The spirits of our party were sorely depressed; but Paul Reeves and I did everything in our power, by cheerfulness and anecdotes, to divert the gloomy current of their ideas; though poor Paul was not without fears that a day might come when he would be inserting in the log of the Leda, entries similar to those I have quoted from the mouldering volume we had brought away.
"We have found a ship of the dead," said he, "but that is nothing! What think you, shipmates, of a whole city full?"
"A city full!" reiterated our men.
"Not exactly a city like London—but a city, nevertheless."
"And where was this?" asked Hans, doubtfully.
"I read of it in a book—a real printed book—when I was in South Carolina. There was one Lionel Wafer, an English surgeon, who, having nobody to physic at home, took a voyage with the old buccaneers to the South Seas. Well, on one occasion, his craft was cruising off Vermijo, at the mouth of the Red River, in Peru. It was a wild and solitary place; but he went ashore with a boat's crew, and travelled four miles up the stream in quest of adventures; and there, from the margin of a fine sandy bay, a plain spread inland as wide as this ice-field, all covered with the ruins of streets, built of mighty blocks of stone carved with wonderful sculptures, like those of the Egyptians—only more terrible and quaint; and among these crumbling streets and mansions were thousands of graves half open, with the dead bodies of men, women, and little children in them, all mummified and light as cork, for they had been dead two hundred years or more.
"His men were terrified, and fled back to their boat; but on the way they met an old Indian, who related that, in the days of his forefathers, this arid plain had once been fruitful and green as the greenest savannah, and the country so populous, that a fish of the Red River could have been passed through the land from hand to hand, till it was laid at the foot of the throne of the Inca (that was their king, shipmates); but the cruel, murdering Spaniards came, with their guns and bloodhounds, and laid siege to the capital city. Its defence was long and desperate; and rather than yield, the inhabitants slew themselves, and buried each other in the sand, till there was only one man left, and he drowned himself in the Red River.
"In after years the stormy winds had blown the dry sand aside, and there the grim Mexicans lay in thousands—the women with the pearls of Vermijo at their ears and round their necks, their little children, their distaffs and hand-mills by their sides, and their long black hair filled with coins and precious stones. There, too, lay the warriors, with their flint axes and broken spears, and the war-paint yet traceable on their mummies. Lionel Wafer brought away the body of a child, but the buccaneers would not admit it on board lest it might bring a plague or a curse upon them; so he threw it into the Rio Grande."
This yarn produced others equally lively, of course; but while conversing we got over the dreary waste of hummocks more rapidly, and some time after midnight were welcomed on board the Leda, where those whom we had left were burning with curiosity to learn the result of our expedition.
The impression of all we had seen was so vivid, that a horror lest the same fate should befal us, made our men suggest and revolve every rash plan for release.