“Done!” cried Francis. “A man’s a fool not to take odds like that, even if it’s a question of the multiplication table. Possibly millions of dollars against a positive bad dime! I’d bet two times two made five on the chance that a miracle could prove it. Name it? What is it? The bet is on.”
“Oysters,” Henry smiled. “Oyster shells, or, rather, pearl-oyster shells. It’s mother-of-pearl, cunningly mosaicked and cemented in so as to give a continuous reflecting surface. Now you have to prove me wrong, so climb up and see.”
Beneath the eyes, extending a score of feet up and down the cliff, was a curious, triangular out-jut of rock. Almost was it like an excrescence on the face of the cliff. The apex of it reached within a yard of the space that intervened between the eyes. Rough inequalities of surface, and cat-like clinging on Francis’ part, enabled him to ascend the ten feet to the base of the excrescence. Thence, up to the ridge of it, the way was easier. But a twenty-five-foot fall and a broken arm or leg in the midst of such isolation was no pleasant thing to consider, and Leoncia, causing an involuntary jealous gleam to light Henry’s eyes, called up:
“Oh, do be careful, Francis!”
Standing on the tip of the triangle he was gazing, now into one, and then into the other, of the eyes. He drew his hunting knife and began to dig and pry at the right-hand eye.
“If the old gentleman were here he’d have a fit at such sacrilege,” Henry commented.
“The perforated dime is yours,” Francis called down, at the same time dropping into Henry’s outstretched palm the fragment he had dug loose.
Mother-of-pearl it was, a flat piece cut with definite purpose to fit in with the many other pieces to form the eye.
“Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” Henry adjudged. “Not for nothing did the Mayas select this God-forsaken spot and stick these eyes of Chia on the cliff.”
“Looks as if we’d made a mistake in leaving the old gentleman and his sacred knots behind,” Francis said.