“Whoo-hoo-hoo,
Whoo-hoo-hoo,
Whoo-hoo-hoo.”
As in a dream he recalled the day they had practiced that call, he and Jean, back there in the jungle.
Alert, straining his ears for the next note, telling himself that when it came he would locate the singer and thus begin the task of finding a way out, he waited.
A moment passed; another and yet another. The silence became unbearable. He stamped his feet to break the awful spell. Then he became conscious of another sound—a slow tap-tap-tap-tap. Always a second apart, never any louder, never coming more softly, this mysterious tap-tap-tap in time became more maddening than the silence. Still at strained attention he waited for Jean’s call which did not come.
“What can have happened?” he murmured at last. “Can other ears than mine have heard that call and silenced it, perhaps forever?”
He found himself filled with sudden anger, a raging hate of the Mayas.
“What manner of treatment is this,” he asked himself, “after I saved their princess from a terrible death?”
This anger lasted but for a moment. He next found his mind filled with wonderings. In the deep dust of the outer corridor there had been not a single footprint. How could the living Mayas have set such a trap as this without leaving traces of their coming and going?