The Inca Emerald

by Samuel Scoville

The latter took one look at the great pointed head and olive-colored body, now showing plainly in the water.

"It's worse than that," he whispered, as if afraid of attracting the saurian's attention. "It's an American crocodile. The explosion and the sight of the dead fish have brought it over from the farther shore."

Without paying any attention to the raft or the men, the great crocodile suddenly sank through the water, so close to them that they could see its triangular head, with the large tooth showing on each side of its closed lower jaw, which is one of the features that distinguishes a crocodile from an alligator. Even as they watched, wavering up through the smoky water came the white figure of the boy from the depths below, swimming strongly toward the surface, his right hand clasped tightly around some large object. Even as they glimpsed the ascending body, a gasp of horror went up from the little group on the raft. Before their very eyes, with a scythe-like flirt of its long, flattened tail, the great reptile shot its fifteen-foot body down toward the swimming boy.

Not until fairly overshadowed by the rushing bulk of the crocodile did Will realize his danger. Then he tried frantically to swerve out of the line of the rush of this terrible guardian of the treasure-horde. It was too late. Even as he swung away, the cruel jaws of the great saurian opened with a flash of curved keen teeth and closed with a death-grip on Will's bare thigh.

With a shout and a splash, the black form of the giant negro shot down into the water. Hen had learned to love the happy-hearted, unselfish boy, and, desperate at the sight of his danger, had gone to his rescue. No man nor any ten men can pull apart the closed jaws of a man-eating crocodile. The plated mail in which he is armored from head to tail can not be pierced by a knife-thrust and will even turn aside a bullet from any except the highest powered rifles. Yet all the crocodilians—alligators, crocodiles, gavials, or caymans—have one vulnerable spot, and Hen, who had hunted alligators in Florida bayous, knew what this was.

Swimming as the onlookers had never seen man swim before, the great negro shot toward the crocodile, which was hampered by the struggling boy, locked his strong legs around the reptile's scaly body, and sank both of his powerful thumbs deep into the sockets of the crocodile's eyes. The great saurian writhed horribly as he felt the rending pain. Inexorably the thumbs of his assailant gouged out the the soft tissues of the eye-sockets until the crocodile reluctantly loosed his grip and sought refuge from the unbearable pain by a rush into the deeps beyond the raft. As the great jaws opened, Hen unwound his legs from the armored body, and, catching Will in his mighty arms, shot up to the surface with him.

In another moment the boy, slashed and torn, but conscious, was stretched on the raft beside Jud, while Joe and the professor bound up the gashes in his thigh, which, although bleeding profusely, were not deep enough to be dangerous. As the last knot of the hasty bandages was tied, Will smiled weakly and opened his right hand. There, in the outstretched palm, gleamed and coruscated the green glory of a great oval emerald, cut and polished by some skilful lapidarist perhaps a thousand years ago. Lost for centuries, the gem which had been worshiped by a great nation had once again come to the earth from which it had disappeared.

Three weeks later, Professor Amandus Ditson lay sleeping in a luxurious bedroom on the ground floor of the rambling house of a Spanish friend whom he was visiting in the beautiful, historic, blood-stained city of Lima. In other rooms of the same house slept Will and Jud and Joe. Two days later the steamer would sail which was to take them all back north. Pinto was already on his way back to his wife and children at Para, and Hen was visiting friends of his own in the city and intended to join the party on the steamer.

The silence of the night was broken abruptly by a grating, creaking noise, and into the room of the sleeping scientist through the veranda window stepped a great masked figure. As the electric lights were switched on. Professor Ditson awoke to find himself looking into the barrel of an automatic revolver.

"Give me the treasure from Eldorado," croaked a voice from behind the mask, "if you want to keep on livin'."