Inside it was a big earthen jar, which might at one time have contained water or food, more probably the latter. A broken paddle was near it and another object which the boys did not investigate just then. For something else had attracted their attention.
This latter was the sight of several bones, undoubtedly human, that lay by the side of the mouldering canoe. Evidently the bones were all that remained of the navigators of the ill-fated craft; but whether they had met their death at the hands of a human enemy, or had fallen prey to a jaguar or alligator the boys were, of course, unable to decide.
“Ugh! This place gives me the shudders,” exclaimed Jack, turning away. “Let’s get busy over that wood and go back.”
“Right you are; but let’s have a look at what else there is in the canoe first,” rejoined Tom.
“That’s so. We might as well look. After all, it may afford us a clew to the fate of the poor devils whose bones lie yonder,” replied Jack.
The bottom of the canoe was inch deep in slimy ooze, and out of the stuff the boys excavated a skin bag containing some hard objects and an odd little figure of a squatting man, with a hideously deformed face, fixed in a perpetual laugh. This little idol, for such unquestionably the thing was, was about as ingenious a bit of hideousness as could be imagined. It was not more than a foot high, and was wrought out of greenish stone. It was carved in a squatting position with the legs tucked under a fat body, tailor-fashion.
But it was the face, tiny as it was, that sent a chill through the boys’ veins. There was something diabolical in that frozen laugh. It was as if the miniature god was mocking all mankind with a grin of bitter irony.
“Nice little thing to have about the house on the long winter evenings,” chuckled Tom. “Cheer a fellow up when he felt blue, wouldn’t it—not?”
“I suppose the folks it belonged to held it in enough veneration,” rejoined Jack, holding the hideous little figure up in the dying light. “Anyhow, the fact that it was in the canoe shows that those chaps must have been killed by an animal or a ‘gator. If natives had finished them off, they wouldn’t have left this thing in the canoe.”
“Unless they were scared of it,” commented Tom; “it’s enough to give anyone the shudders.”