Johnny Thompson, as you already know, could not help. He was not there. Two days before he had gone up the Stann Creek Railway. He had not returned. He was in jail. Pant had been obliged to go it alone. “And now in this short time,” he told himself, “I have located the map here in the heart of the jungle. No, I haven’t got it. That couldn’t be done without bloodshed. But I have its equivalent, I hope.
“A dark place!” he exclaimed. “I must find a spot that is absolutely dark.”
As he sprang from his hammock he paused to listen. Some one was singing. In a clear girlish voice there came the words of a quaint old Spanish song.
As he parted the branches he saw a plump Spanish girl, with a round face and sober brown eyes, tripping barefoot down the path. Balanced on her head was a large stone jar.
“Going for the morning water,” the boy told himself. “How like those old Bible pictures it all is!”
Twenty minutes later he found himself within the white walls of that ancient and mysterious castle, which had a few hours before loomed so wonderfully out of the night.
CHAPTER II
AN UNDERGROUND SEA
Pant sat in a kitchen so broad and long that it reminded him of a picture he had seen in an illustrated copy of Ivanhoe. The table, on which rested his steaming cup of home grown, home roasted coffee, was a massive hand-hewn affair. On the top, a single slab of mahogany six feet wide and four inches thick, axe marks were yet to be seen.
As his glance took in the room his heart swelled with admiration. There was no stove. A great fireplace was there in its stead. Pots and pans of iron, and of copper and black tin, hung from the rafters.
“Like Longfellow’s ancient home,” he told himself. “Only this is to-day. The last of the Dons!” he repeated in a tone of reverence.