister has translated it, and marked the route in red ink. It's allplain as daylight."
I could tell by the sound of his voice that he was wildly excited. Hespread out the map upon the little table in the centre of the cabin,and, feeling secure since Joshua Trust was keeping watch, spokebreathlessly to Forsyth, relating the matter in such detail that thenand there I was made a party to the whole vile conspiracy--or as much ofit as there was any need for me to know.
"When the ancient Peruvians fled before the advance of the Pizarros," heexplained, "they carried their treasures across the mountains. Thesethey hid in two places: one, which is called the Little Fish, consistsof all manner of earthenware utensils; the other--the Big Fish--iscomposed of golden ornaments and ingots. I have heard it said by somethat the Little Fish is in Bolivia; by others, as far north as theAmazonas Territory--the truth being that no man living knows. It wasJohn Bannister himself who discovered the secret of the GreaterTreasure, or the Big Fish, as the natives call it. He lived for yearsamong the wild savages who inhabit the forests about the easternfoothills of the Andes; and there, I believe, he came across somepriestly descendants of those who had served the Incas. It was high upamong the Conomamas, to the south of the great Region of the Woods, thatI first fell in with Bannister. I was there prospecting for gold, but Ihad never dreamed of such a gold-mine as the Greater Treasure of theIncas. Bannister never told me that he had learned the secret from thepriests, but I made so free as to inspect the map, when I believed himto be sleeping."
"But is this safe?" asked Forsyth. "Supposing Bannister returns?"
"There is nothing to fear," said Amos. "Time's our own. Joshua is onwatch upon the sand-hills, and can see him coming half a mile away. Weare as safe here as anywhere."
"Well, then, go on with your story," said the other. "You saw the mapyourself?"
"No more than glanced at the thing before he had me by the throat andwell-nigh strangled me," cried Amos. "After that we parted company,though I followed his track, and three times tried to kill him."
I heard Mr. Forsyth laugh in his silly, affected way.
"You do not mince your words," said he. "And I think I like you for itall the better. So you tried to murder him, and failed?"
"I did not say 'murder,'" grumbled Amos. "You can do no worse than killin the great Region of the Woods; and whether you slay a jaguar, amonkey or man, it is much the same in the end. But to kill a man likeJohn Bannister is no such easy matter. He has the ear of a panther andthe eye of a bird, and he strikes like the coral snake--silent anddeadly--and for those self-same reasons, the story I am telling you mustnow turn something against myself. For I began the business by huntingJohn Bannister in the Wilderness; but, before the game was a week old,it was he that was hunting me, and hunting me, too, day and night, fromthe Putumayo to Bolivia, from the Amazon to the sea.
"I sought safety, at last, in the port of Lima, where I was sheltered bysome pretence of Law and Justice; and there I joined forces with friendJoshua and three other kindred spirits who now lie unburied, their bonespicked by the vultures.
"Well, then," Amos went on, "we five put our heads together and talkedthe question out. It was plain to us that, since Bannister was such atough nut to crack, it were safer and simpler to go straight to thefountain head, as the saying goes, and see what could be done with thepriests. I guessed from what Bannister had told me, that the Peruvianswere a weak-kneed, cowardly lot, and thought it would not be difficultto frighten them into telling us all they knew. But we had to searchthe woods for months before we found them, living in the midst of blackignorance and superstition; and by then--would you believeit!--Bannister had got wind of our intentions, and had come back uponhis own trail, crossing the mountains and descending into the Region ofthe Woods.
"He turned up in time to ruin all our plans. His very presence gave thepriests the courage they had lacked. There was a stiff fight, and we,having the worst of it, were obliged to beat a quick retreat to thefoothills, though we carried with us a hostage. So far as this man wasconcerned, I took a leaf from the book of the Spaniards. I knew thatPizarro had not gained all his knowledge by fair words and promises. Itortured the wretch, until he shrieked for mercy and promised that hewould guide us to Cahazaxa's Tomb, upon the very crestline of the Andes,where he swore to us the Greater Treasure was hid. Thither we went, tofind that the rascal had lied to us. A few golden ornaments there were,in a vault cut in the living rock, at the end of a narrow passage, andamongst these was the ancient sceptre of the Incas, but the lot were notworth the price of our journey. Moreover, John Bannister himself hadhad the audacity to follow us. Night by night, he hovered about ourbivouac, hoping to deprive us of our hostage. So I set my mind to workto finish him; and as fortune had it, the old Tomb was as good as arat-trap. For there was a great boulder at the mouth of the passage,which might be rolled down-hill to block the entrance; and even then itwas as much as Joshua and I could do. We fooled John Bannister to enterthe Tomb by making a show of moving camp and leaving the Peruvianbehind. However, when we thought we had caged him, we found to ourgreat dismay that we had under-estimated the man's colossal strength;for he rolled back the boulder as though it were nothing, and came downupon us like a raging lion."
"HE ROLLED BACK THE BOULDER AS IF IT WERE NOTHING (missing from book)]
Amos paused a moment in his narrative. Listening eagerly for what wasyet to come, I heard distinctly the disgusting noise of the chewing ofone of his long, black cigars.
"We were unprepared for that," he continued. "Indeed, thinking we hadgot him safely caught, to starve to death or shoot himself, we werestanding before the entrance to the passage without our arms; and beforewe could master him, our party of five had been reduced to two. It wasJoshua who ended the affair. We had looted the Tomb of the littletreasure that was there; and Joshua snatched up the golden sceptre ofthe Incas and struck down John Bannister, whom that night we left fordead."
"And what of the map?" asked Forsyth.
"We searched him, but never found it. He may have left it with thepriests, or hidden it somewhere in the forest. Two years later, I againjourneyed to the Region of the Woods, and found out from the prieststhat Bannister had taken it away with him, after he had returned to theWilderness from Cahazaxa's Tomb."
Amos had calmed down by degrees whilst he related the whole story to Mr.Forsyth; but now, quite suddenly, he became as frantically excited asbefore.
"For two years I have hunted for the man," he cried; "and I found himhere by chance. I want nothing but the map, to know where the GreaterTreasure has lain hidden for more than four centuries, and to learn howto get there. See here!" he shouted; "the p
lace is far to the north,near the valley of the Yapura River. The treasure of the Incas wascarried four hundred miles from Cuzco!"
"What more could we want?" laughed Forsyth.
"Why, nothing else," said Amos. "This map's worth more to us than thekeys to the vaults of the Bank of England."
I heard a sound like the rustle of paper or parchment, from which Ijudged that Amos flourished the map in his hand. And then it was that Idid a thing so bold that I have never ceased to be amazed at my ownaudacity.
I had passed from sheer fright to cold deliberation. I cared not twopins for my own safety; and though I was still in dread of Amos, Ithought not once of him, but of John Bannister, whose very shadow Ialmost worshipped. Besides, it must be understood, I was already caughtlike a fly in the web of these adventures. I had listened, as to astory, to all that Amos had said, and had tried to figure in my mind'seye the Greater Treasure, all glittering in the dust, Cahazaxa's Tomband the dark Region of the Woods. I knew, from what I had heard, thatif all this wealth belonged to any Christian man, that man was JohnBannister himself and never Amos Baverstock. Why Bannister was contentto live as he did, when he could be master of such riches, was acircumstance I could not then explain, but which I was wise enough tosee was no concern of mine. Upon one thing was I well determined, witha kind of blind pig-headedness that might have led to my ownundoing--and that was that Amos should never take away with him the map.
"Gold!" he cried. "Gold! We'll wade knee-deep in it!"
And at that, I sprang from under the sleeping-bag and hurled myselfstraight at him whom I so truly feared.
Both he and Mr. Forsyth were too surprised to do little else but gape,which gave me the chance I wanted, to snatch the parchment from hishand.
I do not think I could have been much quicker; but he was not to betaken unawares. The parchment was old, and must have been half tornalready, for, when he pulled one way and I the other, the thing came inhalf. And then, even before Baverstock had time to drop an oath, I waspast the opening of the cabin and racing like a madman through thegorse.