My own audacity can be explained, I think, by the fact that I was now three parts a savage. I was, as one might say, on friendly terms with danger. Peril and I had sojourned together for so long that I had come to regard even grim Death itself as no such weighty matter. Life was no more to me than to the little wild things that I daily slew for food. And so, for three days, I continued my searching in the jungle, howbeit acting more cautiously than before, making little noise and pausing frequently to listen.
And then, by chance, I made a great discovery. At the time, in very truth, I did believe that I beheld the manifestation of a miracle; and I warrant that he that reads this will think the same, when I have set down the facts as they occurred.
I came, late of an afternoon, upon an open place where there were rocks among the trees; and between these rocks the ground was soft, the soil quite black, being composed of the decayed vegetation of many tropic seasons. Here I found footmarks of living men, and, moreover, men who were no strangers to leather boots.
That more than one of them had visited this very place, I was well convinced, since the footmarks bore evidence of at least two pairs of boots--one with great hobnails, and the other without. I never doubted that I had hit upon the trail of Amos and his friends; and I had--as I thought--sure proof of this, a little after, when I came upon an empty cartridge-case.
The most of us believe that we have latent abilities, little suspected by our friends, that we are never called upon to use. I have heard it said that the great Duke of Wellington thought little of himself as soldier, but far too much of his reputation as a politician. And on this occasion it was something pleasing to my vanity to play the part of a detective, though I knew not the very alphabet of the business. I examined the footmarks, and made quite sure that I had found the trail of Joshua Trust, who wore, I knew, a pair of heavy boots with hobnails; and the brass cartridge-case--which I have kept to this day as a memento--had, I surmised, once been the property of Amos. So I went down on hands and knees, groping in the half-light of the woods to see what else I could discover. And whilst thus employed, I hit upon the miracle that all but cost me life itself.
I found a place beneath the rocks where there was a smooth stone slab, fashioned plainly by the hand of man. And this rocked gently when I pressed my weight upon it, which suggested that it had been moved quite recently.
In any case, both the shape and the size of the thing bewildered me, for it was all the world like a tombstone. And one would not think to find tombstones in the tropic wilderness beneath the Andes.
I found the stone quite easy to lift, for it was thin as a plank, and had a hole in the middle, through which I could place a hand. And then I stood gazing into the cavity below.
And as I gazed, I gasped. I drew back a little, with a quick catch of the breath, and then came forward once again, to stand staring, like one who is entirely daft, at what lay at my feet.
For the round moon, of a surety, shone down into a tomb; and there before me was a corpse--or what had been a corpse, four hundred years ago. There lay a skeleton, white-boned and horrible--moreover, a skeleton that was encased in armour.