The Aztec Treasure-House

by Thomas A. Janvier

XIV.

THE HANGING CHAIN.

By the winding way which we followed along the mountain-top (and that this was the way we wished to follow the King's symbol and the pointing arrow plainly showed), we came presently close beside the rift in the cliffs through which the waters of the upper lake had been discharged upon the city in the valley below and so had buried it. And here we made a very surprising discovery—which was no less than that the great rift in the rocks through which the water had been let loose was not, as we had supposed, the result of some fierce convulsion of nature, but very plainly was the fiercer work of man. Along the face of the opening whence the water had poured forth the rock was grooved, showing that drill-holes had been made, close together, from the edge of the cliff backward to the lake that once had filled all the valley now lying bare and empty before us; and with the field-glass we could see that there was a like channelling of the rock upon the farther side of the break. And all doubt in our minds in regard to this matter was removed by our finding a vastly long drill—made of the bright, hard metal that we now were familiar with, yet could not at all understand its composition—lying close beside the chasm upon the bare rock.

"There has been the devil's own work here!" said Rayburn, as he fully took in this extraordinary situation. "Whoever did this must have spent months over it, perhaps years, working with such tools as these. They evidently went at it systematically, with the deliberate intention of drowning the whole crowd down below. From an engineering stand-point I must say that it's a good piece of work. See how cleverly they've picked out this particular spot, where the wall of rock went down almost perpendicularly into the lake, and so got the full value of the thrust of the water when their cuts were finished. If I'm not mistaken, there was a third line of drill-holes sunk in the middle of the mass that they meant to cut loose. That's the way I should have done it: then there would have been a little giving in the centre that would have helped to loosen the sides. But what a lot of incarnate devils they must have been to go at such a job!"

Truly, there was something chilling to the blood in the thought of the slow labor of them who had toiled here, day after day and month after month, until their ghastly purpose was accomplished, and they had slain a whole city without striking a single honest blow. Such vengeance upon an enemy as here was taken never had its equal for cold, malignant cruelty since the world began. Down in the valley below we had seen gleaming beneath the calm surface of the lake the bones of the thousands who had perished when this diabolical work was completed, and the waters bounded forth, shining and sparkling in the sunlight, on their mission of death. And whoever let them loose must have stood just where we now were standing; and at sight of what came of their long labor there must have been such joy as no hell could adequately punish in their black hearts.

Our bodies shuddered as we turned and left the scene of this tremendous tragedy; that was the more appalling to us because of the profound mystery in which was buried everything related to it save the fact that it had been.

For a long distance our way went onward beside the bare, deep valley that had been the basin of the lake, and so the thought of the horror which had been wrought so devilishly with its innocent waters lingered gloomily in our minds. Involuntarily we associated the unknown people of a long past time who had perpetrated this hideous wholesale murder with the people for whom we now were searching, and an uncertain dread filled our souls as to what might be our own fate should we end by finding what we sought. From the tender mercies of a race in which stealthy craft and cold, malignant cruelty evidently were such conspicuous characteristics, little was to be expected. Therefore, it was in a sombre mood, and with but little talk among us, that we went forward upon our way.

The path that we followed showed the same care in the making of it that we had found in the path leading down from the cañon into the valley where the drowned city was. Throughout the length of it, by carrying it skilfully along the windings of the mountain-sides, an equable, easy grade was maintained; where it led across open spaces the loose stones had been cleared away and stood heaped along each side of it; where it skirted precipices the solid rock had been cut out in order to give a wider and a surer foothold; and here and there in its course crevices which traversed it were bridged with great slabs of stone. Rayburn was lost in admiration of the engineering skill that was shown in its construction, and declared that a very little extra work put on it would fit it for the laying of a line of rails.

The valley on our right, in which the lake had been, narrowed as we advanced; and as the path that we followed had a steadily rising grade (according to Rayburn's estimate, of a trifle more than three per cent.), the bottom of it fell away rapidly. As we reached what had been, as we found, the foot of the lake, we discovered fresh evidence of the enormous amount of labor that had been expended in order to make its waters an effective engine of destruction. Far in the depths beneath us, extending across the whole width of the valley—but here the valley had so narrowed that it was less a valley than a cañon—we saw a high and vastly broad stone wall. It was then that we perceived fully the whole of the devilish design, and realized the years that must have been given to its execution. By the building of the wall the level of the lake had been raised fully three hundred feet, and so a head of water had been obtained strong enough to thrust out the mass of rock that had been loosened by drilling through its centre and at its sides. It would have been possible, also, for the rock that was to be broken away to be greatly thinned by quarrying its open face while the water was rising slowly after the great dam was built. Clearly, the whole work had been planned with a calm, diabolical ingenuity that assured with absolute certainty the accomplishment of the horrible purpose that those who labored at it had in view. It seemed impossible, but for the proof that we here had of it, that human hearts could have in them enough of purely devilish cruelty to spend years in thus working out to perfection so hideous a vengeance; and to me it seemed all the more dreadful because of the time that had passed since this most evil deed was done. Centuries had vanished, and the slayers—living out the few years of their lifetime—had perished from off the earth as utterly as had the slain; yet here the whole proof of the great crime that had been wrought lived on in enduring stone that was like to last until the very end of the world should come. Thus had these sinners left behind them, raised by their own hands, a monument telling of their sin; which sin had not even the redeeming quality of passionateness, but was slow and subtle and cruelly cold.

We were glad to turn from sight of this place and press onward into the cañon, for such the valley now had become; and we found in the dark shadows which enveloped us in this deep cleft between the mountains a sombreness in keeping with the feelings in our hearts. So high above us towered the cliffs that at their top they seemed almost to meet, showing between them only a narrow ribbon of bright blue sky, and below us the chasm went down sheer for a thousand feet; a gloomy depth that our eyes could not have penetrated had there not gleamed at the bottom of it the foam and sparkle of a little stream. Here the path was hewn almost continuously out of the solid rock; and we could see that a like path was cut in the rock on the other side. That so prodigious a piece of work should be thus duplicated seemed to us a very astonishing waste of energy; for even Young did not have much faith in his own suggestion that two prehistoric railway companies had secured rights of way along the opposite sides of the cañon, and had begun the building there of rival lines.