“Who’ll be the first to greet de Silva?” he demanded.
I recall heretofore setting forth a number of reasons why we decided to attempt our escape via the water hole tunnel. It is my belief, on more mature reflection, that with all my care I have failed to state the most important one: that of the sheer desire of the majority of our party—a desire that had been fed by the continued hounding de Silva had given us—to meet him and fight it out.
At any rate, the manner in which Hardy answered his own question by leaping up the stairway, afforded every evidence of how he felt about it.
We followed closely. But nothing in the line ahead of me seemed to occur, and to our astonishment, on gaining the surface, there was no one to meet us. Soon we found the explanation, for not far distant lay the bodies of a white man and an Indian. They were locked together in death, while a rod farther on was the body of another Indian. He had been shot in the back. Scattered about in the sand, evidently where the running man had dropped them when hit, were numbers of brilliant gems. They were gems of the Ataruipe!
In frank wonder, we gazed upon that indisputable proof that at least some of the members of the de Silva party, unbeknown to us, had got past the fatal stile and explored a portion of the caverns. But where was de Silva? And what had become of the rest of his crowd?
Our interest in this matter soon gave way to that far more important problem as to the direction in which we were to move. In the apparel of the dead Spaniard Zangaree discovered a compass, and while this seemed almost heaven-sent, yet it did not tell us the way we had come.
A final effort was made to dislodge from the debris the beautiful statue which we had used as a lever, but it was solidly buried and we soon gave over the attempt. Then, with little further discussion, we shoved off, following the trail of the many feet that led to the east from where we had found the gems in the sand.
We had not gone far when it became evident that those ahead of us were struggling with the transportation of heavy objects, which it was thought might prove to be golden statues. The correctness of this surmise was later borne out in a dreadful manner, for about four o’clock in the afternoon we came upon one of the beautiful objects. It lay in the sand and only a few yards away were three more dead men. Again two of them were Indians and the third a white, the features of all three being horribly slashed with the knives that had been used in the fighting.
Night overtook us still on the trail of the de Silva party, which now, judging from the foot-marks, consisted of about six men. We slept well, and at dawn pressed on.
The unexpected happened—and it came as a glorious surprise—for by ten in the morning we sighted signs of vegetation, and an hour later were nearing the exact point of our departure into the desert the week before.