It was mouldering and musty, and emitted a faint, incense-like odour of perfumed wax. It was covered, as Baines had described, with “geometry” of sorts, namely squares, and oblongs twisted and welded together with intricacy, but with apparent method. The long lines of them ran across it in ordered rows from top to bottom, though which was the beginning, it would have been hard to say, except that at the end appeared a drawing—the presentment of as diabolical a looking monster as I have ever seen. It was of the nature of a huge lizard, with a long, sinuous neck doubled into terrifying contortions and flung back upon its thick and lumpish body. The lines which radiated from its eye evidently represented the baleful glare which was supposed to proceed from that organ. But it was portrayed with a rough skill which was more or less admirable.
“Well,” said I after a pause, when we had ceased to gape upon this absurdity, “I think you are driving me into an escapade worthy of the worst kind of lunatic, but as you are all against me I give in. We sail for Chichitza, but while I say it, I am calling myself fool, fool, and again fool, and there is no other word to characterize every one of us.”
And so amid Gerry’s shouts of acclamation was set on foot that outrageous adventure which brought us to the Great South Wall.
CHAPTER V
PROFESSOR LESSAUTION’S OPINION
It was a hot, damp, oppressive October evening when our little coasting steamer deposited us at Greytown, whither we had come after being landed by the Pacific Mail at Colon. Gerry and I fought our way ashore amid the crowd of niggers and half-castes of varying degree, while the melancholy Baines brought up the rear, eyeing doubtfully the all too easy porterage afforded our baggage by the longshore loafers who had annexed it tumultuously.
Baines had accompanied us under strong compulsion, and only by the promise of a stipend that many a weary curate would have deemed beyond the dreams of avarice. When the point was mooted—and we felt that his experience was a thing worth struggling for—he had met our proposals with a flat refusal. He had explained emphatically that he had already had sufficient, for one life at least, of irruptions into the tangle of primeval forests where the dark green abyss of jungle made twilight eternally. Where, as he forcibly expressed it, the crawling beasts of peculiar noisomeness were thick as flies upon a butcher’s stall; where the water was soup and the soup water; where the grey mists of malaria enveloped one as with a blanket of ague germs. All these things, as I say, were contrary to him. But the financial allurements held out to him, and the magic of Gerry’s silver tongue had prevailed, and now he conducted us personally, though lugubriously. He it was who hustled a way eventually for us to the wretched inn, and set himself to prepare our morrow’s transport.
Nothing, we ascertained, had been seen or heard of M. Lessaution, and it was therefore to be supposed that he was still encamped amid the ruins of Chichitza. By noon the next day we had accumulated our carriers, and set forth a half-day’s stage in that direction before evening, full of excitement in our quest, and of hopes of adventure in the attaining of it. For now that we found ourselves in these tropic wilds, visions of encounters with savage man and beast loomed largely before our mind’s eye.
A greater disappointment than the reality I have seldom, if ever, had to undergo. Instead of varied and delightful travel, enlivened by brilliant experiences of peril at the hands of the aborigines, or the claws of the forest denizens, the advance was simply one long, perpetual grind. Eternally we hewed our devious way through the thickest brush which exists, as I believe, on this earth. Every moment of the day and night were we devoured by mosquitoes and other noxious beasts, including “jiggers,” which lamed us both for the best part of a week. Nothing did we eat save cassava bread and the perpetual monkey and porcupine steak, and over every portion of our bodies were we covered with enormous tropical boils, by reason of which we rested not day nor night. So in stupendous misery did we proceed to Chichitza, seeing neither man nor beast of the slightest import during the whole ten days we spent in the transit.
Well do I remember our arrival at the ruins. The last few miles we had stumbled on a faint track among the creeping lianas and spiky aloes, and Gerry and I, hearing that the end of our quest was only a matter of an hour or two, had begun to head the party with some small show of élan. Thus as we strode hopefully through the endless gloom, we saw a ray of blessed sunlight flicker down between the masses of dense foliage about a quarter of a mile ahead, and yelled with pure delight at the sight, the monkeys and parrots answering back defiantly. Then we took to our heels and ran like lamplighters down the aisles of rotting logs that lay between us and the gladsome shaft of brightness, shouting uproariously.
Still sprinting we emerged suddenly into an encampment where white civilized tents gleamed in the noon-day sun—oh, the loveliness of open skies—and tripped with startled outcry upon their pegs, rolling at the feet of a little wan, wizened, black-bearded man, who stared down upon us with timorous amazement.