As we arrived our noses were greeted with a most stupendous and enwrapping stench. It took me just about the twentieth part of a second to realize that the black objects that lay above the tide mark were the half-dismembered bodies of sea-lions, the intestines protruding black and decayed upon the smeared and oily sand. Round about them were tramplings and churnings of the mud, and spreading away across the landward rubble to the entrance of the ravine were great sloppy paddings—the slow trudge of some ponderous and long-nailed quadruped.
It was almost with gratified expectation that I recognized the trail of the Horror of the cañon. Here doubtless was his feeding-ground, his private abattoir, where he came down to prey upon the sleeping sea-lion, even as centuries before he had lumbered down upon Alfa, Hardal, and probably many another of those hapless immigrants besides. Here as in a trap he found his prey. Often one could suppose the sea-lions passed through the sea entrance at the far end of the bay, failed to find exit, and, tired with wearily threshing round their prison walls, landed to take their siesta in the sun. Here asleep they fell unawares into his maw, or, surprised in the rock-ringed pool, gave him many a jovial hunt in the clear depths between the cliffs.[[1]]
[1]. Lord Heatherslie makes a mistake here. Professor Lessaution’s subsequent researches proved “the god Cay” to be without doubt Brontosaurus excelsus, remains of which have been found in the Jurassic formation of Colorado. It was purely a land animal.—F.S.
At the far side of the beach were other lumps, embedded in the sand. To them we strode and began to dig at them with our axes. It scarcely came as a surprise when the powdery silt fell aside to disclose timbers sticking up gauntly from below—the worn joists and ribs of some stranded vessel.
One or two of the great timbers—carven and decorated by hands long dead—were now wind-planed and worn by the sand drift, and slanted deep into the pebbles. We shovelled and scraped to trace them further. Below the soil they rounded almost at right angles, and we uncovered one of them at full length. It measured a good forty paces—the keel, as we could but suppose, of some Mayan bark, sole remnant of what had been a gallant ship in the squadron of that lost and hapless race.
We scratched and delved, but nothing further than dried wood splinters did we discover. Finally we decided to explore the ravine for traces of the Mayans, or for the track of the great Beast. This latter was plain as a cart trail on the softer ground, but soon faded and was lost among the rubble.
We felt no fear of consequences should we suddenly unlair the monster, for though the walls of the cañon were steep, they were broken by ledges. Up these we could skip swiftly enough, while he, with his ungainly body, would be unable to follow. So up the loose, rattling pebbles we toiled to draw near by degrees to the top, where the ravine passed into a scar of the mountain ridge, and then sinking rapidly, clove its way deep among the spurs and gullies of the far side.
At this point the immensity of the glacier we had crossed that morning was apparent. It stretched away westward in broad, horizon-touching acres of snowfield. Through another cleft a branch of it sank into the valley below us. Far down we could see a streamlet issue from its foot. From the heights above, the tumble of crevasses converged in the narrows like the handle of some huge fan. It smote into the gorge at its straitest, the brook pools glinting away between the rocks. On the spur between the valleys was broken rubble dotted with great boulders. Above all, in sunlit, cloud-like purity the snow crest hung majestic. Out in the distance, seen through the tunnel-like formation of the cliffs, the sea glanced and gleamed, flecked with white bergs to the far horizon.
It was the sight of this last that brought us up all standing. It seemed a trifle astounding to be confronted with the sea again when we had thus turned inland, and for some few moments we debated on the problem unavailingly. Then as I gazed round me various things seemed familiar.
In an instant the explanation came. We were standing in the very cañon up which we had marched the previous day, only we were entering the other end. No wonder that I had thought I had seen before that blue glacier foot and that chain of broken pools down the stream. I had—not twenty-four hours before, too—but from the other side. Our ship and the sunk lake basin were on a great promontory. We had followed the circle of the eastern shore and turned inland. Thus we had cut across the cape as the great fissure did—almost at right angles. If we had followed the cañon the previous day we should have attained to the very spot on which we stood.