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 upper part of it, a sharp spur of rock protruding from the ground. I got to my feet and approached, taking my blow-pipe with me.

"_A blow-pipe from the nose of the Fish._" That clause had always puzzled me. It seemed possible that I should use my blow-pipe as a kind of measuring-rod; but I could not think in what direction I should place it. Besides, the nose of the Fish was at least six feet from the ground. And then I observed for the first time what I had not perceived before; namely, that the body of the Fish was curved; and it was this that gave me the very clue I wanted. What if I were to use the blow-pipe as a plumb-line?

At all events, I would try. So I drove the blow-pipe into the soft ground, as near the perpendicular as I could judge, in such a manner that it just touched the tip of the Fish's nose.

I read my instructions again--though I already knew them by heart, and tried to guess their meaning. I crossed the brook, which in that place was very shallow, the water reaching little above my ankles; and no sooner did I find myself upon the other side than I observed that my wooden blow-pipe and the sharp, upright spur of rock that formed the Fish's tail were in the same alignment.

"_Twenty yards across the Brook_" could have but a single meaning. Since the Red Fish itself was not that distance from the water, twenty yards must 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 I held to this line--or if, in other words, I kept my blow-pipe immediately between myself and the Fish's tail--I could not go far wrong by 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 had my two fixed points in line with one another. I had verged a little to the left, but soon put this right by taking a short pace in the other direction. And then I repeated to myself the last sentence of my instructions: "_Three feet, below the ground--a Ring_."

Down I went upon all-fours, and began to sc.r.a.pe up the earth in my hands. 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 aside and continue with my work.

It was nightfall by the time that I had gained a depth of three feet or more; but, by then, I had come upon a great, smooth slab of stone; and this discovery set my heart so wildly beating that I was obliged to leave my task and rest awhile, drinking deeply of the water of the brook.

In the moonlight I laboured still, and a slow business it was, displacing the earth a handful at a time, and scratching with the Indian knife that Atupo, the priest, had given me. I was hot and weary, and my finger-tips were painful; and yet I could not desist, but worked on till midnight, to be at last rewarded. I came across a metal ring, fastened to the slab, about eight inches in diameter. And when I had washed the earth away, bringing water in my quiver from the brook, I discovered that this ring was made of gold.

I tugged at it and pulled with all my might, but could not move the stone 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 length quite overcame me, and I was obliged to lie down and rest, and fell sound asleep, though I had intended no such thing.

I awoke suddenly, at the first sign of daybreak, and went to the great hole I had made in the ground, and wondered at myself that I had done so much. 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 of it with my knife, to loosen it, and then looked down upon my work, to see how I might approach the conclusion of my task with the greatest prospect of success.

The stone slab was about three feet wide and twice as long. And the gold ring, I could not fail to notice, was much nearer one end than the other. As the handle is never to be found in the middle of a door, this seemed to suggest that the slab opened upon hinges. It remained to be seen, 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 or so. Finally, I went into the Wood and cut a length of liana, one end of which 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 vertical position, and there remained stationary and upright.

I stepped to the hole and looked down upon a narrow flight of steps all covered with the earth that had fallen from above. Down these I hastened, presently to find myself in utter darkness, so that there was nothing for it but for me to return and look about me for some means of making a torch.

I was now as skilled as any forest Indian in the art of making fire. For months I had journeyed without matches, tinder-box or magnifying-gla.s.s.

I knew where to find touch-wood in the forest, and could strike sparks from 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 was thus employed I realised for the first time how hungry I was--for I had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, though I had consumed great quant.i.ties of water.

And now I did a strange thing, in view of the fact that I have always been somewhat impetuous by nature and was then but a boy in years.

Though I was actually trembling with excitement, all eagerness to behold the interior of the vault that I knew to be at the foot of the steps, I went deliberately into the jungle in search of food.

Finding no living thing that I could kill but monkeys, I was obliged to content myself with wild nuts and berries; and then I returned to the Red Fish, drank again from the brook, took up my torch and lit it from the fire that I had kindled. And then down I went into the vault, to feast 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 the living rock, the walls of which were of the same red granite as the strange stone above. And weird and almost magic did the whole place look in the light of my burning torch.

For the very walls sparkled as with diamonds. Everywhere were little grains of felspar, mica, or quartz, which caught the reflection of the light. 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 with such regularity and neatness that they might have been the palings of a fence--or many fences--spread flat upon the ground.

How deep these ingots went I could not say, and was not then disposed to inquire, for my attention was attracted by an arched opening, like the doorway of a church, on the other side of the room. Through this I pa.s.sed, and found myself at the head of another flight of stone steps, much broader and wider than the others--a gigantic stairway that descended into the middle of a chamber so vast that my torch did no more than throw a kind of halo all around me.

I rushed down these steps with a loud, glad cry, and below I hastened like a madman, here and there, pa.s.sing along the walls, crossing at random that wide, gloomy subterranean room.

Everywhere was gold, stacked upon the floor, piled against the walls. I saw golden chalices and cups, bracelets, rings and girdles; great jugs of gold and golden basins, besides bars and ingots that one might have counted by the thousand.

I know not why it was, but the very sight of it made me dizzy, as I staggered blindly about that wondrous place. At times I slipped and stumbled, and at other times I fell between those glittering stacks, to find myself--as Amos Baverstock had said in my hearing--knee-deep in the very 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 was gold. The very sight that I had seen had exhausted me far more than all my travels and privations. I felt sick at heart and weary. I looked about me with tired and dreamy eyes.

It seemed to me strange--now that I had beheld this wonder--that I had endured so much for sake of it. How had it come to pa.s.s that men prized so highly what after all is no more than yellow metal? Here was enough of it, in very truth, to serve the needs of a nation; and here it had lain for four hundred years--and the world was none the worse. How little of this vast treasure would be enough for me, or even Amos Baverstock, in spite of all his greed!

It frightened me--and that is the truth of it. I could not think what I should do if all this precious wealth were mine. And then I wondered if I had any right to call it mine just because it was mine for the moment to gaze upon, to regard in breathless bewilderment and fear.

You may behold that which you never own, as you may own that which you never see. Boy though I was, so much was clear to me as daylight. Nor had I any reason to suppose that I was the first to look upon this marvel, since the fugitives from Cuzco, centuries ago, had carried it across the mountains to hide it in this secret place. John Bannister himself, perhaps, had looked upon it, though he had never told me so. If it 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 was burning low. And therefore I got unsteadily upon my feet and walked into the little outer room, and thence ascended the steps in the broad light of day. And there I stood breathing deeply, with my eyes closed and my mouth parched as if by thirst.

On a sudden I cast my burning torch into the brook before me, and fell upon my knees and prayed to G.o.d. I prayed aloud, as if the living trees and 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 very pith and kernel of all temptation to which, since Eden, humanity was heir.

CHAPTER XVIII--I FALL IN WITH A FRIEND

I sat for many hours that morning, idle and oppressed by a feeling as of emptiness. What use to me was all the wealth that I had seen--or, for the matter of that, to any one? I had no means at my disposal to take a millionth part of it away.

And then I remembered Amos, and thought it my duty to take what steps I could to see that that dread man should never solve the riddle of the Red Fish, though it was unlikely he would find the place without the aid of my fragment of the map.

The sight of all that gold had, as it were, unnerved me--filled me with a kind of weariness of life. I cannot say exactly how it was, but I know that I had lost, on a sudden, all my energy and enthusiasm; and it was late in the afternoon before I bestirred myself and got to work.

I lowered the great slab and covered it with earth, which I trampled down with my bare feet. Then I went into the woods and dug up plants with my Indian knife, and these I stuck in the ground so that I made a little garden. One shower of tropic rain and they would take root and grow, and thus hide all trace of how the soil had been disturbed. And looking up at the sky, where it was visible here and there between the branches of the trees above me, I saw that such a shower was coming.

The rain fell that evening, when I was camped once more in the woods towards the east, having gone back the way that I had come, following the course of the Brook of Scarlet Pebbles. I took shelter from the rain beneath a tree, the great leaves of which formed a veritable roof above me, so that not one drop of water fell upon the fire that I had kindled.

I ate my simple meal, and then lay down, not to sleep, but to think and to listen to the rain, beating with a noise like many drums upon the leaves.

Well, I had seen the Treasure of the Incas. With my own eyes I had beheld it. And I asked myself if I were any the better for it, and could not see that I was. For gold is mud, and part of man is mud; and yet there is a great G.o.d who is above, around and within us all. And that night, as I lay awake in the woods, listening to the drumming of the rain, I tried to think out such problems as man has not yet begun to understand--problems that, perhaps, he may never solve on this side of the grave.

No doubt, the constant propinquity of danger had made me serious for my years. I had lived for many months in the wilderness, and my pulse now beat in rhythm with the earth. The forest, the majestic mountains I had seen at sunrise, the sky of stars above the plain--all these were mysteries to me, wondrous and eternal. But there was neither eternity nor mystery in the work of man; in gold, in the rusted sword of Orellano's soldier, or Cahazaxa's Temple.

I saw quite clearly now that this hidden treasure was no affair of mine.

I had lived happily for months as Nature meant me to, and the sum total of my wealth had been my blow-pipe and the knife that Atupo, the priest, had given me. I now understood--far better than I had done at the time--all John Bannister had told me of his dread of cities and of people. I, too, would like to live my life far from the abodes of men, with the little shy things as my friends, in the chamber of the Wild.

For the very sight of the Treasure of Kings had frightened me. Four hundred years it had lain there, beneath the ground, like a great, harmful dragon; and it seemed to me that to let this monster loose upon the world would be a bold thing to do--to saddle my conscience with a load of responsibility such as I was never strong enough to bear. I wished now that I was not one of the few who had solved this precious riddle.

And yet I was not sure of anything, for the gold tempted me sorely. I was tempted more than I can say. If I had now learned to understand something of John Bannister's ideals, I saw also, with alarming clarity, the motives that swayed the deeds of Amos Baverstock. Gold to him was a living force, the origin of all his strength and evil, the prompter of his actions. Once or twice that night was I tempted to return to the Red Fish that I might feast my eyes again upon the Treasure.

I told myself that I had not seen enough of it. I was like a drunkard who had tasted wine. I wondered what worth it had in coinage that I knew, and I set to thinking how I would spend so vast a sum.

But these were thoughts only of the night-time, in the darkness and the silence of the woods. I fell asleep at last, sick at heart and wretched; but dawning day came to me with comfort, and I continued on my journey with new hopes and prospects.