“He had no wings so must have dug-in or crawled.” Bob strode off briskly toward the edge of the forest, leaving Jim, the rope hanging loosely in his hand, to see that nothing happened to the plane. Austin watched the younger boy stop at the lovely spring, scoop some of the clear water up in his hand, and take a good drink. “Great stuff,” he called. “Feel as if I’d knocked off ten years.”
“Go on,” Jim grinned. “Don’t drink any more. I do not know how to take care of infants.”
At that, Bob shied a stone that struck the ground within an inch of his step-brother’s foot, then proceeded. He reached the rim of the thick woods, where Jim saw him pause, then start slowly around, scrutinizing everything that grew. Keeping one eye on the lad, whose white suit made him easy to follow, Austin glanced around at the ground and began to wonder what it had been and what it was. Since his acquaintance with Don Haurea he had seen and been inside many marvelous underground caves, temples, ancient hiding-houses, homes of the once famous race of the Yncas, as well as their vast laboratories. He knew that the lost empire had extended no further north than Quito, hundreds of miles south of them, but he knew also that at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, this northern portion of South America had been inhabited by intelligent Indians whose origin none could trace. They too had built amazing temples, and it occurred to the boy that five hundred years ago, when the remnant of the conquered tribe had gotten together, some of them may have been mobilized from localities far from their original homes. It was not straining credulity to reason that some of the temples of the northern tribes might have been utilized to advantage, and certainly this dome-like clearing of rock, with its gurgling spring, might be over one of them, and the water might be forced through the stones so that the moisture would assure the underground community, if there was one, of dense growths which would be an added protection against invasion of their domains.
Jim remembered that the first time they had landed on the high plateau, known to Peruvians as Amy Ran Rocks, they had found an ancient Indian woman apparently in possession of the place. At that time she had recognized the green emerald rings given the Flying Buddies by Yncicea Haurea and had told them to ‘go in peace’ but today, the ancient who had stood like a man struck dumb in amazement, had made no such identification. Thinking it all over carefully, Jim decided that the Amy Ran guardian was probably apprised of the boys’ coming, while this man, if he watched an ancient fastness, had heard nothing of the Flying Buddies.
“Then, again,” Jim grinned. “This may all be perfectly natural land, formed so through the ages, and the Indian a lad who lives in the forest as far from the whites as he can get. Our dropping down on him was a surprise, and the minute he got his wind, he beat it. Just the same, his exit was mighty sudden. He was standing near the water, then he just wasn’t. I didn’t see him run an inch or drop, but he surely did fade out pronto.”
That fact stuck in the boy’s mind, and now Bob was some distance from his starting point, so Austin moved to the front of the helicopter lest he lose sight of the youngster. There was an uncanniness about the place, and Jim wished that his step-brother would hurry with his investigations, but he appreciated the fact that Bob was thoroughly interested in what he was doing, and that it would be unfair to urge his step-brother to shorten his investigations. They could not possibly linger in the country many days and this opportunity seemed like an especially good one which should be made the most of, while it was possible.
Suddenly, from the east, Austin noticed a thick white cloud moving swiftly toward the coast, and forgetting Caldwell for the moment, he studied it in puzzled wonder. It certainly was not vapor of any kind, it was too substantial looking, and another thing he observed was that it did not move with the wind, which was from the south, although the breeze did affect its direction somewhat. As it drew closer, he noticed that it was considerably deeper than when he first picked it out against the sky, also from its midst tiny particles, almost like snow, seemed to hesitate and fall.
“What in heck?” Jim had his field glasses slung in a case from his shoulder, and now he hastily took them out and in a moment was examining the strange phenomena. “Well, what do you know about that!” he ejaculated.
Magnified by the glasses, the boy saw countless small, white butterflies, fluttering and poising in the sunlight. There were myriads of the tiny insects flying toward him, and as they came, hundreds of their number dropped out and tumbled toward the ground as if too exhausted to continue their journey. As the boy watched in astonishment he had no idea of what it was, then suddenly he remembered reading that every year the butterflies, their life work completed, start in a tremendous migration, drifting southeasterly along the sea coast until they finally reach the sea, where they drop exhausted into the water and die by the millions. He knew that science is unable to explain the strange instinct which prompts them to choose death sometimes thousands of miles from their breeding ground, and only a few weeks before he had read an article by someone who had seen this great funeral cortege when it hovered near a steamer. As the boy recalled, this migration usually took place in the autumn, but he decided that probably in different localities the time of year differed.
“Gee, they must be mighty tired,” he exclaimed pityingly, “and I’ll bet they are leaving a thick white track beneath them.” They were getting so close now that he no longer needed the glass to see what they did. The outer edges of the “cloud” were thin, as if leaders or scouting parties were racing in advance, but from the main body so many were falling that they must have appeared like a strange sort of storm. Several minutes more he watched, then he remembered his step-brother, and glanced in the direction where he had seen Bob a bit earlier, but no white-suited boy stood out against the dark background of the dense foliage he had been examining, and Jim’s heart jumped into his mouth.