“Twin mirrors could do it in the hands of a man,” was Henry’s comment.
“They are the eyes of Chia,” the peon repeated. “It is so written in the knots as you have heard my father say. Wait in the foot-steps of the God till the eyes of Chia flash.”
The old man rose to his feet and wildly proclaimed: “To find the treasure we must find the eyes!”
“All right, old top,” Henry soothed him, as, with his small traveler’s compass he took the bearings of the flashes.
“He’s got a compass inside his head,” Henry remarked an hour later of the old priest, who led on the foremost mule. “I check him by the compass, and, no matter how the natural obstacles compel him to deviate, he comes back to the course as if he were himself a magnetic needle.”
Not since leaving the foot-step, had the flashings been visible. Only from that one spot, evidently, did the rugged landscape permit the seeing of them. Rugged the country was, broken into arroyos and cliffs, interspersed with forest patches and stretches of sand and of volcanic ash.
At last the way became impassable for their mounts, and Ricardo was left behind to keep charge of the mules and mule-peons and to make a camp. The remainder of the party continued on, scaling the jungle-clad steep that blocked their way by hoisting themselves and one another up from root to root. The old Maya, still leading, was oblivious to Leoncia’s presence.
Suddenly, half a mile farther on, he halted and shrank back as if stung by a viper. Francis laughed, and across the wild landscape came back a discordant, mocking echo. The last priest of the Mayas ran the knots hurriedly, picked out a particular string, ran its knots twice, and then announced:
“When the God laughs, beware!—so say the knots.”