“An animal like a crocodile or an alligator, in a peculiar stage of evolution, approaching that of a serpent, is depicted here,” his finger touched the buckle, “and everywhere else are variations of one theme, the Serpent and the Tree. The people of this Navel of the World retain the traditions of our religion.”
After that we all became intensely interested in the belt or girdle, but we withheld our comments. Our pretense was sincere enough. We were interested, so interested that it would have been impossible for any of us—the Professor alone was capable of such sublime detachment—to have slept a wink if we had tried to, but then our interest, in which mingled the elixir of a fabulous Hope, succeeding days and weeks of danger and uncertainty, was satisfied at a lower stage of realization. With us it was MEN and GOLD, and, scintillating back of these noble facts, was the speechless marveling of the world of letters, of science, at our recital, if ever we got back to those things.
I asked Goritz all about it when we were together outside of the tent. It seems he had walked about three miles from the camp, and was watching a flurry of wind tear up the water of a little pool, literally boring it all out in spray, when, as the action was accomplished, he saw the glint of the gold. Another look and the belt was in his hand. He sat down to catch his breath, and to quiet the beating of his heart, and then when he had recovered his composure, he had gone on, believing that other trinkets might turn up, or that he might encounter its makers, or anything in fact that might explain the treasure trove—but the search had been unavailing.
“Well,” I said as he finished, “what do you think? The Professor has some wild notions about it, but it looks to me as if the Professor has all along sailed pretty close to the wind.”
“Yes, Alfred,” he answered, “there’s a kernel of truth in his talk. Of course I always thought so or I wouldn’t have come at all—And Alfred,” his splendid eyes searched my own in that great way he had, “I have had curious premonitions just now, as I walked back to the camp. We are coming upon incomprehensible things. We must go on, though we may cross starvation before we reach food, and—the marvels beyond. The rations I know are low, and I know too we’ve a bad way ahead—Mais, esperons.”
I would have said more but before us stood Hopkins. He was actually smoking—“to keep from going bug-house,” he explained, and then he muttered:
“Send me to the Arctic regions, or illimitable azure.
On a scientific goosechase, with my Coxwell or my Glaisher.”
Camp was broken up the next morning. We were wild to get away. Before we started the dogs were fed the last of the bear meat, and we were all put on half rations; the demands on our strength for the work immediately before us would not be great.
I also got a chance to see the belt better. It was very short and made up of plates hooked together with a larger buckle. There was absolutely no metal but gold in it. The buckle was decorated with an impossible serpentine monster with legs and a snout-bearing head, indeed a thing very well described by the Professor as a cross or mixture of a huge snake and an alligator, and the plates were engraved with hieratic markings that looked like poles encircled by spiral lines.