Even at that, while he made his way to his bunk, his heart all but failed him. He dreaded the fight he was sure would come, the fight to a finish with Daego’s men.
“If only Johnny were here!” he again repeated. “Where can he be? That black man over in Daego’s camp said Daego had driven him into the jungle. Surely no jungle can hold Johnny Thompson!”
Of this last he could not be sure. A Central American jungle is an awesome and terrible place.
“If he were here,” he went on, “I could tell him the good news of Daego’s undoing and of those wonderful concessions that are all but within our grasp.
“And if only he could lead in the fight that’s sure to come! Daego will fight. It will be a battle to the bitter end. Some have gone down the river, but there are plenty still.
“Oh, well!” he sighed at last. “Johnny may not be here, but his ghost is. He’ll throw terror into the hearts of those blacks yet.”
That night the ghost of the air did strange things; very strange indeed.
CHAPTER XX
CENTURY OLD CAVERNS
Johnny was still in the land of the lost Mayas. The city he and Jean had discovered was not the city of Jean’s dreams, the golden metropolis of long ago, yet there were signs of past glory all about them. Massive ruins that had once been a pyramid, elaborately carved shafts reaching toward the sky, great squares and slabs of stone, all told of the glory that had departed.
“Think what it must have been!” said Jean as, on their third day among the Mayas, she sat high upon a carved rock and allowed her eyes to roam over the ruins of what must have been a majestic temple. “Just think what it was! Such a labyrinth of corridors! Such chambers! Such secret recesses. One might have been lost among them for hours!”