The Inca Emerald

by Samuel Scoville

In another minute they were upon him. Dodging his outstreched hands, their wedge-shaped heads plunged between his legs. Jud's feet flew up, and he sat down with a startling bump, while, rushing and clanking through the bushes, both of the armadillos disappeared in the depths of the thicket. The old man rose slowly and felt himself all over.

"I'd just as soon try to stop a racing automobile with my two hands as to head off a scared armadillo," he observed indignantly. "They got no right to run that way. Their business is to curl up an' be caught."

"Never mind, Jud," said Will, comfortingly; "you had the right idea, but you tackled 'em a mite too high."

That day, as they rested after lunch, Will wandered up toward the mountains, as usual studying his beloved birds. Along the pampas-like stretches of the plateaus and up among the hills, he found the bird life very different from what it was in the jungle. It was Pinto who taught him the bassoon notes of the crested screamer, changing at times to the long roll of a drum, and pointed out to him "John o' the mud-puddles," the South American oven-bird, which, unlike the northern bird of the same name, builds a mud nest a foot or more in diameter, strengthened with hair and weighing several pounds. The birds mate for life, and have a quaint habit of singing duets while standing facing each other. Then there was another bird which Pinto called the "fire-wood gatherer," which built great nests of sticks in trees, dropping a wheelbarrow load of twigs under each nest. Of all the new birds, the boy liked the one called the "little cock" the best. These were ground-birds some nine inches long, with little tails that stuck straight upward, and bristling crests on their heads. Looking like small bantam roosters, they scurried around through the brush, following the travelers inquisitively and giving every now and then a loud, deep chirp. Whenever Will would chase one, it would scurry off, chirping with alarm, but always returned and followed him through the grass and brush.

As the days went by, Professor Ditson became more and more uneasy, and, when camp was pitched, overtaxed his unrestored strength by hunting through dark nooks in the jungle and peering and prying among tangles of fallen trees or the rare ledges of rock which showed now and then among the waves of green. At last he told the rest of the party the cause of his anxiety.

"In a few days more," he said, "we shall begin to climb the foot-hills of Peru. Under my contract with Mr. Donegan, we were to collect a bushmaster before we began the search for emeralds. So I would suggest that we make our camp here and scatter out through the jungle until one of us is fortunate enough to discover a specimen of this rare and beautiful serpent. Let me beg of you, however," he continued earnestly, "to use the utmost care in catching a bushmaster. They are easily injured."

Jud's face was a study. "I will," he promised. "I'll bet there isn't any one on the continent of South America who will use more care than me."

The next day the first hunt began. Armed with long, forked sticks, the six adventurers poked their way painstakingly through the thickest parts of the jungle, but without any success so far as bushmasters were concerned, although Pinto aroused a fine specimen of a boa-constrictor, one of the smaller boas of South America, which flowed through the forest like a dark shimmering stream, while Jud scared up another hideous iguana, it being a disputed question as to which ran away the faster.

Toward the end of the afternoon Will found himself some distance from the others, following what seemed a little game trail, which zigzagged back and forth through the jungle. At one point it led between two great trees, and there Will caught sight of a blaze on either side of the path. As he stepped forward to examine the marks more carefully, a dreadful thing happened. The ground under his feet suddenly sank away without a sound, and the next moment he found himself at the bottom of a jug-shaped pit some fifteen feet deep, whose sides curved in so sharply that not even a monkey, much less a man, could climb out. The opening had been covered over with the stretched skins of animals, stitched together and cunningly hidden under turf and leaves.

Although shaken and half-stunned by his sudden fall, the soft earth floor of the trap saved him from any serious injury. Far above he could see the light streaming in through the irregular hole which his weight had made in the covering which masked the pit. All too late Will realized that the blazes on the sides of the game path had been warnings for human beings to avoid the pitfall which they marked. The neck of the great earthen bottle was some five feet in width, but at the base it widened into a space fully double that distance across. As the boy's eyes became accustomed to the half-light below, he found that he could see the sides and the bottom of the pit more and more clearly, and, scrambling to his feet, he started to explore its full circumference.