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."
Fifteen minutes were lost ere Henry and Francis succeeded in only partly convincing him, by repeated trials of their voices, that the thing was an echo.
Half an hour later, they debouched on a series of abruptrolling sand-dunes. Again the old man shrank back. From the sand in which they strode, arose a clamor of noise. When they stood still, all was still. A single step, and all the sand about them became vocal.
"When the God laughs, beware!" the old Maya warned.
Drawing a circle in the sand with his finger, which shouted at him as he drew it, he sank down within it on his knees, and as his knees contacted on the sand arose a very screaming and trumpeting of sound. The peon joined his father inside the noisy circle, where, with his fore-finger, the old man was tracing screeching cabalistic figures and designs.
Leoncia was overcome, and clung both to Henry and Francis. Even Francis was perturbed.
"The echo was an echo," he said. "But here is no echo. I don't understand it. Frankly, it gets my goat."