She showed much excitement while she listened, and when we had finished, she spoke with vehemence.
"Oh, thad Duran!" she said. "Ah, my brother, he will help you. Wait till Carlos come. I cannot explain now, but he will be very glad to help you."
Carlos was gone to the city on some marketing errand, and would be back by night, she said.
And so we lay aside our packs, and, to while away the time, set off to explore the region, a mile or so farther inland. Our hostess warned us to keep aloof from an old ruin of a palace we were likely to see on our tramp. The place, she said, had a bad name. The natives had it that the old ruin was now the abode of zombis (devils); and there were stories of men who had gone to explore the place and had never returned. Some of the stories were fanciful, she admitted, but she had herself seen one man return nursing a bullet wound, and who had refused to talk of his experience, and had gone away never to return.
Robert and I moved on up the valley, curious for a look at this tabooed ruin. The path for some time led through heavy forest growth, where was a perfect tangle of lianas, running from ground to tree, and tree to tree, in a great network.
Presently we came to an open space. Robert was ahead.
"There she is," he said, pointing.
The ground sloped away, down to the left hand of our path. The forest trees hid the bottom of the valley—a big ravine I prefer to call it—and over there, over-topping the trees on the other side of the valley, a mile away, loomed a wonderful structure—or the ruins of one.
For a minute we gazed in speechless wonder.
The air was clear, and from our high vantage point we could see with unusual distinctness the high walls of each story which seemed to rise a wide step behind that of the story below. Flanking a great arched portal at the ground, either side rose wide stone buttressed terraces, zigzagging in their ascent. The top—the fourth or fifth story of the palace showed only crumbling walls, and trees grew up there, evidently rooted in the crevices. And one tree, I saw, poked its head through a window opening. The grandeur and bizarre beauty of the structure made it seem like a chapter out of "Arabian Nights Entertainments."