“Nevertheless, shall we go?” said Pant.
Kirk nodded.
“All right. We had better go up in the cool of late afternoon. The jungle air will not be so oppressive. We can return by the light of the moon.”
Late that afternoon, after a day of rest, Pant found himself on the broad veranda of the house. Here he unbound his pack. From it he took three light fibre trays, a package of powders, two flashlights, extra batteries for the lights, and his small black box. All these, together with a quantity of matches, he bound carefully in waterproof oiled cloth. He was then ready for the journey to the cave.
As he sat for a time, waiting for his new found friend, his mind was rife with speculations. How had this strange American boy come here so far from the seaboard? How did he come to be in Central America at all?
The Spanish people were strange, too. He had heard of them, the last of the Dons. Fragments of their history had drifted to him from afar. They were the direct descendants of a proud Spanish family. Two centuries before the family had grown immensely rich, so the story ran. How had they come by their wealth? Where had it gone? These were questions no one seemed prepared to answer. Enough. They were rich no longer. For all that, they appeared to live very comfortably off the land.
“So there is a story, probably only a legend, telling of a box of beaten silver filled with pearls,” he thought. “I must know more of that.”
He found himself far more interested in the story of that large band of Maya Indians who had perished in the cave. “The thing must have happened long ago,” he told himself.
“They did not enter the cave empty handed. When people flee they take some treasures with them. Should one come upon their bones he would be sure to find priceless curios there, beaten gold, hand cut stones and copper knives of long ago.”
Yes, he was interested in this a little, but most of all he was concerned with his own business within some dark corner of the cave.