Neither Jean nor her brother had heard of it before.
“This,” thought Johnny to himself, “is not the portage. It is some other trail. But what trail can it be?”
Darkness found them still plodding upward. Loath to spend the night without water, at Jean’s direction the boys sought out a tree known as the “kerosene tree.” A match applied to a piece of this wood transforms it into a torch.
They had not gone far before the light of their torch was reflected by water.
“Another pool,” said Roderick, settling down upon the mosses that grew beside it.
“Here we camp,” said Johnny, holding out his torch that they might get a more perfect view of the pool.
It was very much the same as the other, only larger. The stone steps were not lacking, and beside them was a pillar of stone on which Johnny’s sensitive fingers traced some very definite carvings of strange animals and men.
“A relic of old Maya days,” he said.
“What is?” asked Jean.
“See this pillar beside the steps; the pool itself? Ever read about them?”