Tons of verdure were cut down and pushed aside. A hacienda was constructed and a camp for the labourers. Then the shovels and picks were broken from their boxes; the scientists arranged their paraphernalia, and the work began, interrupted frequently by the exultant shouts that marked a new finding. No one regretted Hugo. He made his men work magically; his example was a challenge. He could do more than any of them, and his hair and eyes, black as their own, his granite face, stern and indefatigable, gave him a natural dominion over them.
All this—the dark, starlit, plushy nights with their hypnotic silences, the vivid days of toil, the patient and single-minded men—was respite to Hugo. It salved his tribulations. It brought him to a gradual assurance that any work with such men would be sufficient for him. He was going backward into the world instead of forward; that did not matter. He stood on the frontier of human knowledge. He was a factor in its preparation, and if what they carried back with them was no more than history, if it cast no new light on existing wants and perplexities, it still served a splendid purpose. Months rolled by unheeded; Hugo gathered friends among these men—and the greatest of those friends was Daniel Hardin.
In their isolation and occasional loneliness each of them little by little stripped his past for the others. Only Hugo remained silent about himself until his reticence was conspicuous. He might never have spoken, except for the accident.
It was, in itself, a little thing, which happened apart from the main field of activity. Hugo and two Indians were at work on a small temple at the city's fringe. Hardin came down to see. The great stone in the roof, crumbled by ages, slipped and teetered. Underneath the professor stood, unheeding. But Hugo saw. He caught the mass of rock in his arms and lifted it to one side. And Dan Hardin turned in time to perceive the full miracle.
When Hugo lifted his head, he knew. Yet, to his astonishment, there was no look of fear in Hardin's blue eyes. Instead, they were moderately surprised, vastly interested. He did not speak for some time. Then he said: "Thanks, Danner. I believe you saved my life. Should you mind picking up that rock again?"
Hugo dismissed the Indians with a few words. He glanced again at Hardin to make sure of his composure. Then he lifted the square stone back to its position.
Hardin was thinking aloud. "That stone must weigh four tons. No man alive can handle four tons like that. How do you do it, Hugo?"
Hot, streaming sun. Tumbled débris. This profound question asked again, asked mildly for the first time. "My father—was a biologist. A great biologist. I was—an experiment."
"Good Lord! And—and that's why you've kept your past dark, Hugo?"
"Of course. Not many people—"