“No.”
“Built by Mayas, I believe. Interesting people. Hardgrave loaned me a book about them; the report of some ethnological society. It reads like one of Dumas’ novels. Tell you about them later.”
They were soon busy preparing camp for the night.
Two hours later, with the still waters of the pool reflecting the red glow of a half burned out campfire, with Roderick stretched out on the mosses fast asleep and the Carib woman nodding beneath a nut palm, Johnny sat beside the girl and told of the wonders of this land in the long ago.
“Do you see the cocoanut palm in the shadows at the far side of the pool?” he asked.
The girl nodded.
“We think it grew there wild. So it did. But how did it come there? Scholars say that its great, great, great grandfather, centuries back, must have been planted there, and that it may have grown beside a palace.”
“Whose palace?” the girl’s voice was low.
“The palace of a Maya prince.”
“Were there princes?”