“Are you that man?” asked the Indian.
“I am,” I answered, “and I have suffered much to find you, but now is no time for talk; guide us to this hiding-place of yours, for our danger is great.”
Then once more the girl took the lead, and we plunged forward into the forest, often stumbling and falling in the darkness, till the dawn broke in the east, and the shoutings of our pursuers died away.
CHAPTER X.
HOW MOLAS DIED
For some few minutes we rested to recover our breath, then we started forward again. In front went the girl, Maya, our guide, whom the señor led by the hand, while behind followed Zibalbay supported by Molas and myself. At first these two had run as quickly as the rest of us, but now all the fatigues and terrors that they had undergone took hold of them, so that from time to time they were forced to stop to rest. This was little to be wondered at, indeed, seeing that during five days they had eaten no solid food, for it had been Don Pedro’s purpose to starve their secret out of them. Doubtless he would have succeeded in this design, or in doing them to death, had it not been for a quantity of a certain preparation of the cuca leaf, mixed with pounded meat and other ingredients, which they carried with them. Zibalbay had the secret of this Indian food, and by the help of it he and his daughter had journeyed far across unpeopled wastes, for so wonderful are its properties that a piece no larger than a bullet will serve to stay a man’s stomach for twenty-four hours, even when his power is taxed by work or travel. On this nutriment they had sustained themselves to the amazement of their captor, who could not discover whence they drew their strength; still it is a stimulant rather than a food, and so great was their craving to fill themselves, that as they ran they plucked cobs of the Indian corn and devoured them.
Our path lay through a tropical forest so dense that, even when the sun shone, the gloom was that of twilight. Many sorts of huge and uncouth trees grew in it, whereof the boughs were starred with orchids and hung with trailing ferns, or in places with long festoons of grey Spanish moss that gave them a very strange and unnatural appearance. Up these trees climbed creepers, some of them thicker than a man’s thigh, and beneath them the ground was clothed with soft-wooded bush, or with vast brakes of a plant that in Mexico attains a height of from ten to twelve feet, which the señor told me is cultivated in English gardens under the name of Indian Shot. Slowly and with much toil we forced a path through this mass of vegetation. Now we were creeping over the rotten trunks of fallen and fern-encumbered trees, now foot by foot we must make our way between the stout stems of the Indian Shot, and now our clothes were caught and our flesh was torn by the hook-like thorns and brambles, or our feet tripped in the roots of climbing plants. No breath of air penetrated that measureless thicket, whereof the stagnant atmosphere, laden with the decay of ages, choked and almost overpowered us, causing the sweat to start from every pore. Above us, hiding the sky, hung masses of deep green foliage, beneath which we struggled on in the solemn gloom and the silence that was broken only from time to time by the grunting of an ape, or by a distant crash, as some great tree, after centuries of life, fell with a noise like thunder to the earth from whence it sprang.
This forest that seemed so destitute of life was peopled by millions of insects, all of them venomous. Garrapatas, tiny grey flies, wood-wasps, and ants black and red, tormented us with their bites and stings till we groaned aloud in misery, then, remembering our danger, pushed on again.
Thus two hours and more passed, till, reaching a little stream that ran through a ravine in the forest, we paused to drink and to cool our fevered feet and hands. Zibalbay sank exhausted upon the bank, where I brought him water in my sombrero, while his daughter sat herself down on a stone in the stream, suffering it to flow over her feet and ankles, that by now were swollen with ant-bites and bleeding from the cuts of thorns and grasses. Presently she looked up, and, seeing the señor, who stood upon the bank talking to me, she invited him with a motion of her hand to seat himself beside her.
“What is your name, white man?” she asked.
“James Strickland, lady.”