“The male skulls are a contrast to the female ones. Some are relatively large, thick-walled, with protuberant surfaces, receding foreheads, and prognathic jaws. Evidently their possessors were ferocious, primitive, almost gorilla-like—not of the same race which bred the girl-brides of the Rain God. Again this tallies with the tradition that the warriors sacrificed were captives—fighting-men of high renown, who, after being made drunk with bal-che (the sacred mead of the Mayas), were hurled into the well as fit offerings to the deity.
“Some years before the time of which I am speaking I had the good fortune to discover in a sealed stone-walled grave the now famous Sabua skull. I had to work on it for three days, with atomizer and glue water, because the skull, which was perfect in shape, was no more than lime-dust which would crumble at the least touch. By this treatment I saved it and it is to-day a priceless museum piece kept under glass. In view of this experience it seemed strange, almost uncanny, to see these perfect skulls and bones come from the well, so wonderfully preserved that they required no other treatment than cleansing and rubbing with a weak solution of formalin to render them ready for packing and shipment. In the Sacred Well, big and gruesome as it is, are no large reptiles, no saurians, no fish which would or could tear apart a human body or gnaw or crush the bones. I know this to be true, in spite of the local traditions which speak of huge serpents and strange animals to be seen about the well and to be unpleasantly encountered should one be so foolish as to roam about in its vicinity at midnight. I have been that foolish many times and have never met anything of the sort. On the contrary, in the glorious moonlight of Yucatan the big pool has for me an even greater lure than it has in the sunlight.
“As the excavations in the well became deeper and deeper we passed from mud to powdered limestone, which became more and more compact until we reached a marl-like bed into which the steel-lipped bucket bit with difficulty, finally making almost no impression at all. It became obvious that, although we had by no means dredged the whole well, we had literally reached the end of our rope as far as dredging was concerned. I was convinced that further work of the sort would bring us many more finds, but I was quite as certain that they would not differ greatly in character or variety from those already accumulated.
“I could not quarrel with our good fortune thus far. I felt well repaid, even if we should discover nothing else, for all my effort and expense. My highly speculative venture had amply justified itself. I had proved conclusively the history of the Sacred Well. But our dredging operations, together with soundings made from time to time, indicated clearly that the bottom of the well was very uneven—a series of hummocks; almost a miniature mountain range. And in the pockets between those hummocks, where our dredge could not reach, might there not be other treasures?—objects heavier and smaller in size than anything we had yet found; things which, because of their weight, would sink through the mud to the very bottom of the well.
“Never could I leave the spot until, by some means or other, this last and final ghost was laid.”
CHAPTER VIII
SIXTY FEET UNDER WATER
WE had reached the stage where it was very slow work for the dredge to get even a mouthful of the stiff, almost shale-like bottom of the well, but, while we brought up fewer treasures than previously, I was not ready to discard the derrick and dredge as long as the bucket brought up any finds whatever.
“To facilitate the work at this stage, a plan which I had long considered was put into effect. We built a big flat-bottomed scow, crude but serviceable, and capable of holding ten scoopfuls of muck from the dredge. The scow was constructed, right on the brink of the well, of logs and such other materials as we had at hand. Then we lowered it, by means of the derrick, until it floated easily seventy feet below, on the still surface of the water.