Heart of the World

by H. Rider Haggard

“Farewell, Molas, my brother, true servant of the Heart,” I echoed; “of this I am sure, that you shall not lose your reward.”

Now three of the roots were severed, but the fourth and largest, which was thicker than a man’s leg, remained, and at this Molas began to hew despairingly.

“Are they near?” he gasped, as the white chips flew.

We peeped round the corner of the arch and saw that some seventy feet below us the band had halted on the slippery face of the pyramid, fearing they knew not what, for they heard the dull sound of the axe blows, but could not guess what it portended. One of their number was talking to Don Pedro, apparently urging something upon him to which he did not agree, and in this way they wasted two minutes before at last the order was given to rush up the remaining steps and take the temple by storm.

Two minutes—it was but a short time, yet it meant much, for only a third of the root remained unsevered, and the bark cracking and peeling showed how great was the strain upon it.

“Quick,” whispered the señor, “they come,”—and as he spoke the handle of the axe broke and its head fell to the ground.

“Now if the root holds we are lost,” I said.

But it was not to be, for Molas still had his heavy hunting-knife, and with this he hewed frantically at the wood. At the third cut it began to part, torn slowly asunder as though by the strength of a giant, and while it gave, the vast superincumbent mass of masonry, which it had helped to support for so many years, shifted a little with a grinding sound, then hung again.

“Come down, Molas, come down!” cried the señor.

But Molas would not. He struck one more blow, severing the root, then with a shout of farewell, either through faintness or by design, he cast himself forward with outstretched arms against the face of the wall. His weight was little indeed, yet it seemed that it sufficed to turn the balance as dust turns a scale, for again the trembling mass moved perceptibly and the tall trees upon the top of it began to nod as though beneath the sudden pressure of wind. Now it slid forward faster and faster, while sharp sounds like pistol-shots came from the heart of it, and the trees above bent like a rod beneath the rush of a fish. Now also for the first time the villains on the slope below perceived the doom that threatened them, and uttered such a yell as I had never heard. Some stood still and some flung themselves down the stair, one only, Don Pedro himself, rushed forward. It was too late; the mass of stonework, sixty feet long by twenty in breadth, was falling. It was falling—it fell, taking Molas with it. With a roar like that of thunder it struck upon the stairway, and, bursting into fragments, swept it from end to end. No discharge of grape-shot could have been so terrible in its effects as this hurricane of stones that nothing could withstand, for even the big trees which stood in its path were snapped like sticks and borne away upon its crest, as the carved masonry that had been carried up the pyramid by the long labour of the Indians of a bygone age, rushed downward to its foot.