Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Rod Crawford, Dave Morgan
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net






                       _Mystery Stories for Boys_




                              The Red Lure


                                  _By_
                              ROY J. SNELL


                          The Reilly & Lee Co.
                                Chicago


               _Printed in the United States of America_

                            Copyright, 1926
                                   by
                          The Reilly & Lee Co.
                         _All Rights Reserved_




                                CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
  I The White Gleam                                                    9
  II Sudden Catastrophe                                               23
  III Mysterious Sounds                                               38
  IV Tree Hay and a Jaguar                                            47
  V Narrow Escapes                                                    58
  VI Lost in the Jungle                                               65
  VII Peril in the Dark                                               77
  VIII Death Ahead                                                    87
  IX “It’s Death an’ Destruction”                                    100
  X Johnny’s Ghost Walks                                             114
  XI Provisioned for a Long Journey                                  128
  XII A Bronze Beauty                                                135
  XIII Purring Shadows                                               151
  XIV Forgotten Tribes                                               159
  XV The Hidden City                                                 169
  XVI Pant Sets a Trap                                               177
  XVII The Spanish Girl Reappears                                    185
  XVIII Pant Springs the Trap                                        191
  XIX Capturing a Black Shadow                                       199
  XX Century Old Caverns                                             209
  XXI Trapped                                                        218
  XXII Magic Power                                                   228
  XXIII The Passing of the Ghost                                     237
  XXIV Blind Drifting                                                242
  XXV The Battle of Rio Hondo                                        252




                              THE RED LURE




                               CHAPTER I
                            THE WHITE GLEAM


As Johnny Thompson bent over the black waters of the river he thought he
heard a stealthy movement behind him. Before he could decide whether or
not his eyes had deceived him he caught the reflection of a sudden white
gleam on the dark surface of the water. At the same time something told
him to dive, and dive he did. With the rocket-like speed that was his, he
shot straight into the water, then away beneath the surface. He rose some
ten yards downstream. After one deep, silent breath, he grasped a red
mangrove branch for support, then paused to listen.

He did not listen long, for there came a sudden wild swirl of water close
beside him.

“Alligator!” he breathed, as with a sudden and mighty tug at the mangrove
branch he threw himself clear of the water and out upon the bank.

Here he paused to listen again. Catching no sound, he began creeping back
toward his first position, the foot of the path that had been cut to the
river.

All this time his mind was working on double-quick time. What had caused
that sound behind him there on the bank—man or beast? What was the white
gleam? Was it, after all, only a product of his overwrought mind? The
whole day had seemed full of brooding menace.

“No,” he told himself stoutly, “it was not all imagination. The sound
might have been—but the white gleam? No. I saw that. After all, though,
it might have been only the reflection of a white heron in silent
flight.”

Night was coming on. It would soon be dark. He did not care for that. His
flashlight was in his pocket. As he crept forward through the thick
tangled brush he seemed to feel the swift power of the dark old river.
Rio Hondo, they called it—Black River. And black it was. Johnny had never
before seen water that could so perfectly reproduce the black gleam of
polish ebony. And yet, somehow, he had come to think of the river as his
friend. That was how he came to be there now. Pant, his pal, was away.
The thirty black and brown faces about camp had seemed singularly strange
and unfriendly, so he had come to the river for comfort. And now, how had
it repaid him? Had it in that white gleam given him a friendly warning,
or had it tricked him into a place of great peril, into danger of being
eaten by an alligator?

Suddenly his thoughts came to an end. Sooner than he expected he broke
through the “bush” into the path. Starting back, he stared for a second
in silence.

“No one here,” he whispered. “But wait; some one has been here.”

In astonishment he picked up a long-bladed, gleaming knife. It was a
machete, the tool and weapon of the bushman of Central America.

“Looks like Petillo’s machete,” he breathed. What could it mean?

Just then he caught a sudden sound from the water. It was like a startled
cry for help. He thought he caught sight of a head above the black
waters. He might have been mistaken. It was growing dark. He drew his
flashlight from his pocket. It was water-logged, short circuited,
useless.

Again came the strange cry and at the same time a great swirl of water.

“The alligator!” he breathed.

For an instant he thought of throwing himself in the water to go to the
rescue. This he knew was madness. There were other alligators. Grim,
terrible, man-eating beasts were these sharp nosed alligators of British
Honduras, Central America.

So, as he sat there, crowded well back in the bushes, silent, motionless,
listening and thinking, darkness came and blotted out all, both good and
bad, that might have been seen upon the surface of the Rio Hondo.

A deep feeling of foreboding and gloom settled down upon him as darkness
hid the river.

Picking up the machete that lay at his feet, he felt of its edge.

“Keen as a razor,” he murmured. “Did some one try to kill me with it? If
so, I wonder why? Well, he didn’t, and won’t. Providence took a hand.
Must have lost his balance and fallen in. Bad swimmer. Current carried
him out and a ’gator got him. That’s the way it looks. Can’t tell,
though.”

He shuddered at the thought; the ’gator might have gotten him, too.

Johnny was in a strange land, the strangest he had ever seen. In other
days, as you will know if you have read our other stories of the
adventures of Johnny Thompson, fate had led him over the frozen trails of
Alaska, down the timber roads of the Cascades and out over the sea. Now
here he was far up a tropical river, in the heart of the “bush,” alone.

It is not pleasant to be alone in a tropical jungle at night. Johnny rose
to go. His flashlight gone, there was nothing left but to grope his way
back over the machete-hewn trail to camp. It was some distance—all of a
mile.

As he took his first step, off to the right a twig snapped. His heart
skipped a beat and his face felt strangely cold. Had he been watched? Now
the creature was going on before him. Was it a man, or a jaguar? (Natives
called them tigers.) He preferred the word “tiger.”

Gripping the keen edged machete, he struck away straight down the trail.

There came no further sound. Slowly, steadily, he advanced. Half the
distance was covered. He was breathing more easily when a sudden hoarse
sound brought him to a stand.

Then he laughed. Off to the right he caught the gleam of two small red
balls of fire. And again that hoarse bark broke the silence of the night.

“’Gator,” he said with a chuckle. “Forgot there was one in a pool over
there.”

He did not laugh five minutes later as he heard, off to the left, the
pu-pu-pu of a jaguar. These great cats were dangerous. They had been
known to kill a horse and swim a river with the carcass. The golden balls
that now peered at him from the first branch of a great Santa Maria tree
were not reassuring.

Redoubling his pace, he hurried on toward camp. Five minutes later, with
a sigh of satisfaction, he broke through the brush into a clearing.

Here he paused in astonishment. The place was silent, more silent than he
had known it even in the dead of night. The gleam of coals on the cooking
platform and the dim bulk of cabins looming in the dark were the only
signs that men lived here.

“Hello there!” he shouted.

To his utter bewilderment there came no answer.

An hour before he had left thirty men here. Now there was not one. What
could it mean? Again cold dread gripped his heart.

Turning, he hurried down a logging road to the edge of a broad creek.
There the white bulk of a large flat-bottomed boat greeted him.

“They didn’t take the _Maria Theresa_, anyway.” There was a comfort in
that. “Fellow’d sure be up against it a hundred miles from the coast
without a boat.”

Even as he thought this, his ears caught the steady dip-dip of pit-pan
paddles.

“Hello! Hello there!” he shouted.

Again there came no answer. Even the paddles, if paddles there had been,
were silent.

“Huh!”

He turned and walked slowly back to camp. There he groped about until he
had found a bench. This he leaned against the side of a cabin, and
burying his back in the soft cohune nut thatch, pressed his brow with
both hands in an endeavor to think sanely and clearly.

Time passed. The coals on the cooking platform growing dimmer and dimmer,
at last blinked out. The darkness appeared to grow more intense, the
night more silent.

“They said it couldn’t be done,” he muttered at last, “and perhaps it
can’t. But there was the red lure. The red lure,” he repeated softly.

The red lure! He had heard of it first in a little cabinetmaker’s shop in
Chicago. In that shop an old man wrought wonders with precious
woods—rosewood and ebony and mahogany. Strange tales this old man had to
tell, and he told them as he worked. Tales they were of tropical isles,
of green rivers and dense forests.

One day as he put the last touch to a bit of wood that gleamed red as a
western sunset, he had exclaimed:

“The red lure, Johnny! The red lure! That’s what’s beckoned men on, and
times enough to their death!”

Then, after laying the bit of wood down as gently as if it had been a
priceless porcelain top, he had added:

“And, Johnny, I know where the lure ends. Far up a tropical river, a big
black river. It’s there, Johnny, and unscarred by the hand of man.”

“Why?” Awed by the old man’s tones, Johnny had whispered the word.

“That’s it, Johnny.” The old man had half closed his eyes. “That’s what
the owner of that land would like to know. Three times he has sent men in
boats up the Rio Hondo. Three times they came back empty handed; that is,
the ones that came back at all. Why? Who knows. Who can solve all the
mysteries of the tropics? Who can guess the trickery and intrigue that
lies hidden in a Spaniard’s mind? The red lure is still there. Men have
died for it; but there it stands. The red lure, Johnny. The red lure!”

He had turned once more to his work, but Johnny had not forgotten.
Something within him had been stirred to the depths. He had heard the
call of the wilderness, had felt the challenge of the impossible.

In time, having sought out his partner of many adventures, “Panther Eye,”
or “Pant” as he was called, he had gone in search of the owner of the red
lure. He had found him to be a rich business man.

At first this capitalist, Roderick Grayson, had merely laughed at the
proposition which the two boys made—that they be given a try at the red
lure. In time he had come to take them more seriously.

At last he had made them a proposition.

“I’m tired of having you about,” he growled good-naturedly. “I’ll give
you a chance. You go to Belize, the Capitol of Honduras. That’s a city of
twelve thousand. Plenty of men and boats there. I’ll instruct my agent
there to furnish you with motor boats and pay for thirty men. You may
have them a hundred days, not a day more. At the end of that time you
must show me a profit from your expedition or you lose this concession.
Is that plain? And satisfactory?”

“Quite.”

“Then good-bye.”

The rich man had bowed them out, and that is how it happened that on this
particular night Johnny was far up the Rio Hondo.

“And now this!” Johnny said to himself. “A bolt out of the blue! An
apparent attempt at my life. My men vanish. What is to be the end of it
all?”

Suddenly he realized that he was alone in the dark; that perils lurked in
every corner of the jungle.

“Well enough to have some sort of light,” he told himself.

There was a flashlight on a beam in the very cabin against which his
bench rested. To secure that and to try it out by a flash on the floor
was but the work of a moment.

Upon returning to the bench he felt a little more secure. As he sat down
his foot struck something and sent it to the ground with a thud.

“The machete,” he thought.

Picking it up, he examined it curiously. On the horn handle of this
bushman’s sword he discovered the initials, S. P.

“Seperino Petillo,” he said with a start. “So it was Petillo. I was not
mistaken.”

His mind was in a whirl. Petillo, a half-caste Spaniard, had been his
foreman. Surely, this was a strange land. The very man to whom he had
given position and standing among his people had, apparently, tried to
kill him.

For some time he sat there thinking and his thoughts were long, long
thoughts.

The red lure was all about him. The smell of it was in his nostrils.

Yet, less than a third of their work was done. To establish a camp, to
build cabins from the trunks and leaves of the cohune nut tree, to cut
paths and roads, all this had taken time. A few weeks more and they would
have been drifting silently downstream with their red treasure.

“And now this has happened!” he groaned.

And yet, what had happened? He could not tell—could only guess.

Hearing a sound to the right, he turned to listen. Catching it again, he
threw his powerful flashlight on the spot.

To his astonishment the light fell full upon the face and figure of a
girl.

She was a short, brown-eyed, bare-footed, Spanish girl, about sixteen
years of age. Too startled to move, she stood there for an instant,
blinking in the light. Then she turned and fled down the path.

Too much surprised to follow at once, Johnny sat in his place, wondering.

“There’s not such a girl within fifty miles. I am sure of that,” he told
himself. “Must have come over from Quintanaroo.”

Beyond the Rio Hondo lay Quintanaroo, a land of many mysteries.

Rising, he followed down the path to the creek’s edge. There he sent the
gleam of his flashlight shooting down the creek. He was just in time to
see a slender canoe disappear round a clump of red mangrove.

“That’s where she came from,” he assured himself. “I wonder why?”

As he turned to retrace his steps he caught the long drawn, hoarse call
of a jaguar. There were empty, palm thatched cottages up the river.
Rumors were afloat of a man-eating “tiger” who had carried away the
former owners of these cabins. Could it be that he had been mistaken
about the plot? Had he misjudged the action of the unfortunate one at the
river bank? Had his men become frightened by tales of the man-eater, and
fled? Who could tell?

“Oh, well,” he sighed, “morning will come, and with it the light.”




                               CHAPTER II
                           SUDDEN CATASTROPHE


As if loath to disturb the perfect silence of a night, dawn lingers in
the tropical jungle. Off somewhere in the distance a wild parrot screams;
nearer at hand a long tailed tropical black-bird begins for the
thousandth time to practice the song he will never learn. Swinging from
limb to limb, a monkey chatters at a snake. Faint and from far away, like
a young puppy calling for his breakfast, an alligator barks. Trunks of
trees, gray bulks of cabins, green clusters of ferns take shape and then,
with a sudden burst of light, day arrives.

The sound that awakened Johnny Thompson to dull reality of a hapless
yesterday was the braying of a burro. He had remained seated on his bench
all night. At first he had not dared to sleep. At last, overcome by
fatigue, he had fallen asleep.

At first, only half awake, he imagined himself in Belize. Burros were
common enough there.

“No,” he declared, shaking himself, “I am not in Belize. This is the
jungle. There are no burros. I was dreaming.”

Leaping to his feet, he shook himself free of the last vestige of sleep.

As if to deny his last assertion, there struck his ears, clear and
defiant, a loud, laughing “He-haw!”

“Well, I’ll be a donkey myself!” he exclaimed, turning and racing down
the path that led to the creek. The sound appeared to come from there.

When he had covered two-thirds of the distance, he paused in
astonishment. Before him in the path was the skinniest, boniest, most
dilapidated and dejected specimen of animal kind it had ever been his
privilege to meet. Yet, it was unmistakably a burro.

At that moment, as if to proclaim his species, the creature stuck his
nose in the air and brayed once again.

In spite of his great dilemma, Johnny sat down on a fallen mahogany tree
trunk and rocked with laughter.

“Well now,” he exclaimed, his fit of laughter over, “where did you come
from, and how? Did you walk or swim, or both?”

Without an attempt at an answer, the creature paused in the path, hung
his head and put on such a droll and mournful look as set the boy off
into another fit of laughter.

Johnny was once more regaining control of himself when he caught a yellow
gleam through the branches. The next moment a huge bunch of bananas
appeared, and beneath them was Pant.

“Johnny, meet my new friend Rip Van Winkle,” smiled Pant. “Call him Rip
for short. He’s just slept twenty years down there by a deserted cabin. I
woke him up and brought him along.”

“What a pity! Why didn’t you let him sleep?” grinned Johnny.

“Why should I? He was bound to wake up sooner or later. He’d been
lonesome if there’d been no one around.

“But honest, Johnny,” Pant’s tone became serious, “what would you think
of a native who would leave a poor old fellow like that to starve!”

“I’d think he was a pig of a dog. But how much better can we do? What’ll
we feed him on? Bananas?”

“Easy. There’s a tree up here that raises grass on its branches instead
of leaves—bread-nut tree, they call it. I saw one up the river two days
ago. Burros and cattle get fat on it. We’ll get a native to climb a few
trees and gather a ton of this hay.”

“Natives?” said Johnny slowly. “That reminds me—there aren’t any.”

“What!” exclaimed Pant, setting down his bananas so suddenly that many of
them broke from the stem.

“Skipped. Vamoosed. All gone.” Johnny threw out his arms in a wide
gesture.

“No!”

“Yes, I tell you.”

“Why?”

Johnny shrugged his shoulders. “You tell me. All I know is they’re gone.
They told us in New Orleans that this red lure was a hoodoo. They told us
the same thing in Belize. Maybe it is. Who knows?”

“It isn’t!” Pant sprang to his feet. “We’ll go to Belize and get another
crew!”

“And if they leave us?”

“There are a thousand men in Belize.”

“Pant,” said Johnny slowly, “I think one of them tried to kill me. I—I
think it was Petillo.”

Johnny seated himself on a log and told of his night’s experiences, from
his narrow escape on the bank and in the river to his discovery of the
mysterious Spanish girl in the trail.

“What do you make of it?” he asked at the end.

“Don’t make much.”

“Of course, there’s that man-eating jaguar they’ve been talking about.
They may have run away because they were afraid. They may have—”

“But what of that fellow down by the river!” exclaimed Pant. “No! I tell
you what, Johnny, someone is plotting against us, someone with money and
power. We’ll not spend a night here alone. We’ll get right back to
Belize. And we must not come back unless we find a real, fearless crew.”

“I’m afraid that last is a big contract.”

“Maybe so. But let’s hope it’s not impossible.”

“What’ll we do with that?” said Johnny, pointing to the burro.

“Take him along in the power boat. I tell you what, Johnny, I always feel
lucky when I’m saving some poor dumb creature from suffering. I shouldn’t
wonder if Rip would do us a mighty good turn sometime.”

In this Pant was more nearly right than he knew. Also, this sad-looking
quadruped was destined to be the cause of bringing him into great peril.
But that was all in the future.

Pant had been down the river in a dory for bananas, cocoanuts and
casabas. As soon as they had unloaded these stores and had eaten a hasty
breakfast, they turned the prow of their motor-boat downstream and went
pop-popping away.

                            * * * * * * * *

Belize, the city to which the boys returned, is one of matchless beauty.
Built on a point of land reaching out into the sea, with its red-roofed,
white-walled houses, gnarled old mahogany trees by its governor’s palace
and stately royal palms at the back of the Bishop’s house, bathed in the
tropical sun, it is a city to dream of.

Johnny Thompson dreamed of it very little. His mind was occupied with but
one thought—getting back to the red lure.

He was making his way up from the dock to the hotel when someone called
his name. Turning, he saw Hardgrave. Hardgrave was an old man. He hailed
from the States and had been twenty-five years in the tropics. A natural
student, he had learned much in that time and had already been of service
to this boy from the land of his birth.

“Back so soon!” he asked in surprise.

“We did get back rather soon,” said Johnny. “At least our crew did. But
we’re going back.” He said this last in such a tone as Sheridan must have
used when he said: “Turn, boys, turn; we’re going back.” He had been
given a task to do, and like any red-blooded American boy, he meant to go
through with it.

“Want to tell me about it?” said the old man.

“I’d like to.”

“Come over to the hotel yard. We’ll find shade there.”

So, beneath a low-spreading cocoanut palm, Johnny told his story.

“Johnny,” said the old man impressively, when the boy had finished his
story, “get up from your chair and walk over to the cooler for a drink of
water. As you come back, without appearing interested, look at the man
over there in the far corner of the veranda.”

Three minutes later Johnny resumed his seat.

“See him?” the old man leaned forward eagerly.

“Saw two men; a tall, thin, dark-skinned one, and a heavy-set one.”

“The thin one, a half-caste Spaniard, is the one. That’s Daego.”

“Daego? Who is he?”

“Is it possible you have not heard of him?” Hardgrave asked. “He’s the
richest, most unscrupulous man of our city. He bought you out.”

“Bought us out?”

“Hired your men to quit, and to attempt killing you, like as not. He’d do
that.”

“But—but why?” Johnny licked his dry lips.

“He has his eye on that red lure of yours, has had for a long time.
Strange you haven’t heard of him, haven’t seen his boats. But then, of
course, they pass in the night. Black boats, they are. You don’t see much
of them. You wouldn’t, I’d bet on that.”

Johnny wanted to ask about those boats, but he wanted still more to learn
of Daego’s desire for his treasure.

“You see,” said Hardgrave, “Daego’s built up an immense fortune working
the Rio Hondo territory. He’s worked all the land up to your tract. There
he was obliged to stop. It was owned by a man who would not sell; at
least not at his beggar’s price.

“As you know, British Honduras is one side of the Rio Hondo, and
Quintanaroo, a state of Mexico, on the other. Daego went across the river
and obtained concessions in Quintanaroo. He’s working there now. His camp
can’t be a dozen miles from your own. I’m surprised that you haven’t seen
his boats but of course you wouldn’t. They’re black, and mostly pass by
night.”

The old man paused as if in thought. Then, of a sudden, he exclaimed:

“It’s Caribs you want!”

“What’s a Carib?” Johnny asked. “Some sort of native fruit?”

“No,” smiled Hardgrave, “they’re men. Real men, too. Indians. Columbus
called them the sturdiest, most warlike men of America. They’ve been that
ever since. They’ve mixed with the whites and the blacks, but they’ve
never lost their language nor their courage, either. They are supposed to
have been head-hunters at one time or another, though that can’t be
proven. They’re the bravest sailors, the most daring hunters of our
coast; the best workers, too, and if they enter into a contract they’re
mighty likely to go through with it. What’s more, they hate Daego. He’s
cheated and underpaid them. There’s not one that will work for him. Yes,
you want Caribs.

“And son,” the man leaned forward eagerly, “you’re in luck for once!
There’s two boat loads of them over from Stann Creek now. You’d better
see them. They’ll be down at the storeroom of the Tidewater Company.”

“I’ll go see them,” said Johnny. “What’s the best time?”

“Along about sunset.”

“I’ll be there.”

“You should.”

They parted at the gate. Johnny went to the market and bought the ham of
a young peccary (wild pig) and took it to the hotel to be baked for a
late supper. After that he sat for a full hour under the shade of a
cohune-nut tree, thinking—thinking hard about many things, of the little
brown girl who had appeared in the path by his camp in the night, and of
Daego’s dark boats that passed in the night.

Just at dusk Johnny met Hardgrave at the bridge, and together they walked
in silence toward the Tidewater storeroom.

As they approached the door they caught the sound of laughter. To
Johnny’s well-trained ears there came old familiar sounds, a quick
shuffle of feet, the slap-slap of leather.

“Boxing,” he told himself. His pulse quickened at the thought.

Johnny Thompson, young and vigorous, belonged to that ever-increasing
army of American boys who realize that no person can fight his best in
the battle of life unless he is physically fit. A strong swimmer, fast on
his feet and limber as a hickory limb, Johnny was not the least skillful
of boxers. So his heart was made glad by the sound that greeted his ears.

Silently he and Hardgrave entered the long low room to join the little
company of watchers.

The instant Johnny’s eyes fell upon the dark, gleaming, strong and
well-moulded forms of the Caribs, he felt himself admiring them.

“Black faces,” he told himself, “but real men.”

“See that big fellow over in the corner,” whispered Hardgrave, “the one
with the sprinkle of gray in his hair?”

Johnny nodded.

“That’s Tivoli, the chief Carib of them all.”

A half hour later Johnny Thompson found himself facing this chief and
champion of the Caribs. How had it come about? Why ask? When two devotees
of an art meet, how long a time passes before they begin displaying their
skill?

That he was facing no mean boxer, Johnny realized quite well. He had seen
Tivoli in a sparring match with one of his own men. Tivoli thought of
this bout with a white boy, who could easily have walked under his arm,
as something of a joke. This was shown quite plainly by the smile that
overspread his face as he seized Johnny’s hand in a friendly grasp.

As for Johnny, he had two purposes in entering the match. He wished to
promote friendly relations with the Caribs and he wished to prove to
Tivoli that, though still a boy, he was possessed of such physical
prowess as even a grown man might respect.

So the match began. That the Caribs took more than a passing interest in
the affair was shown by the hush that fell upon the place as the first
swinging blows fanned the air. Even the river that swept by the wide open
port-side door seemed strangely silent.

The shadows, cast by the single small lamp, were deceiving. Twice, in
stepping back from the whirling arms of his giant opponent, Johnny barely
missed a blow that, however well meant, would have sent him to a land of
wild dreams.

Though much smaller than his opponent, Johnny was quick on his feet.
This, combined with the clock-like working of his trained mind, made him
quite a match for the Carib.

Across the shining mahogany floor, back again, criss-cross, to right, to
left, they battled. The Carib drove the white boy into a corner. Johnny
feinted with his left, dodged to the right, and was free.

Crouching low, Tivoli sprang square at him, but he was gone. Not so soon,
however, but that he left a sting on the giant’s ear.

Grinning still, Tivoli squared away for a second rush. This time he
approached more cautiously and won applause by a neatly placed blow on
Johnny’s left cheek.

The contestants warmed to the sport. Caribs know nothing of rounds and
breathing spells. The contest goes to the man of greatest skill and
longest endurance.

They had battled royally for ten minutes. Johnny felt the warm ring of
approval in the cheers of the Caribs as he scored a point.

Then, swift as the wind, came the end. Since his opponent was so much
taller than he, Johnny was often obliged to leap off the floor to so much
as score a light tap on Tivoli’s chin. In the wild excitement of the
contest he had perhaps grown a trifle reckless. Intent upon winning one
more point, Johnny leaped a full foot from the floor and aimed a swift
blow at his opponent’s chin. The Carib, with a sudden quick movement,
bent low for a blow at his chest.

The impact of Johnny’s gloved fist with the giant’s chin was startlingly
quick and sure. The report was like a muffled explosion. Tivoli’s hands
shot out and up, then he crumpled down like an empty sack.

Johnny’s head was in a whirl. An instant of time, one unfortunate move
had undone all. At least, so he thought as, throwing his gloves from his
hands, he bent over the prostrate Carib.




                              CHAPTER III
                           MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS


It was a down-hearted Johnny who bent over the fallen Carib champion and
strove as best he could to bring him back to consciousness. He had hoped
much. His interview with this man was to pave the way to certain success.
With this fearless chief as the leader of his men, with a faithful Carib
band behind him, he was to have gone triumphantly back up Rio Hondo and,
in spite of perils that lurk in the jungle, in spite of unscrupulous
Daego’s trickery and cunning, was to have brought back the richest
treasure that had ever floated upon the ebony waters of the Black River.
And now it had come to this.

What would the man do, once he was brought back from the world of strange
dreams where Johnny’s unintended and unfortunate blow had sent him.
Johnny’s heart skipped a beat at the thought. He might be obliged to flee
for his life. He had heard wild stories of these primitive people of
Honduras; how, when slightly wounded in play with machetes, a man flew
into a rage and at a single blow severed the offender’s head from his
body. These were simple people, men of the tropics, quick in love and
sudden in hate.

Since there was no answer to this, Johnny could but fan his victim and
await results.

He did not wait long. The man’s eyes opened and he sat up unsteadily,
staring wildly.

“Who—who did that?” he demanded. “Who—hi—hit me?”

“Unc-a,” the men grunted, pointing at Johnny.

Johnny put on as brave and friendly a face as he could command. Though
friendly enough, it was far from brave. His heart was in his toes.

“You—” the chief looked incredulous, “you hit me like that?”

Johnny nodded. He dared not trust his voice.

“Why! You—you little hammer!” exclaimed the chief.

At that there was a roaring burst of laughter. From that day on Johnny
was known among the Caribs as “Little Hammer.”

Tivoli joined heartily in the laugh and as it subsided, to Johnny’s great
surprise and joy, he exclaimed:

“You want men? I got men. All the men you want. How many men, you think?
Sixty men? Half work, half watch and fight? What you think? All right?”

At this sudden turn of fortune’s wheel, Johnny’s head was too much in a
whirl to permit of much clear thinking. He merely nodded. Then, seized by
a sudden inspiration, he invited Tivoli to join him in his feast of roast
peccary—an invitation which was promptly accepted.

“Hardgrave,” said Johnny, as the two sat in the hotel court after the
feast and Tivoli’s departure, “do these creatures, these jaguars which
the natives call ‘tigers,’ ever become man-eaters?”

“Once in a blue moon they do. I knew of one that did. That was on the
island of Riotan. And, by the way, it was only a month ago that an
Englishman, a chicle buyer, told me of actually seeing one stalking a
man—up the Rio Hondo, too. By all that’s good! Right up in your country!
It must have been!”

Johnny leaned forward in unconcealed interest.

“This ‘man-eater’ as they call him,” Hardgrave continued, “has a bad
reputation. You’ll see little settlements, two or three palm thatched
cabins along the river, deserted because of him. That’s what the chicle
buyer said.”

“Dead? The people dead?” the words stuck in Johnny’s throat.

“Probably not. The jaguar might have carried off a child, or even a man.
Those cats can kill an ox. They’re bad when they get old. And this tiger
is old, fairly gray bearded, the chicle buyer said. Said it made his
blood run cold to see him stalking that native. Of course he was armed;
all those Englishmen go armed. Only a pistol, but enough to scare that
spotted fury away.

“‘Just as I shot,’ that’s what he told me, ‘the creature turned its head
and I saw its marking. I had heard of it before. There was a broad white
stripe above the left eye. Someone had creased him with a bullet years
before. Pity it hadn’t killed him. Didn’t, though.’”

Hardgrave paused to look away at the moon that was just rising above the
cocoanut palms in the churchyard across the way. Wind stirred the
branches noisily. Johnny started. The story of that “tiger” had affected
his imagination strangely.

“So you’ll know if you see him,” Hardgrave concluded dryly. “A white
strip above his left ear. Guess I’ll turn in. You’re leaving before dawn?
Here’s luck!” He pressed the boy’s hand, and was gone.

It was a brave company that Johnny assembled at the postoffice dock next
day—sixty Caribs, all from Stann Creek. There had been no need that these
men go home for luggage. All that they had was on their boats. It was
little enough, too. The two most important items were the great
long-bladed machetes that hung at their belts and the cooking platforms
on the decks of their sailing crafts.

To the mouth of the Rio Hondo they would sail. After that Johnny would
give them a tow up the river.

Pant was in great spirits. He had lived much in the jungles of India.
There he had met the great yellow tiger and the treacherous black
leopard. He had heard of the “man-eater” up the river and was more than
eager to hunt out his lair and do him battle. Of course his days belonged
to Johnny, but nights were his own, and night is when the big cats prowl.

As for Johnny, as they went gliding up the dark river he thought of many
things—of the red lure and of his hopes to win with this new and more
trustworthy crew. He thought again of the mysterious brown girl who had
appeared in the trail on that memorable night spent alone in camp.

“She may belong to the company of that rascal Daego,” he told himself. “I
doubt it, though. Her face was too honest and frank for that. I wonder
who she may be, and if she will return.”

He wondered if their camp had been destroyed by their enemies, and
thought of Daego’s black boats which Hardgrave had spoken of, and the
trouble Daego was in which made him want to move back across the river.
He wondered if the trouble was in any way connected with the black boats.
He even gave a passing thought to Rip, the burro, who under Pant’s care
had learned to prick up his ears with an air of importance and had
actually taken on a little flesh.

“Didn’t bring any feed for him,” he thought. “Pant will have to hunt out
one of those bread-nut trees and gather some grass from it. Be an
interesting experience, mowing grass from the top of the forest. Like
cutting a giant’s hair,” he chuckled.

So they moved on up the river. Past the last banana plantation and
cocoanut grove, through thin settlements of bushmen, between groves of
cohune-nut trees, and on and on, up and up until night fell and the stars
came out.

Coming to the mouth of a small stream, they decided to camp for the
night. Boats were tied to overhanging mangrove branches, dry wood was
gathered and soon fires gleamed out brightly. Mingled with the crackle of
the blaze was the merry talk and laughter of these ever cheerful people.

While supper was being prepared, Pant shoved a dug-out from the deck of
his power boat and went paddling away up the small stream. He was going
on a little trip of exploration all his own. Not that he expected to find
anything of real interest. It was too dark for that. He wanted to be
alone for a time, and besides, there is a real thrill to be had from
poking the nose of your canoe straight away in the night up a stream you
have never seen.

As he moved slowly forward into the dark, the silent mystery of the night
was now and then broken by the splash of an alligator as he took to the
water. Nothing was to be feared from these so long as his canoe remained
in upright position.

On and on he glided. The light of cooking fires faded. Laughter died
away. Still he glided on. Then, of a sudden, he became conscious of a new
sound—a throbbing that, beating faintly against his eardrums, seemed to
come from nowhere. At first he thought it was the beating of his own
heart and wondered at his increased power to hear in that silence. Soon
enough he knew it was not that.

“But what is it?” he asked himself as he held his dripping paddle in
mid-air to listen.

Getting no satisfactory answer, he drove his paddle into the water and
sent his boat forward at renewed speed. This lasted for ten minutes.
Perspiration ran down his cheeks as he paused to listen.

“Yes, yes, there it is, louder!” he murmured. “Much louder. It’s up the
river. It’s a gasoline motor—a motor-boat. No, it can’t be.”

Dropping his paddle straight down, he touched bottom at eighteen inches.
In such a stream there were sunken logs. No motor-boat could ascend to
the spot where the motor was throbbing.

Swinging his boat about, he drove its prow against the shelving bank.
Leaping ashore, he bent over, and putting his ear to the ground,
listened.

“It can’t be,” he muttered, “and yet it is! It’s a stationary gasoline
engine going full swing up that creek. And what’s more”—his thoughts were
working rapidly now—“this creek runs up into our property. That engine is
on our land. What can they be doing there?”

Creeping back into his canoe he allowed it to drift downstream. He wanted
to go up and investigate, but it was too late. What that engine could be
doing up there he could not so much as guess.

“But I’ll find out,” he told himself stoutly. “Leave it to me!”




                               CHAPTER IV
                         TREE HAY AND A JAGUAR


Aside from slight damage done by a band of wild pigs, who in their search
for food had rooted their way into the cook shack, the camp up the Rio
Hondo was just as the boys had left it.

“It’s quite evident,” said Pant with a grin, “that Daego, or whoever it
was that brought our work here to an end, thought there was time enough
to come over and take possession.”

“Didn’t expect us back, that’s sure,” said Johnny.

“But here we are.”

“And here we go to work.”

They went to work with a will. Two days’ time saw a bigger and better
camp erected, new roads cut into the jungle and everything in readiness
for operation.

It was early in the afternoon of this day that Johnny saw a small dugout,
paddled by two Spaniards, moving up the creek.

Surprised at their appearing on these little frequented waters, he paused
at the entrance of the trail to see them pass.

They did not pass, but, pulling up to the landing, tied their boat and
got out.

Seeing this, Johnny stepped from the shadows.

“Pardon,” said the taller of the two. “We are looking for Johnny
Thompson.”

“I am Johnny Thompson,” said Johnny, not a little surprised that any
stranger should be looking for him at this lonely spot.

“A message for you.” The man bowed low as he held out a sealed envelope.

With fingers that trembled ever so slightly, Johnny tore this open and
read:

  _To Johnny Thompson._

  _Sir:_

  _It would give me the greatest of pleasure to have your most
  entertaining and entirely fascinating presence at a dinner to be served
  at my camp a few miles above your own, at six this evening. We have had
  the great good fortune to secure two wild turkeys and your assistance
  in eating them would be both a service and a pleasure to me._

  _Your Most Humble Servant and, I trust, Friend,_

                                                 _El Vincia Daego._

For a moment Johnny stared at the note. He wanted to laugh, but did not
quite dare. He was tempted to use some very strong language, but
refrained from that, too.

“So he came up here ahead of me and is now at his camp,” he thought to
himself. “He invites me to a feed of wild turkey. I wonder why?”

A half hour later he was showing the note to Pant.

“You won’t go, of course,” said Pant.

“I shall go. Why not?”

“Why should you? He might get rough—or something.”

“That’s a good reason for going. Can’t afford to show a white feather,
can I? If I excuse myself, it’s equivalent to saying: ‘No, I won’t come.
I’m afraid.’”

“You’re going into a strange country, Mexico, without a passport,” Pant
protested.

“What’s a passport in a wilderness? Why, if it wasn’t for this gloomy old
river they wouldn’t know where the boundary runs. There are hundreds of
miles of unsurveyed and unexplored boundary lines down here.”

“You’d better take a bodyguard.”

“I’ll take a dugout and a paddle. What do you think this is? Cannibal
land?”

“Well,” said Pant, a trifle grimly, “good luck, and may you come back!”

“I’ll come back, right enough,” said Johnny.

Had he known what was to come from this turkey dinner, would he have
gone? He might, and then again he might have stayed on his own side of
Rio Hondo. Who knows?

“Since you’re going out to dinner,” said Pant, as Johnny prepared to take
the trail to the river, “I think I’ll go on a hunt for a bread-nut tree
that grows grass for leaves. That old burro, Rip, is showing signs of
being hungry. I caught him trying to chew the picture from the side of an
empty corn can this morning.”

True to his word, just as dusk was falling, Pant found himself paddling
slowly down the river. Suddenly, as his keen eyes followed the outline of
the forest that crowded the river bank, he caught sight of a tree that
towered above its fellows. From the tip of its branches hung great masses
of green hay. Reaching down a yard, two yards, even three, it looked like
long green streamers hung out for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration.

“Bread-nut tree,” he said to himself.

On reaching the tree he found himself presented with a serious problem.
The trunk of the tree was immense; the first limb twenty feet up. At
first sight he felt himself defeated. But on circling the tree he
discovered a stout vine which reached far above the first branch.

Soon, with his machete still swinging at his side, he was going up hand
over hand.

Scorning the first branch, where the grass clumps were small and ragged,
he climbed to the second, then to the third, fully thirty feet above the
ground.

“I must be careful,” he warned himself.

Many a man had been killed by a fall from these trees. To gather the
grass one must climb far out on a slender limb and hack off the end which
holds the heavy clump. Suddenly released from its load, the limb springs
up and if the grass gatherer loses his hold he is unseated and down he
plunges to injury or death.

“I will be cautious,” Pant told himself. Had he but known it, no amount
of caution could save him from facing the peril just before him.

Carefully he climbed over the stouter part of the limb, then out and
still out on a slender branch from whose tip there hung a clump of
“grass” that seemed as large as a haycock.

“Three days’ feed for old Rip from a single clump,” he told himself as,
gripping the branch firmly with one hand, he drew his machete from its
sheath.

He had lifted the machete for the first hack when his action was arrested
by a slight scratching sound coming from somewhere above him. Imagine his
surprise and horror when, upon looking up, he caught the gleam of two
yellow eyes and at the same time heard the thumping lash of a great cat’s
tail. It was a jaguar about to spring!

Pant was so startled that he all but lost his hold upon the limb.
Overpowered by something akin to fear, for the instant he was unable to
move. He was not so far bereft of his senses as to fail to note that
above the creature’s left eye was a broad white stripe.

“The—the killer!” he gasped.

                            * * * * * * * *

To do two things at once; to listen and talk intelligently, and to employ
one’s mind with planning safe escape requires a steady nerve and active
mind. Johnny Thompson was doing that very thing. He was talking in an
intelligent and connected manner to Daego, the Spanish half-caste
millionaire of British Honduras. They had been talking for some time
about many things that had to do with industries on the Rio Hondo, and
all the time their discussion had become more animated.

Johnny was seated before a small table. Daego sat opposite him. On the
table was a pile of bills. A gentle breeze, entering the hut through its
lattice-like walls of cohune-nut stems, fluttered the corners of the
bills. They were big bills—fifties and hundreds. There was in that
carelessly flung pile over twenty thousand dollars. Although one may not
feel at liberty to refuse to attend a wild turkey dinner, he may refuse
to accept other things, even at the hand of a millionaire. Johnny was
refusing, refusing in the most vigorous language, and at the same time
his keen eyes were taking in the construction of the hut and his mind
plotting swift and sudden exit.

He smiled involuntarily at thought of it. The smile, without a meaning as
far as the half-caste millionaire, Daego, was concerned, angered him.

“I offer you a fortune,” Daego burst forth in a sudden rage, “and what do
I get? A laugh. What sort of people are these ones from the United
States? They call you dollar men. I offer you dollars, many, many
dollars—your own American dollars—and all you offer me for answer is a
smile!”

Johnny did not smile again. The situation was grave enough. He had been
foolhardy to cross the river without his men. Daego was flanked by six
husky Spaniards and at the side of each was a gleaming machete. Johnny
was backed only by a wall of cohune-nut tree stems. He hoped and prayed
that they might prove fairly well rotted when his moment came.

The camp in which Johnny had enjoyed his wild turkey dinner was a chicle
camp. Up until these last few minutes Daego had proven a most perfect
host. The food he offered was the best the jungle could provide. He was
politeness itself, with one and the same breath pressing food and
compliments upon his guest.

One peculiarity of the man’s nature disgusted Johnny. He seemed at every
turn to wish to impress Johnny with respect and awe for his wealth and
power. Before dinner he had showed Johnny about.

“This,” he had explained, “is one of my many chicle camps. I import into
Honduras every year more than two million pounds of chicle. The price, as
you know, is fifty cents a pound. The profit,” he smiled out of one
corner of his mouth, “the profit is, well, very large—perhaps half. These
men work very cheaply; like slaves they are, almost; always in debt to
me. I employ them by the thousands. You have no idea how many. For that
matter, neither have I. This Rio Hondo, this Black River, has made me
rich, rich and powerful. On the Rio Hondo I am, you might say, a king.”

And now this “king” of the Black River, with a strong backing of his
armed men, was attempting to bribe or brow-beat—he apparently did not
care which—a red-blooded, honest American boy.

“On this Black River,” he repeated now, as they sat at the table, “on
this river I am king. It is I who have always developed its industries
and I it shall be in the future, and none other! I have offered you
money—money not that you should speak an untruth, but that you should
return to the people who control your tract and say to them: ‘There is no
profit to be made in a quest for your red lure and your chicle.’

“And is it not so?” He showed all his white teeth in a half smile, half
snarl. “I—will I not see that you make no profit, that no other person
beside myself make a profit? More than twenty thousand dollars I offer
you—for what? That you may tell the truth to a friend. What could be
easier than that? Now I ask you for the last time—do you take that money
or must I resort to harsher methods?

“Think well!” He held up a finger of warning, “I am a millionaire.
Thousands serve me. They are all in debt to me. They are my slaves. The
Rio Hondo is mine. All I need do is to stretch out a hand and take.” He
swung his arm in a dramatic gesture.

“But I,” he went on, purring now like a cat, “I am not a man who loves
violence. See! Here is proof. Here is money, twenty thousand American
dollars. And for what? For peace. What do you say now? Do you take it?”

“We Americans,” said Johnny with a ghost of a smile about the corners of
his mouth, “do not talk. We act.”

With that he seized the small table before him, swung it above his head
and sent it crashing through the frail side of the hut, then followed it
through the hole it had made in the rotten walls of the cohune-nut stems.




                               CHAPTER V
                             NARROW ESCAPES


To say that Pant was surprised at sight of the jaguar, the well-known
“killer” above him in the bread-nut tree, would poorly express it. For
once in his young life he was without a solution to the problem that lay
just before him. He knew that he must act, and act instantly. But what to
do? Thirty feet below him was the solid earth, far too solid. Through the
gathering shadows he thought he saw directly beneath him the wide
spreading leaves of a young cohune-nut tree. Of this he could not be
sure. In any event these soft yielding leaves would offer slight cushion
at the end of a thirty foot fall.

Flight back over the limb, the way he had come, was not to be thought of.
The instant he began creeping forward the great cat would be upon his
back. To remain in his present position was equally perilous. There was
his machete, to be sure, but what was this against the claws of a
man-eater? It would doubtless be knocked from his hand at the first
spring of the spotted beast.

The great cat’s tail ceased to lash the twigs. The boy’s heart beat
wildly. Was the end at hand?

Time passed. Ten seconds seemed an hour, and yet no spring. And then, of
a sudden, there flashed into his mind a desperate chance, yet it was a
chance—at least something to do.

He was now sitting with his back to the tiger, looking over his shoulder.
Slowly, with his eyes fixed steadily on the killer, he began to turn
about on the limb. It was a hazardous undertaking. Should he slip, lose
his balance, fall, it might mean death. But this was a moment for
hazards.

Swinging a leg over the limb, he sat sidewise for an instant; then with a
second swing the thing was accomplished. Still the killer lingered. The
tail was lashing furiously now, sending dry twigs flying downward.

Pant began sliding back upon the limb. With eyes still fixed upon the
tiger, with heart beating like a throbbing motor, he moved back a foot,
two feet, three, four. Still the tiger waited. His eyes, in the gathering
darkness, had turned to red balls of fire.

Suddenly the boy’s hand went up. The machete was raised above his head.
The great cat gave forth a blood-curdling snarl. But the big knife was
not meant for him.

Once in his boyhood days on a farm Pant had climbed far out over the
track that ran beneath the ridge of a tall hay-loft. He had gone out to
adjust something that had gone wrong with the double harpoon fork. It
would not trip. He had used every ounce of his strength climbing out
there hand over hand. He had not dared attempt the trip back. The hay of
the loft was twenty feet beneath him. There was a load on the fork.
Choosing the least of three evils, he had taken the drop with the
half-ton of hay when the fork was tripped. He would not soon forget that
breath-taking drop, yet he had landed without a bump or bruise.

“This,” he told himself as calmly as he could, “will be exactly like
that—maybe.”

He was now seated firmly on the great clump of “tree grass.” Some three
feet across, this clump hung down a distance of two yards.

“Now,” he breathed, “Now!”

He said the last “now” out loud and at the same instant the machete came
down upon the branch on which he sat.

It was a master stroke. Bent as it was by its double load, the branch
snapped clean off and instantly the boy shot downward through space.

One breath-taking instant, then bump! He landed with a thud that made his
teeth rattle, then pitched head foremost into the brush.

Hardly had he had time to realize that he was still conscious and
probably unharmed, when there came, not four feet from him, a terrible
thud.

Once more his mind was in a whirl. What had happened? Had the tiger,
angered at loss of his prey, risked a thirty-foot leap to the ground? It
seemed incredible, yet there he was.

For the answer to his problem regarding the jaguar who had dropped in the
bush beside him, Pant did not have long to wait. For ten seconds, as if
stunned, the great cat remained where he was, then with a sudden rush he
dashed wildly away.

The boy laughed a low laugh.

“Pity it didn’t kill him,” he murmured.

He had guessed what had happened. Suddenly released, the limb on which he
had been seated had shot upward and, striking the jaguar, had perhaps
stunned him. At least it had unseated him and he had fallen.

“Well,” Pant grinned, “here is plenty of hay to last poor old Rip for
three days. I came down rather sooner than I expected and in a manner
quite unusual. Wouldn’t care to try it again, but it did work that time.”

Searching out his machete, he hacked the grass from the limb, tied it in
three bundles, then began making his way back to his boat with one of
them.

“I must get after that beast,” he told himself. “If the Caribs hear too
much of him they may take fright and desert us.”

He was not long in putting this resolve into execution.

                            * * * * * * * *

Daego thought he had been quite shrewd in his choice of the spot to be
occupied by his guest. There were no windows to the hut. Light entered
between the palm walls. The rich half-caste and his six men sat before
the door and that way lay the path to the river. Back of the place where
Johnny had been seated was the jungle, an all but impenetrable mass of
palms, great mahogany trees and creeping, twining vines.

As Johnny sent the table crashing through the flimsy, rotting walls of
the hut he followed after it so closely that both he and the table made
their exit at almost the same instant. He had but one thought—to get into
the jungle as quickly as possible. It was his only chance. Daego and his
natives, surprised into temporary inaction by this sudden turn of
affairs, were delayed just long enough to permit Johnny to get into the
jungle. After that, Johnny knew, it would be a game of “hide and seek”
with at least a fair chance for escape.

A moment after Johnny had dived headlong into the dark, dank jungle,
Daego’s men came tumbling through the newly made hole in the wall of the
hut, eager to win their master’s praise by seizing this unarmed boy.

But so tardy and clumsy was their pursuit that Johnny had gained enough
distance to cover up the sound of his movements. For the moment, at
least, the advantage was his. But what if he did make good his escape?
Where would he go? How could he hope to make his way back to his own
camp?

Without thinking much of the outcome, more from instinct than reason,
like a rabbit close pressed by the hounds, he leaped for the jungle.

By some good or evil chance he came at once upon one of those low, narrow
trails made by the small short horned deer that abound in that
wilderness. By stooping quite low, almost bent double, he was able to
make rapid progress.

After covering a hundred yards he paused to listen.

Yes, he could hear the men shouting and beating the bush.

“There must be a hundred of them,” he murmured. “And dogs! Trapped here
by dogs!”

He turned and fairly flew down the trail.

On and on and on, not knowing where, but ever on until at last with hands
and face bleeding and clothes in rags, he fell flat in the trail and lay
there motionless.




                               CHAPTER VI
                           LOST IN THE JUNGLE


Could Johnny have witnessed the dismay and confusion caused by his sudden
escape he would have felt far less concerned over his present plight. The
first eager pursuers crashed wildly about in the jungle, rushing forward
at every sound only to discover that it was made by another hunter
instead of the hunted. Their shouts brought other men pouring from the
huts and a half score of dogs, who jumped about and added to the din with
their senseless yelping.

Daego shouted directions, but his shouts were either unheard or not
clearly understood. Then he made an attempt to set the dogs on Johnny’s
trail. There were dogs a-plenty to overtake Johnny and slay him but for
one thing—dogs are never eager to enter a tropical jungle.

Unaccompanied by his master, the native dog seldom goes far into that
tangled mass of vegetation. There are reasons enough for this. Poisonous
snakes, ten feet long, lurk in the decay at the base of great trees.
Jaguars, prepared to pounce upon a dog, lie flat along great branches,
and the uncouth “mountain cow” (tapir) is all too ready to tear him to
pieces with her sharp hoofs.

So, though urged on by their enraged masters, the dogs did not venture
far and soon enough came crawling back, their defeat registered by
drooping tails.

So Johnny Thompson was safe. And yet, was he safe? As the dull agony of
exhaustion left him, he began, in a slow, numb sort of way, to remember
where he was. He was in a tropical jungle. It was early dusk and the
coming night would be made hideous by the barking of alligators, the
scream of wild parrots and the hoarse call of jaguars. To move down the
trail after darkness would be dangerous. Curled on that trail might be a
great snake whose fangs offered sure death. Further movement might call a
jaguar to leap upon him from the tree tops.

On the other hand, if he went forward on this trail he might come to
water. Already his throat was parched, his tongue swollen. Then, too, a
small stream meant a certain amount of protection and a possible fire. He
had matches in his pocket, a small box of them. As he thought of these he
wrapped them in his handkerchief for safer keeping.

Then of a sudden a more terrible realization came to him. Not only was he
in a tropical jungle, but he was lost.

“Lost!” he whispered in an awed tone.

“Lost!” “Lost!” the strange rustle of palms seemed to answer back.

It was true, must be true. Hardgrave, who had spent years in the jungle,
had warned him: “Don’t ever dare to enter that jungle without a guide,
not to go even a few rods. If you do, you’re lost.”

“Rods,” Johnny repeated, “I’ve gone miles!”

As he thought of it now, he realized that he must have crossed scores of
these low, criss-crossings paths. Should he will to attempt it, he could
not in a thousand days find his way back to Daego’s clearing over that
dry sponge-like patch.

“Nor any other place,” he told himself. “I’m lost! Lost!”

At first the thought left him so weak that he could not move. But in time
strength and courage came flooding back. He was young, strong,
resourceful. There was a way out. He would find it. Daego was doubtless
at this moment sitting in his cabin smoking cigarets and contemplating
the day when he would move across the river and take charge of Johnny’s
deserted camp.

“That will never be!” Johnny told himself, setting his teeth hard.

To his surprise, as his hand went to his knee he found his clothing wet.

“Must have crossed some small stream and in my wild fear, never knew it.
No more of that. I’ll be calm. I must be calm—and I must think clearly.”

“A stream,” he mused, “means water for drinking and a place of greater
safety. What’s more,” he exclaimed, attempting to spring to his feet only
to be tossed back by closely woven vines and branches, “that means a way
out. A small stream flows into a large one; the larger one into one still
larger, and in time one comes to Rio Hondo, the old Black River. There I
might find a rotting native cabin and perhaps a dugout for floating down
to my camp. But first I must find the beginning. There is a beginning to
all things.”

He contemplated the gathering darkness. There was yet a little time.
Which way should he go? He shuddered at the thought of going back. There
seemed to be an equally good chance ahead. So, slowly, always with an eye
out for those terrible snakes, he crept forward into the gathering gloom.

As time went on he struggled forward, and as the darkness deepened it
seemed to him that he must, Tarzan-like, spend the night in some great
mahogany or Santa Maria tree. The thought was depressing. His throat
ached from thirst. There were jaguars in the trees. Exhausted as he was,
he might fall asleep and plunge from the tree to his death.

As this thought came near to a conviction and when hope had all but fled,
he rounded a sudden turn in the trail and his eyes were half blinded by a
light which was much brighter than the gloom to which his eyes had been
accustomed. The light was at the spot where the bush and the trail
appeared to end,—a distance of less than a hundred yards.

What could it mean? Had fate played a trick on him? Had he followed a
circle in the jungle, only to return to Daego’s camp? Was this some other
clearing? If so, whose could it be?

For a moment he remained there motionless, staring. Then, with a speed
born of sudden hope and maddening fear, he sprinted forward toward the
light.

Even as he moved forward the light faded, and night, such night as only
the jungle knows, settled down over all.

Driven half mad by this sudden fading of his dreams, throwing all caution
aside, Johnny rushed straight on until, with a sudden gasp, he threw
himself backward. One foot had plunged into water. In another second he
would have pitched head-foremost into some stream; what stream he could
not know. The thing he did know very soon was that out in the water some
little distance away gleamed two red balls.

“The eyes of an alligator,” he murmured. “Well, anyway, here is water.”
He drank greedily.

As he attempted to pierce the darkness about him, he was able to guess
what it was that had caused the unusual light. The sky, dimly visible
through overhanging branches, was filled with black clouds. There had
come, without doubt, one of those last sudden flashes of sunsets which
gleam out, then are lost forever. This light shining upon the water had
been dazzling in its intensity. Because of its very intensity the
following darkness had appeared quite complete.

Once his eyes had become accustomed to the feeble light, Johnny was able
to distinguish some of the black bulks about him. Downstream, hanging far
over the water, was a palm. Upstream he caught the dim outline of some
dull gray masses.

“Rocks, I hope,” he murmured as he moved slowly in that direction.

There was now reason enough for caution. Sharp-nosed alligators of these
streams sometimes slept on the banks. To disturb one was to invite
disaster. To break a twig or make any other unusual sound might be to
call other wild creatures to attack him.

So, parting the branches with great care, he moved on cautiously until
with a grateful heart he put a hand out to touch a huge rough boulder.

Mounted upon this heap of rough rocks, of which there were five, each as
large as a sleeping elephant, he breathed more freely.

“Now for a little fire,” he thought. “All wild things fear fire.”

It was not long until the stream, which appeared to be some twenty feet
wide at this point, was lighted by the blazing flames of quick burning
palm leaves.

Sudden as was the blaze, even more sudden was its fading. Looking away
from the red glow of coals, Johnny tried to peer into the dense darkness
that followed. He could distinguish only the red gleam of eyes. They were
all about him; upon the water, on the bank, in the tree tops.

Monkeys, fierce black little creatures, chattered from the tallest trees.
From the ground sounded many odd grunts, which the boy could not
interpret. Coming down the river, like a dimly lighted floating burial
procession, were the silent alligators.

“It’s all very strange and—and somewhat spooky,” he told himself.

With a shudder he seized a dully glowing brand and, having fanned it into
flame, went boldly forth in search of wood. This time he would gather
more substantial material. His fire must last longer, much longer, for
somehow he must snatch a little sleep.

Waving his firebrand before him in one hand, he gathered fuel with the
other. Some dead ferns and palm branches, the fallen branch of a black
tamarind, the half rotted stem of a yamra, some large branches of a tree
quite unknown to him, all these would send the light of his fire gleaming
out into the night for hours to come.

Soon, with his fire glowing cheerily, he settled down on a chair-like
rock crevice and with head bent forward, hands hanging down before him,
every muscle relaxed, he tried to induce sleep to come.

It did not come at once. His mind worked on. Across its silver screen
there passed a long procession of pictures. The trip up the river, the
wild forest, the dark Caribs all about him, the silent black river, Daego
seated before the table, money, twenty thousand dollars fluttering before
him, the surprised look of the Spaniards as the table tore through the
wall, then the jungle, the terrible uncertain jungle with its wild perils
and its noisesome nights.

Then, as will happen when half thoughts and half dreams come, the reel
changed. He was sitting with old Hardgrave, his friend who had seen
sixty-eight summers, twenty-five of them in the tropics. In the cool
shade of the hotel porch at Belize the old man was showing him a crudely
drawn map and was pointing to a spot on that map.

“If you ever get to that spot,” he seemed to hear him say, “you’ll find
Indian gods. I have seen them. Three of them, a black one, a blue one,
and one of pure gold. I don’t say you’ll come back to tell anyone about
it,” the old man smiled a queer smile. “They say it’s dangerous to go up
there and I reckon it is. Truth is, no one knows the way there and back.
It’s up in the bush somewhere. That’s all anyone knows. It’s all I know,
and I’ve been there once.

“You may be sure I didn’t mean to go there,” he reminisced. “They found
me sick with a fever, the Indians did, and carried me to their village in
the bush and cured me up. Wanted me to stay on with them. Seemed to sort
of take a liking to me. I told them I wouldn’t.

“At first they said I didn’t have any choice in the matter. Took me to
see some bones, human bones. White man’s bones I’d say from the size of
them. Then they took me back to the village.

“Something changed their minds, though. I don’t know what. One day they
blindfolded me and took me through the bush and downstream for a whole
day. When my eyes were uncovered I found myself in a dugout on a part of
the Rio Hondo that I knew.

“So, Johnny,” he added with a rare smile, “if you really want some Maya
gods, you just hunt that place up. They’ve got some black ones, and some
that are green, and at least one of pure gold.”

Johnny did want one or two of these Maya Indian gods. A very good friend
had asked him to bring back one or two for his collection. He had
promised to perform this commission.

“I had no notion they were so hard to get,” he told himself now. “It
would be strange if I should stumble upon those Mayas up here
somewhere,—strange and rather startling.

“Black gods and green ones, and at least one of pure gold,” he repeated,
half asleep.

Then of a sudden he started up. His fire was burning low. After throwing
on a fresh supply of fuel, he thought more clearly of the consequences if
he should fall into the hands of these strange bush people. He was not at
all sure that, once they had found him, they would allow him to return.

“And then,” he thought, “our camp would fall into the hands of Daego
unless—unless Pant were strong enough and resourceful enough to hold his
own against that wily half-caste rascal.

“Poor Pant,” he murmured, “what will he think when I don’t return? I hope
he doesn’t start a big fight right off the bat. He must not. I must
return. Somehow I must get back. I’ll do it, too! See if I don’t! I’ll
make some sort of raft and float down this stream from nowhere to
somewhere.”

At that he fell asleep and, as the fire burned low, the glow of eyes from
the river, in the trees, on the ground, moved closer and ever closer.




                              CHAPTER VII
                           PERIL IN THE DARK


As for Pant, he was worried enough by Johnny’s prolonged absence. It had
been dark for fully three hours. Having returned from his gathering of
tree hay and his brush with the jaguar, he had gone down to the creek
landing to wait for Johnny.

Two anxious hours passed and still he did not come. For a half hour he
paced the creek trail in deep and troubled thought. Over and over, as a
squirrel turns his cage, questions revolved in his mind. What was keeping
Johnny? Should he go for him? Had he been attacked, perhaps slain? Who
could tell, if he went to Daego’s camp, what would happen? Johnny had
left him in charge of the camp. If something should happen to him, should
he fail to return, the Caribs would pile into their boats and go drifting
down the river.

“No!” he exclaimed, “Johnny left me here to carry on in his absence, and
carry on it is. If he does not appear by morning I’ll send a messenger to
Daego’s camp to find out what he has to say about it.”

He did send a messenger in the morning. The millionaire half-caste
received him with the greatest courtesy. Johnny, he said, had indeed had
dinner with him and they had enjoyed quite a long chat when the meal was
over. The boy had left his camp in quite a hurry on account of the
gathering darkness. He had not seen him since that time.

Daego assumed an attitude of greatest surprise upon being told that
Johnny had not returned to his own camp and expressed the hope that he
might soon learn of his safety. The Rio Hondo was a treacherous river,
treacherous indeed.

All of which was more or less true, and at the same time a most
diabolical lie.

“He’s a crook and a scoundrel!” Pant raged to himself when the messenger
had made his report. “He’s done something to Johnny, locked him up, or
sent him up some river, a prisoner. Depend on that. But he’ll not get his
way on our side of the river!”

After laying out the day’s work for his men, Pant sat down on a red log
and indulged in some long, long thoughts.

“The way to keep a man from making trouble for you,” he told himself, “is
to make as much trouble for him as you can. A fight like this is just
like a game of chess. If you can keep a man busy getting his knights,
bishops and castles out of danger he isn’t like to make much trouble for
your king.”

For a long time he sat blinking at the little patches of sunshine that
filtered down though the tropical foliage.

“That was a capital ghost story Hardgrave told me when I was down at
Belize,” he told himself at last with a little chuckle. “Happened on one
of the islands, but I’ll bet it would work right up here. He promised to
send me up the things I need for trying it if any sort of craft comes up
this way. Don’t suppose there’s much chance, though.

“What’s that I hear?” he exclaimed, starting up suddenly.

Hurrying down the river trail, he was just in time to see four pit-pans
moving slowly up the river. The pit-pans, great dugouts sixty feet long,
were loaded with Spaniards.

“Daego’s men,” he murmured. “Re-inforcements. He doesn’t need them for
work. I wonder?”

Cold dread gripped his heart. Daego was assembling his men. This addition
would give him a force double the number of their Caribs. Could it be
that, in the absence of their leader, he meant to lead an attack at once?
There would be a fight, a battle to the finish between Johnny’s forces
and Daego’s. Caribs against Spaniards, but Pant hadn’t expected it for
some time yet.

“Wish I had the stuff Hardgrave promised to send,” he murmured. “Might
thin that force out a bit.”

The stuff Hardgrave had promised was on its way and much nearer to
Johnny’s wild lumber camp than Pant guessed. Hardgrave was on his way,
too; in fact, he was bringing the supplies up the river at that moment.
It was a strange assortment of articles that he carried in a box beneath
the seat in his little motor boat; a dozen or so of large blue toy
balloons, a bottle of phosphorus, a number of yards of cheesecloth, some
putty, three tubes of glue, two metal retorts and two packages of
chemicals.

“Goin’ up the Hondo,” he had said to a friend before he set out. “Coupla
boys up there a tryin’ to do a little stunt of bringing out some of the
red lure. Jest boys, they are; no match for that crafty Daego. Reckon
I’ll jest run up there and give ’em a little help for, after all, they’re
from the United States and so am I, though I been down here quite a
spell, and all us folks from up there has to sort of hang together.
It—it’s sort of in the blood.”

So, Pant was soon to receive re-inforcements. The re-inforcements
consisted of but one man, but there are times when one is as good as a
host.

                            * * * * * * * *

Morning brought bitter disappointment to Johnny. He had hoped that the
palm tree he had seen down the creek was a cocoanut tree. The milk even
of a green cocoanut is sweet and refreshing. Since ripe nuts fall the
year round, there was reason to hope too that some of these might be
found on the ground. But early morning light revealed a cohune nut tree.
True, there were great clusters of nuts hanging from this tree, but these
Johnny had been told were composed mostly of a hard shell. The meat, such
as there was of it, was dry and indigestible.

“Oh, well,” he sighed, “got to eat.”

At that he worked his way downstream to the tree. After spending a half
hour cracking three nuts, and finding their meat meager and tough, he
turned to other quarters for food.

A tropical wilderness abounds in fruit. The strangest, most unheard of
trees in the world were at Johnny’s very elbow. The fruit of many of
these was good to eat. Some might be eaten raw; others were delicious
when cooked. But some, too, were deadly poison. Which might be eaten?
Which not? This he could not tell. To his right was a tree laden with a
green cucumber-like fruit, and over to his left one that hung heavy with
long yellow muskmellons, or so they seemed to be.

“If I only knew!” he groaned. “If I only did!”

He recalled hours wasted that might have been put to good use roaming the
jungle with one of his Caribs, learning the use and value of these
plants.

“If I get back in safety I’ll never waste another hour!” he resolved.—
“I’ll learn, and learn and learn until there is not an important thing in
this wilderness that I do not have some accurate knowledge of.”

In the meantime, however, his stomach was crying loudly for food. Food?
Without doubt there was plenty at hand, but he dared not eat it.

There were fishes in the stream. He could see them calmly fanning the
water in a pool beside the rocks. Fish were always good. His mouth
watered at thought of the fry he would have on the hot rocks. But he had
no hooks. He tried a snare of tie-tie vine, but the fish were too quick
for him.

At last, despairing of his undertaking, he dropped on hands and knees to
creep away into the bush. He had not gone far before his heart was
gladdened by what he saw just before him. It was a hot, humid morning. A
peccary, a little wild pig, with her half grown brood, having without
doubt spent the cooler hours of night hunting grubs and roots, lay
stretched out on a bed of dead ferns, fast asleep. One of the young
porkers, lying with his two hind feet close together, was not twelve feet
from where Johnny lay.

“A quick grab at those feet, a sudden get-away, and I have my breakfast,”
he thought as he moved cautiously forward. “That fellow doesn’t weigh
over ten pounds dressed, but that’s enough food for two days and by that
time I’ll be back to camp.” Oh, vain hope!

Right hand out, right foot forward; left hand, left foot. So he moved
ahead. Now half the distance was covered and still the little wild pigs
slept. Now he was within arm’s length of his prey. Then, rising to his
knees, he shot out a hand. There came a wild, piercing squeal, then all
was commotion.

Quicker than he could think, the old peccary was after him.

“Insignificant little brute,” he thought. “I could brain you with a
single blow of a club.”

He had no club, had not thought of that.

A convenient tree offered protection. Clinging to his squealing prey, he
leaped to the first branch.

“Go away in a moment,” he told himself as with his clasp-knife he
silenced the squeals of the young porker.

To his immense surprise, as he looked down he saw that the ground was
literally alive with angry, grunting peccary pigs.

“Where’d they all come from?” he asked an hour later, as for the
twentieth time he adjusted his sore muscles to their cramped position.

This question no one could answer. The angry horde had apparently
declared the tree to be in a state of siege. And, though they were small,
they were terrible to look at. There were gnarled old fathers of that
herd whose ugly yellow tusks, curled twice round, stood out at the end
like spears.

“Rip a fellow to pieces before he’d gone ten steps,” groaned the boy.

As his position in this small mahogany tree with its smooth limbs became
all but unbearable, he cast about for relief. Next to this tree was a
larger one and beyond that a great, broad-spreading palm.

“If only I can reach the palm,” he told himself, “I will at least have a
comfortable place to rest and maybe grab a few moments of sleep.”

Tying the dead peccary to his back, he climbed out as far as he dared
upon his limb, then executed a sort of flying leap for the next tree. It
was a daring venture, but a successful one. Five minutes later, with the
carefully dressed peccary meat hanging nearby, he sank into a cushioned
depth of the palm tree and was soon fast asleep.

Some time later, much later, he awoke. At first, as he attempted to gaze
about him, he could not believe his senses.

“It can’t be true,” he insisted. “There has been an eclipse. I have gone
blind. It can’t be night!”

But it was. Overcome by exhaustion and the humid heat of the tropics, he
had slept the day through and a short way into the night. So had passed
the day that was to have seen his raft built and launched, to have seen
him on his way back to camp.

“And here I am!” he exclaimed in disgust.

“Well, at any rate,” he sighed, “I now have some supper and may make my
way back to the rock and cook it.”

“But can I?” he started. “What of that wild horde with their ugly yellow
tusks? Are they still waiting down there?”

For a moment he hesitated. Then, with a sudden resolve born of necessity,
he began to descend.




                              CHAPTER VIII
                              DEATH AHEAD


Peccary meat was Johnny’s supper. A dry supper it was, and old Father
Gloom sat across the fire from him while he ate. To have wasted a whole
day; to face a second night of vigil; to recall those pairs of burning,
greedy, red eyes; to know that with the passing of the hours the owners
of those eyes must certainly grow bolder; all this was depressing in the
extreme. To add to this set of depressing circumstances, a small thing
happened; a very small thing indeed, but fraught with great consequences.
There were not many mosquitos in this place at this time. The streams
were swift, and at this time of year there were no water holes for
breeding them.

For all this, a single mosquito, drifting in from nowhere, alighted on
Johnny’s hand and began to drill. He had half finished his task when,
without thinking, Johnny crushed him at a blow.

Instantly the boy’s mind was filled with foreboding. He had been bitten
by a mosquito! One thing Hardgrave had said to him:

“Johnny, wherever you are, don’t ever lie down to sleep, not even in the
daytime, without a mosquito-bar net over you. Malaria. The mosquitos
carry it. It’s the only way you can get it.”

In camp they always slept beneath canopies.

“But out here,” Johnny grinned a wry grin, “what’s the chance? Well, if
that was a malaria mosquito he’s got me loaded up good and plenty, and
there’s no use bothering my mind about it.”

He did not bother his mind, but it bothered him. In his imagination he
saw himself delirious with fever, insensible to his surroundings,
wandering down narrow trails, tripped by vines, torn at by brambles.
Watched from every dark hole and tree top by wild beasts, he saw himself
struggle on until burned out by fever, exhausted by aimless, senseless
endeavor, he at last lay down to die.

Shaking himself free from the haunting spectre, he threw fresh wood upon
the fire.

He slept little that night, and welcomed the dawn less eagerly than he
had the day before. He felt a desire to be idle, a dreamy indifference
creeping over him.

“It’s the tropics,” he told himself. “Everyone slows up down here. The
heat and the humidity makes you want to drag your feet, to loaf, to sit
and dream. But I must not! I must act! Act! Now!”

At that he went at the task of building a raft and before noon it was
completed.

A crude affair it was, to be sure. Dry logs of different lengths; there
was no axe for hewing them. All these, bound clumsily together with tough
tie-tie vine, made up the raft that eventually carried Johnny away from
the great rocks and swiftly down the river. As far as he could see ahead,
branches formed a perfect arch over the water, and at places hung so low
that it was necessary for him to lie flat down to avoid being dragged off
into the water.

He bade farewell to his rocky home with no regrets, but with some
misgivings after all. He was to drift off into the unknown. What awaited
him there? Who could tell?

“It—why, it’s like death,” he thought.

With this mood there drifted into his mind a bit of verse:

  “I know not where His islands lift
  Their fronded palms in air,
  I only know I cannot drift
  Beyond His love and care.”

He felt a strange tightening at the throat as the words escaped his lips,
and he blessed the teacher who had given them to him for just such a time
as this.

Many and strange were the sensations that came to him as he drifted
silently, swiftly beneath this cathedral-like arch of trees. A green
parrot screamed at him as it fluttered away; a black monkey with a white
face, clinging to a limb by a foot and his tail, scolded at him as he
passed. A slow-moving snake, hanging from a tree trunk, darted out a
black tongue. The jagged corner of the clumsy raft, catching on a snag,
hung there while the water, warm as soapsuds, washed over the raft.

Loosened, the raft whirled on. More swiftly now they moved. The current
was gaining strength. Rocks appeared, one to the right, one to the left,
and one amid stream. The arch of trees rose higher. A patch of blue
appeared. Rising to his feet, Johnny struggled with all his might,
darting his pole first one side and then the other, to keep the raft off
the rocks. Then suddenly, without warning, he was seized by an
overhanging vine and dragged clear of the raft.

That was a tragic moment. With his raft went his last bit of food; and
with it, too, for a moment his last bit of hope. With an eye out for
drifting alligators, he swam strongly after the runaway raft.

Fortune favored him. For a moment the raft, caught in a corner between
two rocks, hung motionless and in that moment, breathless, exhausted, he
climbed aboard. At the same instant he sensed the presence of a wakened
alligator nearby.

Quite motionless he lay for a full moment as the raft rushed on. This was
no time for inaction. Faster, ever faster glided the raft; faster, faster
the trees flew by.

And now a new catastrophe threatened. A sharp rock had cut one of the
tie-tie vines that bound the raft. In another moment the raft might be
torn in bits, leaving Johnny in the water, beyond hope. Seizing a fresh
vine, he passed it over the ends of the logs and by exerting all his
strength drew them to place and bound them there.

And now came a respite. Suddenly the river broadened. Blue sky appeared
above him. He was floating slowly on the surface of a small lake.

Drawing his feet up under him, he gave himself over to much needed rest
and enjoyment of the scene that lay before him. Surely here was beauty
untouched by the hand of man. Had man’s eyes ever looked upon it? Surely
no eyes of civilized man. Yet what a gleaming of blue waters, what a
blending of matchless green and faultless blue!

If he did not allow his mind to linger long on all this matchless beauty
of spreading palms, clinging vines and reflecting water, it was because
the more practical side of his nature sought two things—a native hut and
a cocoanut palm tree. One of these would be a boon indeed.

And one appeared. A leaning cocoanut tree hung over the water at the very
spot where the lake ended and the current grew swift again. He saw it at
the moment when his raft, caught by a stronger current, shot forward. At
that same moment came a disturbing sound, a deep, low thunder that he did
not wholly understand.

In his confusion of thought he all but lost his opportunity. Leaping to
his feet, he struck at the palm with his long pole. Once, twice, three
times he clubbed it, and with the third blow a ripe cocoanut came
hurtling down to splash in the water beside his raft.

With a little cry of joy he dropped his pole and all but sprang in the
water after it. Restraining this impulse, he dropped on hands and knees
to reach for it. It was just beyond his grasp. The pole—yes, with the
pole he could drag it to him. Sending the pole sweeping out over the
water, he was about to bring the fugitive dinner to him when the raft,
striking a submerged rock, whirled about and left him three full yards
from the prize. At the same time there came to his ears again that dull
thunder.

“Can’t be a storm,” he said, scanning the sky. “Clear as a bell.”

Sadly he watched the cocoanut as, abreast of his strange craft, but just
out of reach of his pole, it drifted onward. Within that brown husk was
delicious, refreshing drink and nourishing food.

Fate seemed to mock him. The current having carried the cocoanut within
his reach, quickly whirled it away again. Then, tempting him, it whirled
it close only to catch it and fling it at last into a backwater eddy
where it was lost to him forever.

“That thundering sound is growing more distinct,” he told himself as,
resigned to his loss, he settled down for a moment’s rest. “I wonder what
it is.”

Then of a sudden he knew and the realization stunned him.

“Falls!” he said, leaping excitedly to his feet. “Falls in this river.
Falls straight ahead!” The next moment he lay stunned, half unconscious
on the raft. He had been struck on the head by an overhanging limb.

How long he lay there he will never know. Enough to say that when at last
he struggled back to a sitting position the thunder of the falls filled
all the air, while the trees and bushes, as if borne on by a cyclone,
sped by him at unbelievable speed.

“Gotta stop!” he groaned. “Gotta get offa here somehow! Death in the
falls. Won’t do! Gotta get off!”

With a mighty effort he dragged his scattered senses together. The next
instant he found himself gripping the tough branches of a red mangrove
tree, while his raft shot on to its doom.

With a sinking sensation about his heart and a dull pain in his head,
Johnny saw his hope of an early return to camp disappear downstream. On
that raft was tied a bit of peccary meat, the only morsel of food he had
in the world. Yet where there is life there is hope, and after climbing
carefully back over the limb that had saved him, he descended the tree to
the ground.

An hour of struggling forward, sometimes through thickets, sometimes over
rocks or through water to his waist, he ended at the top of a steep
precipice that stood thirty feet above the side of a most beautiful
waterfall.

“Beautiful things at times become terrible,” he told himself. “My raft is
gone; my dinner with it. These beautiful falls took them. No use to waste
time in vain regrets. I’ve got to get down some way.”

After exploring every corner he became convinced that there was no
suggestion of a rugged stairway anywhere.

“Have to be some other way,” he thought wearily. Having glanced at a
towering sapodilla tree, he noticed that a wild fig vine grew up its
side.

“Make a rope of it. Let myself down,” he said, beginning to unlace his
shoes.

Having climbed the tree for a distance of forty feet, he cut the vine and
began stripping off a stem an inch in diameter. It was a long and
dangerous task, for these vines, with a grip of death, in time hug the
very life out of a tree. But in time he won and, attaching one end of the
vine rope to the trunk of a tree, dropped it over the precipice. He then
began nimbly following down.

“Looks like a cocoanut palm there by the pool at the foot of the falls.
If it is, I know where I get my supper.”

It was indeed a cocoanut palm, a low one, standing not more than ten feet
from the ground, but bearing cocoanuts all the same. He had not descended
half way before he could count them. There were many green ones and three
that were brown and ripe.

“Um-yum-yum!” he smacked his lips as he seemed to feel the rich white
milk go gurgling down his throat.

He was still looking at that tree and trying to figure out how he could
best reach it, when he suddenly discovered that he was all but at the
bottom.

He had given no thought to what that landing might be like. He glanced
downward, then with hands that trembled so he could scarcely open and
close them he made desperate efforts to climb back.

Had he dropped another foot he must surely have fallen into the jaws of a
mammoth alligator. The beast was asleep with his mouth wide open.
Grinning terribly, his yellow tusks looking like rows of sharpened
spikes, he lay there quite motionless. What would have been the
consequences had the boy dropped that remaining foot? Would the alligator
have tumbled in great fright into the water? Would his terrible jaws have
closed like the iron gates of a prison? Who can tell? Who would care to
perform the experiment that he might know?

                            * * * * * * * *

In the meantime Pant had not been idle. Good old Hardgrave, a plain man
from Arkansas with the courage of a knight and heart of a king, had
arrived. He had anchored his motor-boat with its wheezy engine close to
the creek landing, then had unloaded his cargo of chemicals, retorts, toy
balloons and cheesecloth.

“Where’s Johnny?” he asked the moment he stepped on land.

“Just what I was going to tell you.”

“Tell it, then.”

Pant did tell—told all he knew.

“Huh!” the old man grunted. “He’ll come back. Daego’s got him hid out
somewhere. Wouldn’t quite dare kill him outright. Leastwise, I don’t
think so. Can’t tell about that half-caste strain in his blood, though.”

“He’ll come back,” echoed Pant, “but meantime we’ve got to carry on the
work. ’Twouldn’t do to disappoint Johnny when he comes back. We got to
get all this red lure down by the water ready for the trip down.”

“What’s worse,” said Hardgrave, “we’ve got to do just what you said a
minute ago; keep old Daego guessing. Don’t like his taking up more men.
Looks bad. May come over here like a young army any time, bent on driving
us out. Got any place for this?” He pointed at his miscellaneous cargo
stacked on the bank.

“Have to use Johnny’s office, I guess.”

The next morning, Gesippio, a Carib who bunked close to the office, said
to his work mate, “There was devil doin’s in that office of Johnny’s last
night.”

“Devil doin’s?”

“Devil doin’s! First the whole place was lit up like it was busting with
flames. Seemed like every crack was shootin’ flames. Then all was dark
again. Pretty soon there came a blue blaze, sort of low-like, and a
hissin’ sound like the old Serpent, the Evil One, might o’ made. Then all
of a sudden, sendin’ me all of a heap, there came a most terrible bang.
After that I didn’t hear no more.”

From that time on the cabin that had been Johnny’s office was kept
carefully locked day and night.




                               CHAPTER IX
                      “IT’S DEATH AN’ DESTRUCTION”


Having barely escaped dropping into the jaws of an alligator, Johnny
Thompson wound his leg about his vine rope at a spot where a knotty
projection would give him partial support, then proceeded to make a sad
survey of the situation. There was the cocoanut tree, and there the
alligator. There were two other ’gators floating silently on the surface
of the pool. To land there was out of the question. There might be a
landing place on the other side of that particular rocky formation. It
was his only chance.

After climbing the vine, a slow and painful process, he made a hasty
survey. Already it was growing dark. There was need of haste, but the
dull stupor of the tropics was still upon him. He could not hasten. He
found it necessary to make his way over the jagged rocks for some
distance before finding a safe fastening for his vine.

When at last all was secure the sun had gone down and a dark bank of
clouds again obscured the sky.

“Got’a hurry,” he told himself. “Got to get down fast.”

He did go down rapidly until he had all but reached the rocky ledge upon
which he was to land. There, for a time, he lost his courage. His late
experience had unnerved him. What sort of landing was this which he now
approached? It is difficult to distinguish a motionless alligator from a
rocky surface even in broad daylight. How impossible in the dusk! So he
clung there motionless, trying to stare into the half darkness.

“Can—can’t hang here forever,” he breathed at last. “Here goes, and
here’s hoping!”

To his great joy he landed safely on a high and dry rock, quite free from
danger.

But at once there arose the problem of finding his way to the cocoanut
tree. After a half hour of groping about, he uttered a shout of joy:

“There! There it is!”

There indeed was the tree, and at the top of it were the cocoanuts—three
ripe ones and many green ones. The problem of securing the food was still
before him. At close sight of the tree his heart sank. It was taller and
larger than he thought—fifteen feet high and a foot through at the base.
What was worse, the circle of great fern-like leaves that grew between
him and the nuts appeared to present a solid barrier through which it was
going to be difficult to pass.

“I’m weak from hunger,” he told himself. “From hunger and something else.
I’d rather lie down and sleep than climb that tree, but I must try.”

He did try. Three times he climbed to that green barrier; three times
tried to break his way through the ring of branches to the fruit; fought
there until cold perspiration stood out upon his brow and his knees shook
so he could scarcely support himself; then each time slid slowly down.

The last time, with something very much like a sob, he threw himself upon
the bare rocks and cried passionately:

“Oh, I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!”

That night, on the surface of the highest rock he could find, with no
fire, with only the glittering stars above him, he slept the deep sleep
of utter exhaustion. From time to time as he slept there came sounds of
scratches on the rock above him, of grunts and other sounds in the
darkness; but no wild thing dared approach too close to this strange
smelling creature from another world.

The three days that followed that night on the rocks beside the falls
were like a long drawn out evil dream. True, Fate dropped him a
comforting morsel. One of the cocoanuts, a small one, had fallen during
the night. With fingers that shook, Johnny bored a hole through one eye
of it and drank the milk eagerly; drank to the last drop. Then he broke
the nut on a rock and gnawed at the rich, white meat until not a shred
was left.

Lacking strength and courage to build a second raft, he began making his
way as best he could, now on hands and knees and now flat on his stomach,
over the low, narrow game trail that followed the bank of the stream.

As the heat of the day beat its way through the tangled forest he began
to feel faint. Now and again, as he paused to rest, he felt that he must
be losing consciousness.

A great desire to sleep came over him. Nothing much mattered. A strange
peace, the drowsy, drug-like peace of the tropics, lulled him to rest.
Now he slept, defenseless in the open trail. And now he woke to journey
on. When night came he could not rightly tell. In that gloom there was no
day. In time he woke to find all dark about him. Still he struggled on.

The scream of parrots, the senseless chatter of monkeys, the roar of
beasts of prey, all were the same to him, for all came faint and
indistinct as in a dream.

Once he fought with a great spotted beast. A jaguar, perhaps. Or was
that, too, only a dream? He could not tell. He seemed to wake from a
horrible nightmare of claws and wild snarls to find his arms and chest
torn and bleeding and his knife gone.

“Must have fought with my knife and lost it in the struggle,” was his
mental comment.

He did not feel badly about that, nor did he search for it long. Nothing
seemed to trouble him. Great waves of dreams swept over him.

His lips were dry and parched. “Fever. Malaria. That mosquito did it,” he
told himself. That did not matter, either. Nothing mattered.

He dragged himself to the bank of the stream to cleanse his wounds. He
drank long and deeply. A small fish, darting too close, was caught in his
hand. This he devoured whole.

Other things of the jungle he ate—strange fruits, nuts and roots. Were
they poison? It did not matter. Nothing mattered.

So, every day growing weaker, he came at the end of the third day to
something very much like an abandoned clearing. Such it was, but he was
too far lost in his drowsy sleep to know it. He had passed half through
it when, of a sudden, he came upon a hut, a palm-thatched, forlorn and
deserted hut. Yet, to him in his delirium of fever it was something far
greater than an abandoned hut.

“Home!” he cried hoarsely. “Home!”

Throwing himself across the threshold, he fell prone in the dust of the
floor.

A great lizard, sleeping in the corner, awoke and darted away; a small
bird, whose nest was in the thatch, scolded shrilly. But Johnny heard
nothing, saw nothing.

When at last he summoned up strength enough to drag himself to a corner
and upon a bed of rotting mats, he murmured again:

“Home! Home! How good to be home!”

In the deserted cabin was dampness, mold and desolation. Only one
overwrought by peril and trouble, or made delirious by a burning fever,
could have thought of it as home. Home? Here there was neither water,
food nor friends.

Once, having come out of his delirium, he managed to grope about until he
had found a mouldy gourd. With this in hand he dragged himself on hands
and knees to the river. Here in his eagerness for water he all but
pitched head-foremost into the stream. As it was, he left a print of his
hand in the plastic ooze on the bank.

The gourd he filled with water. Having spilled most of it on the way
back, in a fever of haste lest the rest escape, he drank it greedily,
then sank back on his musty little bed to dream delirious dreams.

In his dreams, with Pant by his side, he pursued a red gleam that, while
growing brighter, appeared always to elude them. “The red lure. The red
lure!” he repeated over and over.

Next morning found him too weak to rise or to think. He had only strength
to breathe. He could only stare helplessly at the dull brown roof of the
hut and hope for things that never come.

But now the scene was changed. Instead of the smell of decay all about
him, there was the perfume of apple blossoms. Over his head the white and
pink glory of Springtime blended with white patches of sunshine. Beneath
him was a soft bed of grass; above him apple trees and sky. From far and
near came the warble of thrushes, the chirp of robins, the shrill
challenge of woodpeckers. He was once more in the orchard that witnessed
his boyhood. Buried deep in clover, he was sensing the joy of Spring.

Then the hot light of a new day dragged him back to waking consciousness.
Dreams vanished. Dull reality hung about him. He tried to lift himself
upon an elbow. He failed. Could he lift a hand? He could not. His eyes
closed from the mere force of this effort, and remained closed.

The hand of Johnny Thompson, that manly right hand that had scorned to
strike one weaker than its owner; the hand that had so often inspired the
dishonest, the unkind, mean and criminal to a wholesome fear; the hand
that had never been employed in mere selfish ends, was powerless and
still.

The stream rushing past that cabin seemed a funeral train, powerful and
free, ready to carry that brave spirit away. Some strange bird sang a
song from the tree tops. Its notes, measured and slow, were like a dirge.

A great snake, attracted by the dry warmth of the doorway, curled up
there in the dust to sleep. The figure on the cot did not move. A great
lizard crept in through a rotted corner to gaze blinking at him. The
snake, sensing a dinner, slowly uncoiled, then with a motion surprisingly
quick for a creature of its kind, darted, forked tongue flashing, at the
lizard. There was a scurry of feet, a gliding scrape. Lizard and snake
passed within a few inches of that prostrate head. The snake passed over
the motionless hand, yet the hand did not stir, the eyes did not open.

The rush of waters, the distant mournful notes of birds, the sigh of the
wind through the palms seemed to say:

“He is dead! Dead! Dead!”

                            * * * * * * * *

Pant would not believe that Johnny was dead. “They can’t have done him
in,” he said to Hardgrave. “It’s a thing that really can’t be done. Burly
Russians; treacherous, slant-eyed Yellow men have tried it; yes, and
daring white crooks, too. These didn’t get Johnny, so why should a mere
Spanish half-caste succeed?”

No, he would not admit that Johnny was dead; but as days passed and he
did not return he grew more and more restless. Each morning strengthened
his determination to discover what had happened to his good pal. Each
evening found him with some more daring plan for discovering his
whereabouts. When sending his men as spies among Daego’s men at night
failed, he took to paddling across the river and drifting in and out
among them in the dark himself. This was exceedingly dangerous business.
He might be discovered, and if he were he would doubtless go the way of
his pal, whatever way that might be. He was careless of danger; any risk
was not too great, could he but find Johnny.

It was during one of his secret visits to the enemy’s camp that an
exceedingly strange thing happened.

It was a hot, sultry night. Daego’s men lay about on mats before the
huts. The murmur of voices constantly hung upon the air. Now and again
there came a shout of laughter from some black man. Half the workers were
blacks from Belize. The others were Spaniards. These seldom laughed.

At times, when the hum of voices ceased and laughter died away, from out
of the bush there came the hoarse call of a jaguar, and who could say it
was not the “killer?”

Pant had dropped upon a mat at the edge of a group of black men. In the
shadows no man could see his neighbor’s face. No questions were asked.
The moon, just rising over the edge of the jungle, cast long shadows and
sent ghost-like shimmers of light across the patches of mist that rose
from the river.

The hum of voices was at its loudest. A black man, close to Pant, was in
the midst of a loud guffaw when, of a sudden, the laugh appeared to
freeze in his throat. This sound, or sudden cessation of sound, so
unusual and so apparently without cause, spread silence like a blanket
over the clearing.

Out of that silence there rose a hoarse, high-pitched voice:

“Oh! Look up a-yonder!”

The man who spoke was the one who had so suddenly ceased laughing. His
outstretched arm, clad as it was in a white sleeve of cotton stuff, was
like a white pointer with a black tip pointing toward the sky.

What Pant saw as he followed the line of that pointer made even his blood
run cold and set the hair at the back of his head standing on end. The
moonlight playing across the sky had caught something white and faintly
luminous that floated on air well above the tree tops. Even as he
watched, the thing seemed to assume the form of a white-robed figure. The
head began to come out with glimmering brightness. Eyes appeared, and the
semblance of a mouth. Then, as the whole company, far and near, lay
wrapped in silence, there sounded such a rattling as one may sometimes
fancy he hears in passing a graveyard at the dead of night.

“Oh! My Massa!” groaned the black man. “It’s a ghost, the ghost of that
white boy Daego drove into the bush. He’s come back to ha’nt us. It’s
death an’ destruction! Destruction for Daego; and death for all of us.
Oh! My Massa!”

There came a murmuring “Uh-huh” from many voices. Then from a dark corner
there rose the chant of the only Carib of the crew. He was singing the
native song of his people—the Devil Song that is supposed to drive out
evil spirits. Weird and fantastic as his song was, the thing that floated
above the tree tops was far more weird.

Over in another corner Pant heard a shuffling of feet. Someone was moving
away, going toward the river. Fearing that they might find his dugout and
so rob him of his means of returning to his own camp, he went skulking
along after them. There were five or six black men in the group. Since
they were not approaching his boat, he followed close enough to hear what
they were saying. Arriving at the river bank, they pushed a long dugout
into the water and with scarcely a sound leaped in and shoved away from
the shore. A moment later, keeping to the shadows, the boy heard:

“Come daylight we’s far down this haunted river.”

“Yea-bo!” came back in answer.

“It’s death an’ destruction. I knowd twa’nt no sense afoolin’ with them
thar white ha’nts,” gloomed another.

There was silence after that. The only sound was the dip-lip of paddles,
but Pant had heard enough to make his heart glad.

“Johnny’s ghost,” he murmured. “Five men gone already, and more will
follow; perhaps many more. Not so bad for a ghost,” and he laughed softly
to himself.




                               CHAPTER X
                          JOHNNY’S GHOST WALKS


Palms that hung over the silent, swiftly flowing stream murmured and
sighed. Their murmuring and sighing was as sad as the voice of pines and
hemlocks in a graveyard on a winter’s night. Sadder still was the strange
wail of some tropical bird, piping always on the same minor key. On the
bed of decaying mats in the abandoned cabin where little lizards ran in
and out, Johnny Thompson lay white and motionless.

Came an hour when there fell upon all this gloom a shrill discordant
note. The scream of a wild parrot broke the drowsy silence. This was
answered by another, and yet another, until all up and down the stream
the air was filled with harsh, discordant music.

The innocent cause of all this disturbance was a fantastically painted
dugout, all striped and spotted with red, blue, green and white. Its prow
and stern rose high out of the water like the ancient crafts of the
Vikings.

Forward sat a girl, aft was a boy, and in the middle sat a large native
Carib woman. So brown and rugged was the girl that she might easily have
been taken for a Spaniard. A second look revealed deep-set freckles, a
glow of color, a mass of curly hair, and an indefinable air of confidence
and frankness that could belong only to an Anglo-Saxon. This girl, Jean
McQueen, was Scotch. The boy was her brother. Just over from England,
where he had attended school for years, he had the attire, the manners
and the color of a perfect young English gentleman. In his tweed nickers
and his smart sport shirt, he seemed quite as much out of place in the
wilderness as his sister in her patched and faded khaki suit seemed at
home.

“This is not the creek,” the boy said. There was impatience in his tone,
and something that suggested fear. “Let’s turn back.”

“It might be, Rod. We’ll go on a little farther.” Brushing aside a
low-hanging palm leaf, the girl seized her paddle to send the light craft
forward.

For a space of ten minutes nothing might be heard save the dip-dip of
their paddles and the scream of parrots over their heads.

Suddenly the boat swerved to the right shore.

“Abandoned, I guess,” said the girl, sweeping the clearing with her eyes.
“Might tell us something, though.”

“Some sort of old cabin over there.”

“Look!” exclaimed the girl. “Someone’s here—or has been in the last few
days.” She pointed to a well-defined hand print in the half-dried mud of
the bank.

“Who—who do you suppose?”

“Rubber hunters, perhaps, or a chiclero. Let’s go up.”

The boy hung back.

“Aren’t afraid, are you?” the girl laughed. It was a rich, free,
melodious laugh. “Nobody’s goin’ to hurt you in this wilderness. C’mon!”

She led the way over the trail which Johnny on his journey to the creek
for water had made. The boy followed, reluctantly, and the Carib woman
waddled along behind. More than once the girl paused to examine with a
practiced eye patches of grass that lay flat down as if some wild
creature had slept there. These were the spots where Johnny had fallen
and found himself too weak to rise at once.

A little cry of dismay escaped the girl’s lips as her eyes fell upon the
white-faced, prostrate form on the decaying mats.

“Dead!” her lips framed the word she did not speak. Death to this girl
who knew so much of life, and loved it so, was a terrifying thing, thrice
terrible in the heart of a wilderness. Yet here was a boy, a boy of her
own race, who, to all appearances, had died here alone in this abandoned
hut.

“Dead!” she whispered. “How—how awful!”

Some little lizards scampered over the dry palm leaves as her foot
stirred the dust at the door. In another moment she was bending over the
prostrate form.

“You—you can’t always tell.” There was a note of hope in her tone. “Rod,
bring some water, quick.”

During the dragging moments of her brother’s absence she studied the
prostrate boy’s face. There are lines in one’s face which to the keen
observer tells the story of his life. Has he been kind and thoughtful of
others? Has he lived brave and clean? It is written there. Has he been
harsh, impatient, careless, dissipated even in small ways? This, too, is
recorded there. As the girl read the story of Johnny’s life she found
herself hoping more and more that she might save him.

“Give it to me,” she whispered as her brother appeared with the canteen.

With trembling fingers she placed the mouth of the canteen to the boy’s
lips.

A moment of silence followed. Then of a sudden the wrinkle of anxiety on
the girl’s brow disappeared. Johnny’s lips moved in an inarticulate
murmur.

With a little exclamation of joy the girl sprang to her feet.

“He lives! He lives!”

Then all was silent again on stream and jungle.

                            * * * * * * * *

It was a strangely mixed dream through which Johnny was passing. It
seemed night. He was hidden away in some deep forest. A storm had set the
tree tops to twisting and writhing. The constant roll of thunder, mingled
with the moaning of the trees, made the night hideous.

Like a flash the scene changed. It was day—Sunday in the little old
church at home. Someone rose to sing; a beautiful white-gowned figure
with a sweet melodious voice. She sang, but the words of the song had no
meaning for him. It was as if they were sung in a foreign tongue.

And now he was gazing upon a sunrise. Such a sunrise as is never seen on
land or sea, all red, orange and gold.

It was in the midst of this last broken dream that he opened his eyes and
stared around him.

To his vast amazement he saw that the vision of orange and gold had not
completely vanished. Neither had the singing nor the sound of thunder
been hushed. They had merely taken on a more definite form, a truer
meaning. The words of the song:

  “Ne-ha aba ne ha aba muta,
    Sagmuk labsa abona
  Sag aba don,”

were not entirely strange to him, but they had no real meaning for him.
He had heard his Caribs sing them around his camp fire. They were the
words of a strange native song. As for the thunder, it was merely the
wild beating of a barrel drum. And the flash of orange and gold was a
girl, a very beautiful girl, swaying gracefully in a sort of rhythmic
exercise to the beating of the drum.

He stared in unbelieving astonishment. The thing was not real. He was
still dreaming. He tried to put up a hand to rub the illusion away, but
finding this difficult because of weakness, contented himself with
staring about the room where the golden vision continued to sway and
whirl and the reverberating drum shook dust from the ceiling.

Slowly familiar objects came to view. The roof of the palm thatched cabin
looked familiar. He had lain beneath it some time. That might have been
long ago, or was it yesterday? He remembered the holes in the roof. The
holes, one had been triangular, another round. The spots were still
there, but instead of sunlight streaming through, the holes were covered
by a fresh green palm leaf thatch.

He looked again at the swaying spot of gold that was the girl. The girl
seemed almost real. Her face was flushed. It would be, if she swayed to
music in such a clime. The black woman, like an ebony statue, sat beating
the drum as she sang:

  “Ne-ha aba ne ha aba muta.”

Then a sudden thought struck Johnny. The dancing girl was not black; she
was not golden-brown like the Indian, not the brown of the Mexican,
either. She was white like himself. A very comely white girl she was,
too; red cheeks, tossing curly hair, freckles, slightly turned-up nose—a
real girl.

“It’s a dream,” he told himself. “A white girl in the heart of this
wilderness? I’m dead. This is Heaven. She’s an angel.”

He wanted to laugh at this last, but did not dare. It might break the
spell! The girl was too robust, too red-cheeked for an angel. Whoever
heard of a freckle-faced angel? But whoever heard of a real white girl in
such a spot?

The mats looked real, too. What of those on which he lay? He ran his
fingers over them.

“New, too,” he told himself. “How strange!”

Things were coming back to him. He had walked a long way, crept farther,
dragged himself to this cabin. Here, after one try at bringing water, he
had lain himself down to die.

“Apparently I’m not dead,” he told himself. “These people must have
arrived to save me.”

He closed his eyes and tried to think. In the process he fell asleep.

What had happened was this. Having found Johnny dying of fever there in
the abandoned hut, the girl, Jean, had insisted upon abandoning all plans
for their future except the business of bringing him back to life. To
this end the native Carib woman had searched the jungle for such herbs as
have long been used by her people for curing a fever. To this same end,
brother and sister had searched that same forest for birds that would
provide broth and for fruits to supply refreshing drink for the invalid.

The strange music and the rythmic motion that accompanied it was the idea
of the Carib woman. Did she attach some wild native religious
significance to it? Who can tell? The boy had made the drum from a deer’s
skin and a hollow log; the girl had joined in merely to please the Carib
woman and satisfy her simple soul.

Native medicine, the jungle’s nourishment, the black woman’s wild music,
the white girl’s tender care, all these in their way had helped. When
Johnny woke the second time he was well on his way to recovery.

It is one thing to lie alone, helpless and dying in a wretched cabin in
the heart of a wilderness; quite another to find one’s self surrounded by
true friends, none the less real because they are new, and to feel
strength and life coursing back into one’s veins.

At first Johnny asked few questions. Asking questions had never been his
way of discovering the truth. He looked on with astonishment at the
things that went on around him. The wilderness which to him had been a
land of famine was suddenly as if by magic turned into a Garden of Eden.
Early in the morning he heard the pop of a light rifle somewhere in the
brush. At night he drank such broth and ate such tender shreds of meat as
had never passed his lips before. The strange, glorious girl vanished for
an hour, to return with yellow melons, melons that grew on
trees,—“pawpaw” she called it. She brought water that was sweet and
fresh, not from the hot stream, but from a vine torn from a tree where it
clung. A hundred other miracles were wrought for his comfort and healing.
And all the time, as if by magic, strength came back to him. On the
fourth day he walked a bit unsteadily, but quite confidently, out of the
cabin to sit on a mahogany log with a cabbage tree for a back support.
Here he sat and watched dreamily the golden girl who, at this moment
dressed in her humblest garb of faded khaki, was bending over a native
mahogany wash bowl, found somewhere in the cabin, washing clothes.

Engaged in this task, with her thick, curly hair drawn up in a tight knot
at the top of her head, with her brown arms flaked with suds, she seemed
real enough.

“No angel,” he murmured, “just a real girl; a whole lot better!” he told
himself. “I wonder where they came from, and where they were going when
they found me?”

Strangely enough, had he asked the girl this last question she would have
been obliged to answer: “I don’t know.”

The truth was that the Scotch girl and her brother were quite as lost in
this wilderness as he and quite as eager to find their way out.

                            * * * * * * * *

In the meantime the strange doings, the flashes of phosphorescent light
and strange noises, continued behind the locked door of Johnny’s office
at the camp on Rio Hondo. In spite of this, however, the Caribs continued
to work faithfully at their tasks and the work of getting out the red
lure went on.

“You’re making fine progress,” said Hardgrave.

“Yes,” said Pant, “we’ll be able to show a fine profit. That is,” his
brow wrinkled, “if we can take it out of here.”

“You’ll make it. Never fear.” said Hardgrave. “Daego’s getting worried.
Another pit-pan load of his blacks went down the river last night. Wait
and see.”

“It’s the ghost,” smiled Pant.

Strange as it may seem, though Johnny in his far away jungle hut was
greatly improved in health, his ghost walked nightly upon the sky above
the timber that faced Daego’s camp.

Every night, too, Pant slipped across the river to join the enemy’s camp
and to catch the drift of events. He found that these Central Americans,
black and brown alike, had a great fear of ghosts, particularly of white
ghosts. Johnny’s ghost hovering there near the clouds threw some into
near hysteria and sent others hurrying down the river.

It was easy to see, they explained, why this white ghost hovered above
the tree tops. The hot and humid air close to the earth in the jungle has
always been hated and feared by the white man. Above the trees the air is
fresh and crisp. Why, then, should any ghost descend to earth?

But despite the fact that he did not descend, his presence above them
meant that in time pestilence, a death-dealing fever, a destructive storm
or a flood would descend upon the camp and wipe it from the face of the
earth.

One person did not believe in the ghost—Daego. He raved and stormed at
his men. Day and night, as if searching for something, he haunted the
banks of the river. More than once Pant barely escaped being discovered
by him. In spite of all this, however, the ghost appeared promptly on
schedule and Daego’s ranks grew thinner and thinner.

“Keep it up, dear ghost,” Pant whispered, “keep it up, and in time we’ll
have nothing to fear from Daego. Oh!” he sighed, “if only Johnny were
here to enjoy it all!”

But Johnny was far away in the palm leaf thatched cabin on a stream that
was as strange to those who had battled for his life as it was to him.

And then one night Johnny’s ghost vanished into thin air.

Before that happened, however, there were many other strange doings on
the upper stretches of Rio Hondo.




                               CHAPTER XI
                     PROVISIONED FOR A LONG JOURNEY


Ten days after his discovery there in the abandoned cabin, Johnny
Thompson was ready to travel. He was ready to embark in the dugout of his
new found friends.

“It will not be long,” he assured Jean, “before I will be able to do my
bit with the paddle, to assist you in going wherever you wish to go.”
Where that might be he had not the slightest notion.

One thing puzzled him. As they prepared to leave the cabin, the dugout
was loaded fore and aft with food supplies. In the prow, carefully
wrapped in green palm leaves, were the carcasses of two young peccaries,
killed that very morning. Piled on top of these were three or four dozen
ripe cocoanuts. In the stem were casabas (great potato-like vegetables),
tree melons, breadfruit, and a basket filled with strange little red
tomatoes.

“Rations for a week,” he mused. “How far from home are these people,
anyway?”

He was soon enough to know. Hardly had the dugout, with Roderick in the
stem as steersman, been pushed from the shore and allowed to take a
downstream course, than the girl, turning upon Johnny one of her most
wonderful smiles, said:

“I suppose you think we know where we’re going; but we don’t. We only
know we’re on our way.”

“Don—don’t know where you’re going!” Johnny gasped in astonishment. “Then
you’re—”

“Lost!” The girl’s brow wrinkled for a second, then the smile came back.

“Shake,” said Johnny, solemnly stretching forth a hand. “We’ll go it
together.”

For a second their hands met Then, as a swirling eddy set the boat
whirling, the girl seized a paddle.

“You see,” she said quietly as they reached more placid water, “we didn’t
tell you while you were ill; afraid it would disturb you.”

“It would have,” said Johnny. Quite suddenly something had come to him.
“The red lure!” he murmured, quite unconscious of the fact that he spoke
out loud. “When will I ever get back to it?”

“What is the red lure?” the girl asked in surprise.

“The red lure? Why, that’s my pet name for mahogany, the prince of
priceless woods. If you’ve ever seen the mirror-like gleam of its
polished surface, if you’ve seen how like a fire on the hearth at sunset
it is, you know what it means.”

“I have. I do,” she said simply.

“Well,” he went on, “I’ve been given an opportunity to bring down a
sample, one boom full, a hundred thousand feet or so of that matchless
wood from a forest the value of which can scarcely be estimated. I had
made a fine start, too, when I was suddenly driven into the bush. I
promptly got myself lost, and here I am.”

Reading intense interest in her eyes, he told her the whole story of his
adventure thus far.

“And now,” he ended with an uncertain smile, “it seems that we—you, your
brother and I—are all babes in the woods, so to speak.”

“Perhaps it’s not quite as bad as that,” said Jean. “Bad enough, though.
You see, I’ve always lived in the tropics with my father. He brought me
here when I was five. My brother, who is three years older, was left
behind in England.

“He’s done a lot of things, my father has,—bananas, cocoanuts,
grapefruit. Just now he is gathering chicle up a lost river.

“Four months ago Rod came to us. The jungle is all new to him. He was
quite wild about it. So we went on little exploring trips. I love it,
don’t you?”

“Nothing like it,” said Johnny.

“It’s all new up in this country. If ever a white man set foot on it he’s
forgot it long ago. You cut your way through a jungle, you find a stream,
you launch your dugout, which you’ve dragged after you, and you drift on
and on through a land that white men have never seen. It’s wonderful!
Wonderful!” She closed her eyes as if in a dream.

“It’s dangerous, too,” she exclaimed, suddenly starting up. “You may get
lost. We did. One night we slept in the bottom of our dugout—Rod, old
Midge and I. When morning came we found ourselves drifting in the center
of a great river. What do you think of that? Go to sleep in a stream you
can all but reach across, and wake in a broad river. Magic, wouldn’t you
call it?”

“I might.”

“No magic about it, though. A thing had happened to our tie rope. Some
creature had gnawed it square off. And there we were, drifting down a
great black silent river we had never seen before. What were we to do?
What would you have done?”

“Try to find my way back to the mouth of the little stream from which I
had drifted.”

“That was just what we attempted. That’s how we found you. The mouth of
every stream looked alike to us, so all we could do was to go up each one
a short way until we knew it was the wrong stream. We had about decided
that this was the wrong stream, too, when I discovered your hand print in
the mud.”

“And you’ve spent all this time—”

“Getting you well.”

“That’s wonderfully kind. That’s—”

“Not so much in the tropics. Down here time doesn’t matter. We’ll find
our way home sooner or later. When we do I’ll say: ‘Hello, Dad. I’m
back,’ and Dad will say, ‘So I see, daughter, so I see.’”

So lightly did these words come tripping from her lips, so rippling was
the laughter following, that for a moment Johnny was deceived.

“She means it, too,” he told himself. “So this is the way of the
tropics.”

The deception lasted for but one moment. The wrinkle across her brow, the
far away look in her eyes, the irregular dip of her paddle, all told
plainer than words that she had been playing a part; that she was
concealing homesickness and hunger for friends; that they might be days,
even weeks, finding their way back, and that in the meantime all her
father’s men would be searching the streams and bush for her and her
brother.

In the midst of all this fresh revelation, their boat suddenly shot from
the creek into a mighty stream of black and sullen waters.

“The Rio Hondo!” exclaimed Johnny.

“And down this river is your camp,” the girl said quietly. “We will take
you there at once.”

For a moment Johnny was tempted. He had been away for more than two
weeks. What had happened in that time? What of Pant? What of his Caribs?
What of Daego and his men? Had there been a battle? If so, who had won?
Whose camp fires gleamed there in the heart of that magic mahogany
forest, his own or Daego’s? He did so want to know the answer to all
these questions.

But suddenly there flashed through his mind the worried face of the girl.

“Brave girl!” he breathed as a lump in his throat all but choked him.
“She saved my life. It cost her many days. She must go home. She’s a
girl. I’m a boy. I can’t let them take me first.”

“No,” he exclaimed, snatching the paddle from her hands, “there is time
enough for me.”

With the paddle he deftly turned the boat about. Then, nothing loath,
Roderick and the black woman joined him in the stroke that sent it
speeding upstream. So, once more, Johnny’s back was turned on the red
lure.

That night Johnny dreamed once more of little golden brown women grinding
and spinning, of hunters returning with deer and wild pigs slung across
their backs, and of the three gods,—one black, one green and one of pure
gold.

Strangely enough, when he awoke from this dream he felt nearer the fabled
Indian village; the dream seemed more real than ever before.




                              CHAPTER XII
                            A BRONZE BEAUTY


Once more it was morning on the upper reaches of Rio Hondo. The dugout
was tied to the bared roots of a gnarled old mangrove. The camp of Jean
and Johnny, of Rod and the Carib woman, was on the crest of a high bank
that overlooked the black waters.

The aged Carib woman was frying cakes made from casabas ground to powder
and mixed with water. Jean was frying slices of meat from the ham of a
peccary. Johnny was engaged in the business of making coffee. After his
first demonstration this had been his allotted task.

While the coffee was now coming to a boil, he sat alternating gazing away
at the swift flowing waters and looking dreamily at the golden girl whose
hair was glorified by a touch of sunrise mingled with the glow of the
fire.

“Fine chance she’s got of finding her way home,” he thought. They had
searched all the previous day for the right creek. “There are a hundred
creeks. They don’t know how long they drifted nor how far. Not a chance.
Have to be some other way. Some of her father’s men may come upon us, or
we might go back to camp. Someone there might know the way.”

He was meditating on the advisability of proposing this last course when
there came a sudden excited shout from the bush.

“Roderick!” exclaimed the girl. “Something has happened to him.” For a
moment the camp was in commotion, then the Scotch boy came bounding out
of the bush.

“Jean! Jean!” he shouted, seizing her by the shoulders and waltzing her
about. “I’ve found a trail, a hard-beaten trail.”

“The Old Portage,” the girl cried breathlessly. “The trail that leads to
home!”

Suddenly crumpling up in her tracks, she sank to the ground and hid her
face in her hands. Unmoved as she had been through all this strange and
trying adventure, now as the end appeared at hand she was for a moment
just a girl with the heart of a girl and a girl’s way of shedding tears
in times of great joy or deep sorrow. And who would not like her the
better for it?

The Old Portage, the brother and sister informed Johnny, was a trail used
alike by Mexicans and Indians. The trail led from Rio Hondo to the upper
waters of their own river, the one on which their father’s camp was
located. Neither had been over this trail, but their father had. He had
told them of passing over it. It was an old, old trail, he had explained,
which might have been in existence at the time of the Spanish conquest.

“There can’t be a bit of doubt about its being the trail,” said Roderick.
“It’s so hard-packed and old that it seems made of cement.”

“It’s our trail!” the girl rejoiced. “By to-night, or to-morrow noon at
most, we will be home. And you?” she said suddenly turning to Johnny.

The question startled him. It had not occurred to him that there was a
possible parting of the ways.

“You’ll be going back to your camp, of course,” said Roderick. “You’re
quite welcome to our dugout. You may have an opportunity to send it back.
We may pass your way. It’s no matter. What’s a dugout? You’ll be in your
camp by night.”

This time, to his own great stupefaction, Johnny did not pause to reason
why, but simply said:

“No, since I’ve come this far, I believe I’ll see you home.” He looked
straight at the golden girl as he spoke. Had he but known it, he was
taking a rather large contract.

Roderick looked surprised. The girl looked Johnny frankly in the eye and
said: “That will be very kind of you.”

It was not hard to see that she had greater faith in the skill and
courage of this new found friend than she had in her brother who, though
educated in the way of books, was ignorant enough when it came to river
lore and the ways of the jungle.

A half hour later, after dragging the dugout to a safe place on the bank,
they prepared packs for a land journey. Johnny tried to think what it had
been that had caused him to make the decision which must take him deeper
into the jungle and farther from his camp. Other than a vague feeling
that the girl who had saved his life might yet need his protection, he
could discover no motive whatsoever.

“No sense to it,” he told himself, “not a bit in the world. But what’s
the fun of always having a reason for things, anyway?”

“‘A boy’s will is a wind’s will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long
thoughts,’” he repeated as he strapped his pack to his shoulders and
prepared to follow his companions through the brush to the hard beaten
ancient trail.

It was strange, but the trail they followed that day did not seem quite
like a portage trail leading from one river to another. At least it did
not seem so to Johnny, not from the very start. At first his feelings on
this subject were based on nothing tangible. As the day passed and still
they plodded onward, he could have given reasons. He did not give them.
What was the use? Time would tell.

They crossed no streams, yet they were not following the backbone of a
ridge. That in itself was strange. They carried two canteens. These were
soon emptied. Had it not been for Jean’s admirable knowledge of tropical
vegetation they might have suffered from thirst. A vine growing close
beside the trail, which Jean called Bejuco, filled their canteens while
they rested.

At noon they paused for a light lunch. Mid-afternoon found them plodding
upward; indeed, almost the whole day had showed them a slight up-grade
trail.

“Should be coming to the divide,” Johnny said.

“Yes, we should.” The girl’s brow was wrinkled in thought. “Father never
spoke of the divide, but there must be one. That’s the place where you
stop going up, and start going down?”

“Yes.”

“We must come to it soon.”

But they did not.

Four o’clock found them resting beside a pool. A very strange pool it
was. Circular, with moss and ferns growing to its very brink, its water
clear as air, it seemed like a great funnel set in the earth.

“As if there had been a sudden cave-in,” said Jean.

Stranger still, they found on the side next to the trail four crude stone
steps leading down to the brink of the pool.

“Did you never hear your father speak of this pool?” asked Johnny.

Neither Jean nor her brother had heard of it before.

“This,” thought Johnny to himself, “is not the portage. It is some other
trail. But what trail can it be?”

Darkness found them still plodding upward. Loath to spend the night
without water, at Jean’s direction the boys sought out a tree known as
the “kerosene tree.” A match applied to a piece of this wood transforms
it into a torch.

They had not gone far before the light of their torch was reflected by
water.

“Another pool,” said Roderick, settling down upon the mosses that grew
beside it.

“Here we camp,” said Johnny, holding out his torch that they might get a
more perfect view of the pool.

It was very much the same as the other, only larger. The stone steps were
not lacking, and beside them was a pillar of stone on which Johnny’s
sensitive fingers traced some very definite carvings of strange animals
and men.

“A relic of old Maya days,” he said.

“What is?” asked Jean.

“See this pillar beside the steps; the pool itself? Ever read about
them?”

“No.”

“Built by Mayas, I believe. Interesting people. Hardgrave loaned me a
book about them; the report of some ethnological society. It reads like
one of Dumas’ novels. Tell you about them later.”

They were soon busy preparing camp for the night.

Two hours later, with the still waters of the pool reflecting the red
glow of a half burned out campfire, with Roderick stretched out on the
mosses fast asleep and the Carib woman nodding beneath a nut palm, Johnny
sat beside the girl and told of the wonders of this land in the long ago.

“Do you see the cocoanut palm in the shadows at the far side of the
pool?” he asked.

The girl nodded.

“We think it grew there wild. So it did. But how did it come there?
Scholars say that its great, great, great grandfather, centuries back,
must have been planted there, and that it may have grown beside a
palace.”

“Whose palace?” the girl’s voice was low.

“The palace of a Maya prince.”

“Were there princes?”

“Princes and great rulers; a mighty people once lived here. Where this
jungle now rules were cornfields, cocoanut plantations, farms, homes,
cities and great temples, temples of stone, fifteen hundred feet long,
two hundred wide, two or three stories high. That is the land of long
ago, and now here is only the jungle and this pool.”

“Do you suppose this pool was here then?” The girl’s hand was on his arm.

“Why not? There are pools in Palestine to-day that were there two
thousands years ago.”

“Then, if it could talk, what tales it could tell!”

For some time they sat there in silence, each dreaming the magic story in
the fire and the deep, dark pool.

Long after the girl and the Carib woman had gone to sleep in the shadows,
Johnny sat there. In his mind was a problem. They were on the wrong
trail, he was sure of that now. What trail? It was a secret trail of some
wild people, perhaps Mayas. Whatever people they were, there was a city.
Such a hard beaten trail told of many travelers. What should he do? All
his life he had dreamed of discovering a city, a city of lost people in
some hidden corner of the world. This, perhaps, was his chance. For once
the call of the red lure seemed faint and far away.

“Three gods,” he whispered, “one black, one green and one of pure gold.”

But there was Jean and her brother. They had not guessed, at least
Roderick had not. He was not sure about Jean. They would discover the
truth; too late perhaps to turn back. Had he the right not to warn them?

Long he pondered the problem. To go on alone was out of the question. His
recent experience had given him an unconquerable fear of being alone in
the bush. Was it selfishness that in the end counciled silence? Who can
tell? At any rate, this was his decision: they would go ahead until Jean
or her brother called a halt; when that would be he could not guess.

Johnny spent that night beside the dying embers of the camp fire. With
legs doubled up beneath him, arms stretched out before him, head hanging
low, he slept and sleeping dreamed again of golden brown natives, and of
black, green and gold gods.

In the midst of this dream he awoke. Or did he awake? Did he but half
awake? Was it reality or dream? Whatever it was, he saw by the light of
the dying fire, on the opposite side of the pool where the palm leaves
parted, the face of a little brown man, and above his head gleamed a
spear. For an instant he saw, or at least seemed to see him, then the
palm leaves silently swept together.

“Gone!” he whispered, starting up.

He was wide awake now. Had he been awake before? He dropped back into his
place, but not to sleep again. Now the rustle of palm leaves or the snap
of a twig aroused him, and now the long drawn call of some beast of the
jungle sent a thrill through his being. But at last he slept, to dream no
more that night.

Morning found him the first one stirring. Jean was his close second.

“Looks like a rocky ridge just up the trail,” he said. “Might be wild
turkey up there.”

“Might.”

“Want to try it?”

Jean nodded.

The next moment, with Roderick’s light rifle, Johnny was leading the way.
After ten minutes’ walking they came to a rocky ridge that led into the
jungle. Here the vegetation was thin. By climbing a boulder, and creeping
beneath a low-hanging palm, they were able to make their way forward.

They had just crept forward for some distance when, of a sudden, Johnny
held up a finger of warning. From somewhere ahead of them came a drumming
sound accompanied by a beating of wings.

“Turkey strut,” Johnny whispered. “C’mon.”

Together, scarcely breathing, they crept forward. Suddenly rounding a
pile of moss-grown rocks, they saw the turkey.

It was a magnificent sight. Mounted upon a boulder that served as a
pedestal, the sun turning the touch of bronze on his back to a plate of
burnished gold and his red comb to a fiery torch, was the most
magnificent wild gobbler Johnny had ever seen.

With a quick intake of breath, the girl touched Johnny’s arm. Without the
slightest sound he moved the rifle toward her. A shake of the head, a
finger pointed at the bird, told him to shoot.

His hand trembled slightly, but his aim was true. A crack of the rifle
was followed for a moment by a mad beating of wings, then all was still.

“You—you got him,” the girl exulted.

Leaping to her feet she sprang over the rocks to at last find a seat upon
the throne from which the winged monarch had so lately fallen.

“This,” she exclaimed, “is what I call life. I’ve always lived in the
wilds. I will always want to. I’ve always wanted to go back, back, back
into the wilderness, to discover something magnificent there. I never
knew exactly what that would be until last night. When you told me last
night of the Mayas and their wonderful cities, I knew; a city, a
magnificent city filled with rare silks, jewels and gold.”

Johnny started. What was this? Did she know? Would she follow the trail
even though she knew it to be the wrong one? Was she following a rainbow
to find the pot of gold?

“All that happened long ago,” he said, speaking of the Mayas. “The
riches, glory, beauty and power of their civilization perished centuries
ago.”

“Oh,” she whispered as her head drooped with disappointment. “But then,”
she exclaimed, “who knows what is back of this wilderness? On the map it
is marked ‘unexplored.’ It is unexplored. No white man has ever been
over—over—” she caught herself to stammer on, “has been—been across this
great bush to the beyond. There may be—there must be just one city, one
gorgeous city left.” Standing upon the rock, she threw her arms wide as
she exclaimed: “There must be! There must!”

Would they go on over that trail to the great beyond? What call could be
stronger? What fear could hinder? In vain Johnny told himself he must go
back, back to Pant and the red lure, back to fight the treacherous Daego.
All in vain. He owed it to this magnificent girl’s father to take her
back. In vain he recalled old Hardgrave’s words: “They killed all white
men who came to their camp except me.” They must go on. They would go on.

“Johnny,” said the girl suddenly, “we ought to have some sort of—of
signal.”

“Signal?” Johnny was puzzled.

“Yes. Something one could shout or sing, if lost from the other.”

“I have it!” she exclaimed suddenly. “I read a story a short time ago. In
that story the heroine taught the hero a strange sort of song. I believe
it was called ‘An Indian Love Song.’ Anyhow, the first part, or prelude,
went something like this:

  ‘Whoo-hoo-hoo,
    Whoo-hoo-hoo,
  Whoo-hoo-hoo.’”

Her clear voice rose high as she sang the notes. A distant cliff caught
them and threw them back to her.

“Sing it!” she commanded.

As best he could, Johnny repeated:

  “Whoo-hoo-hoo,
    Whoo-hoo-hoo,
  Whoo-hoo-hoo.”

Then they had a good laugh over the broken echoes that came back to them.

It all seemed very melodramatic and unreal to Johnny then, but the time
was to come when he would cling to those notes as a drowning man to a
spar.

By the light of the early morning sun they ate their breakfast; by that
same light resumed the trail that led to the great unknown.

Roderick, who had lived his life on streets and in houses, suspected
nothing. The black woman, like a slave, did not think. But the girl? She
knew. Every glance she sent back to Johnny told him that she knew, and he
gloried in her courage.




                              CHAPTER XIII
                            PURRING SHADOWS


As Johnny’s interest in the red lure lost much of its intensity, Pant’s
seemed to grow stronger. He left no stone unturned if its turning would
in any way hinder the treacherous Daego and his band.

“Johnny’s ghost is doing much,” he told himself, “but it’s not enough.
There must be other ways of annoying him.”

He thought of Daego’s black boats that moved by night and of the
stationary engine he had heard pop-popping in the heart of the
wilderness.

“I’ll go down there and look into that engine business,” he mused. “There
may be something to it, something big. I’ll go down to-night.”

He left camp in his low, black dugout that night and paddled swiftly down
the river. For some time he drove straight on; then of a sudden, as his
keen eye caught a speck of light that flashed on and then blinked out
like a match that is lighted and blown out, he swerved to the shore,
threw a rope over the low limb of a mangrove, then sat there motionless,
watching the river.

His thoughts were of that Spanish half-caste, Daego. “Isn’t it strange,”
he mused. “There’s a man worth millions. If he never made another cent
and lived a thousand years he’d never come to want. Yet he’s so greedy
that he does crooked things that he may gain more. If someone tries to
break into the mahogany or chicle business, instead of helping them in a
brotherly fashion as he could well afford to do, he tries to throttle
them.

“I suppose,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s all in the start one gets. If he
starts out crooked, it doesn’t seem to matter much whether he succeeds or
fails, he remains crooked to the end. One would think—”

Of a sudden his musings were cut short off. Something was moving out
there in the water. Something like a shadow. Pant scarcely breathed as he
watched that long shadow until it had disappeared up a bend in the river.

“That’s no shadow,” he muttered as he sat up. “It’s a pit-pan, one of
those dugouts the natives use for coming on long journeys up the river.
Must have been sixty feet long. The most marvelous pit-pan that ever was.
Those pit-pans they used in other days had at least a dozen men at the
paddles. I didn’t see a single man, and still it moved straight on
upstream. Seems like I heard a purring sound. Surely here is mystery—a
purring shadow.”

“Hardgrave spoke of Daego’s black boats,” he said to himself. “That thing
must be one of them. And there’s nothing good about the thing they’re up
to. Men don’t go creeping up the river in the silence of the night with
an eel-like craft such as that for nothing. If I can find out what it’s
all about and can trap one of his pit-pans I’ll be in a way to keep him
so busy he won’t so much as have time to find out when our raft starts
down the river.”

He arrived at the mouth of the creek, up which he had located the
pop-popping of a stationary engine a half hour later. Taking a chance of
being seen, he began skirting the bushes at the edge of the creek. For
this move he was thankful. He had not gone a mile when, upon rounding a
cocoanut palm that overhung the water, he came in sight of two long, dark
objects that lay close to shore, half concealed by foliage. Seen from a
little distance they resembled nothing quite so much as great, black
water snakes asleep by the bank.

“Pit-pans!” he murmured as he came closer.

Pit-pans indeed they were, slender boats cut from the trunk of a tree,
sixty or more feet in length.

“Blockade runners! Black devils!” he muttered as he passed. He dared not
stop to inspect them. There might be men on the bank, watching.

Soon he caught the pop-pop of that stationary engine which had once so
mystified him. This time, instead of turning back, he paddled straight
on. A mile, two, three miles of water passed beneath his craft. Still he
moved steadily forward until, when it seemed he must be almost upon the
engine, he suddenly discovered that the sound was behind and to the right
of him.

“Back in the bush,” he told himself. “Passed the trail without seeing
it.”

Turning his boat about, he drifted slowly.

“There it is. Drift down thirty yards and hide my boat.”

This done, he struggled back along the bank to the entrance of the path.

Following a winding trail, with the sound of the motor growing louder,
ever louder, with his heart keeping tune to its throbbing, he made his
way forward until caution bade him slink into the shadows of the great
leaves of a cohune tree.

There, with only the ceaseless throb of the motor to disturb his
reflection, he had time to think things through. How was this all to end?
His men were making progress, but Tivoli had told him that many of the
men were becoming frightened by the wild tales they were hearing of the
doings of the man-eating jaguar. Would fright drive them back down the
river before their task was completed? He wished Johnny was here. Then he
would feel more free to hunt that beast down. Must do it, anyway, very
soon.

And what was Daego plotting up the river? He could not bribe the Caribs.
Would there be a fight in the end? Well, if so, Daego would not find them
unprepared. He was training his men in a new form of warfare. They were
handy with their long-bladed machetes, very handy indeed. Daego should
see!

He glanced about him. It was strange that he should be in such a place at
such a time. Yet he wanted to know, to be sure. If things were as he
thought, he’d make Daego no end of trouble. He’d trap one of those black
shadows of his, show him up.

“Trap one,” he whispered, “but how?”

This was a puzzler. Moments of reflection, and then an inspiration.

“The very thing! Rivers have been blocked against war boats by chains.
This is better than chains; it floats. It—”

His whisper broke short off. Someone was coming. They carried a lantern.
He had not thought of a light. What if they should catch sight of him.
Shuddering, he shrank farther into the bushes. Just then he caught sight
of the foremost man’s face.

“Daego!” he breathed. “Daego himself!”

As he listened he crowded farther and farther back among the palm leaves.
He was hearing voices, many voices. They were talking in Spanish. He did
not understand Spanish. It was not what they said that increased his
fright, but the numbers of them.

“Must be twelve or fifteen of them,” he thought with a shudder. “What
they won’t do to me if one of them chances to spy me!”

By great good fortune the leader, Daego, passed without looking to right
or left. With him passed the bright light and much of the danger of
detection. Pant watched the passing line with increasing interest. The
men following Daego went in pairs, one before and one behind. Suspended
on long poles between each pair was a square, black box which, from the
bending of the poles and the labored tread of the men, would appear to be
heavy.

For a moment the boy’s imagination played tricks on him. These men were
ghosts of the pirates and buccaneers who inhabited these waters a century
or more ago. The heavy black boxes were filled with doubloons and pieces
of eight.

Then with a mental jerk he brought himself back to reality. These men
were men of to-day. The boxes they carried were indeed treasure chests,
but chests of power, not of gold.

“Batteries,” Pant murmured. “There is no need to go farther. I see it
all.”

And so he did. The long, black pit-pans near the river’s mouth were only
waiting these black boxes to give them the power to steal silently up the
river. They were electrically driven. The stationary engine back there
was connected to an electric generator. By day it was at work charging
batteries. By night these batteries were busy driving the long black
shadows with their burdens up the river. What sort of freight did they
carry? That he could not tell.

“Have to trap them to find out,” he told himself.

As it happened, he found out before he trapped them.




                              CHAPTER XIV
                            FORGOTTEN TRIBES


Johnny Thompson and Jean found it strangely fascinating to be marching
straight on over the beaten trail that led to the great unknown. It was
exciting, entrancing, this sharing a secret which had not been so much as
whispered by either of them, yet the glances and curious smiles which the
girl bestowed upon him told Johnny plainer than words that she knew;
moreover, that she knew he knew.

“But pshaw!” he told himself with a sudden shake as if to waken himself
from a dream. “There may be nothing to it, probably isn’t. There probably
are many hard-beaten trails leading away into this wilderness. Why should
this particular one lead to the home of a wild Maya? Probably end in
scattered settlements of Mexicans in some camp. It may end—” he caught
his breath, “we may have gone in a circle. It may end in Daego’s camp.
Pretty mess if it does! Have to be careful!”

So, beneath the flickering lights and drifting shadows of palms, over
ridges, through low depressions where there were no streams, now
frightening droves of small wild pigs from their sleep and now sending
flocks of brilliant colored cockatoos fluttering away into the bush, they
traveled on. There were more pools now. By noon they had passed three.
The air was cooler. They were ascending to higher altitudes. Johnny took
long, deep breaths and thought how like it was to the air of the
Cumberlands in Kentucky. Now and again, through the palm leaves, he
caught glimpses of distant scenes.

“Mountains over there to the left,” he said to Jean. “Looks two or three
thousand feet high.”

“Johnny,” the girl stopped suddenly in the trail (the others had gone on
before), “where are we going?”

“I don’t know. Do you?” Johnny’s face was sober.

“No, I don’t.”

“Want to go back?”

“No—o. But I feel sort of shivery. It’s so strange!”

“Yes, it is. But then, all life is strange, and death is strangest of
all. Besides, I guess we’re doing the logical thing. We’re lost in the
wilderness. What do men do when they’re lost? Find the nearest human
being and ask the way home. That’s what we’re doing. And from the signs,
I’d say we were almost there. I saw fresh prints of bare feet beside the
last pool.”

“So did I. And Johnny, look!” she held up a short string of small, round
beads.

“Green,” he said with a low exclamation. “Green jade!”

Again he seemed to hear Hardgrave running on in a low, melodious tone so
suggestive of great secrets: “Three gods; a black one, a green one and
one of pure gold.”

“Green—green jade,” he thought to himself. “That’s it, to be sure. The
green god would be carved from jade.”

To the girl he said, “That’s a rare find. Ever see any like it before?”

“No, never.”

“We’d better go on. Ought not to get separated from the rest.”

As they hurried on, Johnny heard a slight movement among the palms to the
right of him and for a second, above the tallest leaf, there flashed a
gleaming blade.

“Did—did you see it?” the girl asked, gripping his arm.

Johnny nodded.

“Wha—what was it?”

“A spear point, I’d say.” He spoke as calmly as he could.

“Now, I am beginning to be afraid,” she said.

“No use being afraid now. We’ve gone too far. Walk straight on as if you
had seen nothing. We’ll see more.”

They did. It was uncanny, unnerving in the extreme. There came a gleam
from a bush and a brown face appeared, to vanish instantly. Then there
came a rustle and a low call.

“It—it’s spooky,” whispered the girl, keeping close to Johnny’s side.

He wondered how the affair would end. Who were these people? Were they
really wild Mayas? He thought of their own weapons. Few enough they were.
He was carrying Roderick’s light rifle and there was some extra
ammunition strapped in his pack. A good machete hung at his side.

“But what are we against so many? There must be no fight.”

Yet there was to be a fight, such a strange one as he could not have
dreamed of, and that right soon.

As they rounded a turn in the trail, a sudden, piercing scream rent the
air. The next moment a beautiful Indian girl dressed in a strange garment
of scarlet, with her hair streaming behind her, came racing wildly down
the trail and behind her, in mad pursuit, came the strangest creature it
had ever been Johnny’s lot to behold.

As heavy as an ox, but shorter of leg and broader of back, the creature
had such a face as an elephant might present had he been robbed of half
his trunk. Rage gleamed from his small, black eyes. From his side there
protruded the shaft of a spear and this, no doubt, was the cause of his
sudden anger.

To be snatched from the silence of the jungle to the sudden strain of
action is like being dragged from the deep dark of midnight to the
glaring light of day. For a second Johnny stood petrified. Then, born as
he was for action, and trained for it, too, he sprang forward. The
shoulder straps of his pack were thrown off and the pack struck the trail
with a thump. Then, like an ancient warrior, Johnny lifted the light
rifle and prepared to stand his ground.

“Look out!” screamed Jean. “It’s a mountain cow, a tapir. He’s mad with
pain. He—he’ll trample you to death.”

With one hand Johnny pushed her into the brush; with the other he
steadied his rifle. Down the trail came Indian girl and tapir.

The tapir was gaining, and so in line with the girl that Johnny could not
fire. Now he was four yards behind, now three, now two. And now, with a
terrifying scream, the Indian girl tripped and fell.

For a second it seemed that nothing could save her. By great good fortune
she rolled over once. This brought her to the side of the beaten path.
The tapir, too near to halt or swerve, flew on by.

Not to be thwarted, as if realizing that here at his feet lay the darling
of the tribesmen who had sent the spear into his side, he stopped short
with a mad snort to whirl about and renew his attack.

This was Johnny’s chance. He now had a broadside shot and could reach the
heart. The rifle was a light one, far too light to be used on such game
unless the bullet found a vulnerable spot.

The end of the Indian girl must soon have come, had not Johnny, taking
quick, but sure aim, pressed the trigger and sent a small but paralyzing
bullet into the heart of the maddened beast.

It was a dramatic moment. For a moment the tapir stood swaying backward
and forward, then plunged headlong into the bush, twitched convulsively
for a few seconds and then lay quite still. He was stone dead.

Hardly had the tapir fallen when Johnny was treated to a sudden surprise.
He was gripped tightly about the knees. Looking down, he met a pair of
dark eyes looking into his. It was the Indian girl, stammering words in
her own tongue. Johnny understood not one word of it, but knew well
enough that he was being called a brave one, a hero, a young god. And,
having read all this in her eyes, he did not know whether to laugh or
smile. He ended by doing nothing at all until, finding himself surrounded
by a half hundred little brown men all armed with bows and spears, and
having become conscious of Jean close beside him, he stooped, and lifting
the brown girl to her feet, placed her hand in the white girl’s as he
murmured that word which everyone of whatever land or tongue must
understand by knowledge or instinct:

“Sister,” he said, simply and quietly.

There were tears in the brown girl’s eyes, tears in Jean’s as well; yet
they smiled through their tears. Who can tell how strong was the bond of
friendship welded at that moment?

It would have been difficult for either Jean or Johnny to tell how the
movement started, but before they realized what was happening, a line of
march formed along the trail. Before them were many brown hunters with
their weapons; in long procession others followed, while close beside
them was the Indian girl. Just as the procession started, awe-struck and
silent, Roderick and the Carib woman materialized from somewhere to join
them.

A wild, weird chant was struck up, then all moved slowly forward.

“How strange! How—how fascinating!” whispered Jean.

“Like a march of triumph,” Johnny whispered back.

In and out among the palms the procession wound. There appeared to be no
end to that trail. Whence had come these people? Whither were they bound?

“Now where are we?” Johnny asked, an air of mystery in his voice.

As if in answer to his query, a great brown shaft, elaborately carved and
gray with the moss of centuries, reared itself up before them. Beyond
this they came at once into cleared spaces where were cornfields and
pastures with goats grazing in them. Beside the trail were stone cottages
with thatched roofs. Beside these dwellings women sat weaving cloth on
narrow looms while others working over strange stone bowls beat soaked
corn into batter.

“The wild Mayas,” the girl whispered with a thrill in her tone. “We have
found them! At last we have found them!”

“And they have found us,” Johnny’s tone was solemn. “We are in their
hands. This is their land. When shall we leave it? Ever?”

“Ev—ever?”

“Perhaps never. Who knows?”




                               CHAPTER XV
                            THE HIDDEN CITY


It was strange, weird, fascinating, this march of the Mayas. The rhythmic
chant, the all but inaudible pat-pat of their bare feet, the sighing wind
in the palms that waved like plumes above their heads, all this stamped
deep into the minds of the boy and the girl impressions that time will
never erase.

It was a march, a grand processional, but where to? What was to be the
end of it? Armed to the teeth, these men had but a short half hour before
been following, surrounding them, perhaps planning to kill them as
intruders in their secret land. What of the present? Was this a march
done in their honor? Was Johnny being thought of as a hero because of
having saved the life of that beautiful Indian girl, and was this march
given in his honor? Or was it a ceremonial march which would end with
their being sacrificed to some gods, black, green or gold?

As he pondered these questions, Johnny remembered something he had read
in Hardgrave’s book, something that had made his blood run cold. The
Mayas did offer sacrifices to their gods, or at least they had in olden
times. And now, as he recalled it, he understood the presence of those
pools along the trail. The Maya country was a land without streams. It
was a limestone country. All the water ran in underground grottos. From
time to time one of these grottos caved in, forming a pool. That was the
secret of the pools they had seen. Some of these pools held more terrible
secrets. Some of them were thousands of years old. A party of scientists,
coming upon one of these in a territory that had been abandoned by the
Mayas, had found not only rich treasure in ornaments of gold, silver,
onyx and jade, but human skulls as well. The lives of those whose skulls
lay hidden for so many years beneath the water had been sacrificed to
some god. What god? The god of the rising sun? of the noon-day sun? of
the setting sun? of fire? of water? Who could tell. There lay their
skulls, mute testimony of the death they had died.

“So we, too, may die?” Johnny whispered to himself. “Who knows?”

As for Jean, knowing nothing of this, she was enjoying the experience to
its full. And why not? Why dream of tragedy in the sunlight of a glorious
day?

The march came to a halt before a long, low building, and at once an
elderly man, dressed in an embroidered cape which, with his dignified
bearing, gave him quite an air of distinction, came out to greet them.

At once the beautiful Indian girl broke away from the ranks of the
warriors and began a long and excited speech. Accompanied by many
gestures and many a nod of her head in the direction of the white trio,
this speech was impressive indeed.

“What’s it all about?” asked Roderick.

“Don’t understand Maya,” smiled Johnny, “but as far as I can tell, she is
Pocahontas and I’m John Smith. She is pleading for my life before the
great chief. If I’m not mistaken there’s a strong family resemblance.
She’s his daughter.”

“Pleading for your life?” exclaimed Jean.

“My life and yours perhaps,” Johnny smiled. “These Mayas have a way of
sacrificing folks to their gods. Also I’ve heard that white people are
not at all welcome.

“Roderick,” he said suddenly, “what sort of god would you prefer to be
sacrificed to—a black one, a green one or one of pure gold?”

Roderick shuddered, but did not reply.

“Surely you are romancing!” exclaimed Jean.

“Indeed I’m not. Never was more in earnest in my life. Men have
disappeared into the jungle. Many have never come back. Do you think all
have perished of hunger and fever? Not much. I read it all in a book.
Besides, Hardgrave has told me.”

It was the girl’s turn to shudder.

“I’ll put the question more picturesquely,” Johnny said, turning to Jean.
“Would you prefer to be sacrificed to the god of the rising sun, the
noon-day sun, or the setting sun?”

“The rising sun,” she answered quickly. “The morning is so full of
promise. Surely that would be the god to choose if there really were such
gods, and one were to be sacrificed.”

All this talk came to a sudden end as the chief, stepping forward, took
first the hand of the white girl, then that of her companion. After that,
nodding to Roderick and the Mayas, he led them into his house.

There, seated on mats, with a cool breeze floating in from open windows,
they were soon being served to a refreshing drink and to food that was
familiar, but that seemed passing strange in these weird surroundings.

“Hot tamales!” Johnny exclaimed as a great mahogany tray of tamales was
set before them.

“Mm-m!” murmured Jean as she tasted hers. “Wild turkey tamale. How
delicious!”

“They should understand the making of them,” said Johnny as he took a
generous mouthful. “Unless I am mistaken the Mayas invented them. They
probably served them on plates of gold before Columbus discovered
America; yes, or even Solomon found his mines.”

“How—how picturesque! How romantic!” murmured the girl.

Johnny agreed with her, but in his mind many questions were constantly
bobbing up demanding an answer.

That night as he lay alone on a comfortable bed of mats with a heavy home
woven blanket for protection from the night chill of this higher
altitude, he thought of many things.

As he heard the steady pat-pat of a sentry’s feet as he paced before the
door of that long, low house, he realized that they were virtually
prisoners. They were being treated very well, and would be in the future,
he hoped. But would the Mayas allow them to return home? He doubted it.
The trails to this hidden city of the wild Mayas—it was truly a city and
already Johnny had seen thousands of the little brown people—were secret
trails. How Roderick had come to stumble upon the trail they had
followed, he could not tell. Well enough the native chief knew that to
allow these uninvited guests to depart was to throw away the key to his
castle and city.

What, then, would happen? Would they be detained there indefinitely, be
given the privilege of becoming members of the tribe, of learning the
secrets of their ceremonies and initiated into hidden mysteries?

“And in the end perhaps marry the princess,” Johnny chuckled. “Grand
little old fairy story, this.”

Strangely enough, at this moment he felt the call of the red lure as
never before. As he closed his eyes he could see great trees come
crashing down, see little tractors dragging massive logs through the
bush, see those logs splash into the water to form a raft to at last go
drifting silently down the river. This was to have been his great
venture. He was to have tapped a primeval forest of priceless wood. That
wood was to have been brought to enrich the world. The richest lady of
the land might not disdain to have her boudoir furnished with rich
appointments made from this wood. A king or president might be proud to
lay his most important documents upon its shiny surface. There was to
have come from this success, riches, and a consciousness of fine
achievement.

“And I gave it up for what?” he asked himself soberly. “For adventure,
for the joy of discovery. And for a pal, a golden-haired girl. The girl;
I owe all to her. She gave me back life when it was all but gone. But I
was not the only one who chose. She chose as well. Together we chose
adventure, discovery. The lure of the unknown beckoned and we came. If we
escape will we win renown? Will they say we have added a chapter to the
world’s golden store of knowledge? Hardly. We are not great scholars. We
cannot bring back a detailed report; don’t know how. We can only say, ‘we
have been, we have seen,’ and that is all. And yet, what adventure, what
lure of discovery!”

With that he fell asleep.




                              CHAPTER XVI
                            PANT SETS A TRAP


The evening following his trip down the river to Daego’s stationary
engine, during the twilight hour Pant might have been found in the
largest bunk house of the camp. A tropical wilderness seemed a queer
place for one to be teaching bayonet practice, yet that was exactly what
he was doing. He had learned these tactics in a summer military camp.
Now, with five-foot mahogany clubs in lieu of guns and bayonets, his
Caribs were being taught to stab and fend, to dodge and swing, and to
perform all those tricks that saved many a Yankee boy at Chateau Thierry
and Belleau Wood.

Why was he doing this? Had you asked him why, he would perhaps have told
you that Johnny had asked him to do it before he went away. Johnny would
be coming back. He would expect to have it done. Besides, the big battle
was coming some of these days, the fight to a finish with Daego’s men. It
was well to be prepared in every way for that fight. Daego’s band still
outnumbered them. He might get further reinforcements.

“If only we could reduce their number somehow,” the boy sighed as,
stepping from the bunk room into the gathering darkness, he left his men
to finish their practice alone.

“We may do it, too,” he chuckled, throwing a glance toward the little
shack which had been Johnny’s office, and from which at this moment there
came strange noises and a mysterious glow of light.

Hardgrave’s laboratory, however, was not Pant’s destination. He was going
much farther that night.

Recent reports of fresh ravages committed by the man-eating jaguar had
thrown his men into a panic. One man had left camp. Others were
threatening to do so. Something must be done about it, and that at once.

Lowering a mysterious burden into the bottom of the dugout, and leaning a
heavy rifle across it, Pant paddled away down the creek.

Having located the end of the rough trail which Johnny had cut to the
foot of the bread-nut tree, he bent down and began creeping cat-like
through the brush. Half way to the tree he stumbled and all but fell.
Like a flash he was on his feet and three yards from the spot. Something
moving beneath his feet had caused him to stumble. His breath came quick.
Had he stepped on one of those great, poisonous snakes that infest the
tropical jungle? He would hazard a flash of his pocket light.

For a second an oblong circle of light appeared on the back trail, then
the boy laughed a low laugh. An armadillo, one of those strange,
harmless, turtle-like creatures, had lain asleep in the trail. It was
this he had stepped on, and not a snake.

Greatly relieved, he resumed his stealthy journey down the trail. Some
forty feet from the bread-nut tree he paused to peer about him in the
darkness. Having found one of those low palms whose leaves, three or four
feet across, are quite solid save for their ragged edges, he began
silently slashing off leaves until he had quite a pile. Some of these he
spread three or four deep on the damp earth. Then, lying flat down, he
drew others over him until he was almost covered.

“Wouldn’t want an elephant to come down this trail,” he chuckled to
himself.

A few moments later there sounded from that mass of green palm leaves
such a long-drawn-out whistle as the little deer of these forests uses to
call his mate.

Pant was not hunting deer, but jaguars. In fact, he was hunting one
jaguar, the killer. Once in the jungles of India he had used an
exceedingly powerful red light to frighten a tiger. Now, with the aid of
dry batteries from the power boat, he had arranged a bright red light. He
hoped with his deer call to entice the killer to enter the trail, then to
hold him at bay with the red light until he had a fair shot at him.

It was, he knew right well, a hazardous undertaking. Jaguars might not
fear a red light. Who could tell about that? The killer might scent him
and, turning hunter, leap upon him from the low boughs of the black
tamarind trees that grew near. This he must risk. Pant had an interest in
Johnny’s quest for the red lure. He had an interest in the Caribs. He had
a still wider interest in all humanity. If all reports were true, if this
great cat with the mark above his eye had done the killing he was
credited with, he should be killed. Pant felt it his duty to attempt this
hard and dangerous task.

So his whistle sounded on through the night. Now there was a movement off
to the left. At once Pant was all attention. At last he discovered that
this noise was caused by a large lizard hunting among decaying vegetation
for bugs.

Again the whistle. Again a movement, this time among the branches of a
tamarind tree. Pant’s heart beat loudly. Was the great cat above him? Was
he at this moment preparing for a spring? Could the cat know that under
those palm leaves was a tempting supper?

But no, Pant caught the flap-flap of wings. “An owl or a parrot,” he
breathed in disgust.

But what was this? Before him in the path there had come a sudden thump.
Ah, this was it, the very thing he had hoped for. The jaguar, in answer
to his call, had leaped to the ground in the very center of the trail.

Now was the time to act. With trembling fingers he adjusted his light,
drew his rifle into position, then threw on the catch.

At once a glare of red light, streaming down the trail, brought out every
leaf and twig with startling clearness.

Imagine the boy’s surprise at seeing not a crouching jaguar with fiery
eyes gleaming, but a small, timid, short-horned deer, who blinked blindly
at the light.

“Huh!” Pant breathed. “Call worked too well.”

But wait; what was this? There came a movement from farther down the
trail. Pant looked. One look froze him cold. Behind the deer, tail
lashing madly, ready for a spring, was the killer.

As Pant saw, the deer saw, too. For ten seconds the frightened creature
hesitated. Beside him, to right and left, was impenetrable bush; behind
him a jaguar, his mortal enemy; before him the great unknown, the glare
of red light. Ten seconds, and then with a bound he was away; dashing
straight at the red light. And after him, in great swinging leaps, came
the terrible cat.

There are times when the drama of life moves so rapidly that we can do
little more than get out of the way and let things pass. When Pant saw
the jaguar and the deer there was not even time for that. The best he
could do was to flatten himself against his couch of leaves.

On they came. The deer decided to brave the terrifying light. On came the
deer and on came the jaguar. Pant dared not breathe. Now they were upon
him. Then came the cutting dig of hoofs in the boy’s back, followed by a
whirl of air.

What of the killer? Was that breath of air the sign of his passing? Had
he cleared the green heap that was Pant, at a leap? Pant could not tell.
For a long time he dared not move. Even after he had caught a distant
splash which told that the deer had taken to the water, he did not move
at once.

At last, cautiously snapping off his light and gripping his rifle, he
sprang to his feet.

He listened intently. There was no sound. He tried to pierce the darkness
but could see nothing.

At last, after throwing his lighting apparatus over his shoulder and
adjusting his rifle for a quick shot, he made his way back over the trail
to the boat. Even here nothing moved. What had happened? Had the killer
followed the deer into the river? Had he given up the trail to go
prowling back into the forest? One thing was certain; the hunt was ended
for that night. Pant’s nerves were too unsteady to give the red flash a
second trial. Besides, he was not at all sure it would work; in fact, he
felt reasonably certain it wouldn’t.

“I’ll get you yet,” he said stoutly with the shake of a clenched fist in
the general direction of the jungle. With that he took to his dugout and
paddled home.




                              CHAPTER XVII
                       THE SPANISH GIRL REAPPEARS


For three nights Pant had not visited Daego’s camp. Nor had he in all
this time seen Johnny’s ghost walking out upon the air. That it had
walked, he felt quite sure. The night before, a large dugout, loaded with
the half-caste’s men, had been seen to go slipping down the river.

“Just go gliding about up there in my dugout,” Pant told himself an hour
after darkness set in.

He pushed his boat some distance up the river, then, lying flat down in
it, allowed it to drift downstream.

“Might see that ghost again to-night,” he said, chuckling.

In this position it was impossible for him to see perils ahead. A
slanting snag caught his drifting boat and set it tilting. Before he
could realize what was happening he found himself struggling in the black
waters.

Striking out with both hands, he made a grab for the overturned boat. To
his dismay he heard it give forth a sucking sound, then saw it sink, prow
first, in ten feet of water.

“Darn!” he muttered. “Old dugout. Waterlogged. What now?”

There was only one answer to this: shore as quickly as possible. What if
it were the enemy’s shore? There were alligators in these waters, great
scaly creatures ten feet long. He had heard one barking not three rods
from him but a moment before.

“Here for the night,” he groaned, as he reached a leaning tree trunk and
climbed upon it.

This seemed true enough. The tree grew at the edge of a marsh. There were
alligators in the marsh. To travel that marsh in the dark was to court
death.

Imagine his relief when, just as he had resigned himself to this hard
fate, he saw the dark form of a canoe drift into the shadows.

So surprised and overjoyed was he that, casting caution to the winds, he
hailed the solitary boatman.

To his surprise, the answer that came back was in the high-pitched notes
of a girl.

“Who—who are you?” came in the same girlish voice as the canoe halted,
twice its length from the tree.

“Pant—Panther Eye,” replied the boy, not knowing what else to say.

“Oh!”

To the boy’s immense surprise, there was something in the girl’s tone
that told plainer than words that to her his name was not strange. More
surprising still was the manner in which, at sound of this name, she
threw all reserve aside and paddled quickly to the tree and invited him
to drop into the stern.

Once he was aboard, she sent her boat shooting away across the river.
Ignoring the entrance to the river trail, she drove on down the river and
entered the creek, at last bringing her canoe up with a bump at the
entrance of the creek trail.

Pant remembered Johnny’s story of the strange Spanish girl who had
visited their camp. Something seemed to tell him that this was the same
girl. He did not have long to wait.

During all their journey the girl had remained silent. Now she spoke:

“I was here before.”

“I—I thought so,” said Pant. “Why?”

“I wanted to speak to you, or your friend. You had been deserted by your
crew. We knew why. We—we might have helped you.”

“Who are ‘we’?”

“Father and I. What brought you up to the Rio Hondo?” the girl asked
quickly.

“The red lure.”

“The red——”

“Mahogany.”

“And is that all?” There was a searching note in her words.

“Quite all. Believe me, it is quite enough. Perhaps you’ve never felt the
charm of it. Precious, priceless, perfect wood—mahogany, the red lure.
That’s Johnny’s name for it.”

“I know,” said the girl, “I, too, have felt it. I told father that was
all. He was not sure. My friend,” the girl’s voice dropped to a whisper,
“I have helped you a little to-night.”

“A lot.”

“A little. You may be able to help us a great deal, father and me. We’re
in trouble, not our trouble, but our country’s trouble.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you,” she hesitated, “but I guess it’s right I
should. My father is deputy for this territory. It is his duty to see
that the laws are obeyed. Someone is breaking our laws and we cannot
catch them. Not little things that do not matter much, but big things
that mean certain death to many.” She paused for a moment. To their ears
came the silent rush of water. There is something dreadfully solemn about
the rush of black waters through the dark.

“These laws-breakers,” the girl continued, “are smuggling two things to
our people—rifles and rum. You know what that means in Mexico. Rifles and
rum mean revolution; cruel, senseless revolution! The Governor of the
state of Quintanaroo is a good, kind man. Revolution could never bring a
better government. But the people are simple-minded. Rum maddens their
hearts. Rifles make them want to fight. Someone is selling them both at a
great price, and we cannot catch them. One man is suspected, and that one
is——”

“Daego?”

“Daego. But we can prove nothing. Every motor boat is searched, but each
one brings only food, clothing and tools for his camp.”

All at once, as Pant sat there listening to this girl, so earnest, yet so
young, so eager to help her people, he realized that a Divine will,
higher than his own, had sent him here and that his greatest mission, a
moral mission, was just before him.

“I—I think I can help you,” he whispered. “I know I can.”

Before his mind’s eye a black shadow crept up the river and in his memory
there echoed still the pop-pop of that stationary engine away in the
bush.

“Give me a day, two days,” he said. “Come back here day after to-morrow,
two hours after dark.”

“All right, my friend, and may God prosper you! We are your friends.
Good-bye!”

Pant stepped upon the shore and the canoe shot silently away in the
night.

“We are your friends.” How sweet were those words spoken to a lonely boy
in the heart of a wilderness!




                             CHAPTER XVIII
                         PANT SPRINGS THE TRAP


Pant’s conference with the girl at the creek landing on the appointed
night was short and to the point. The girl’s father was to station a
company of his men in a cluster of cocoanut palms at a certain point on
the river’s brink an hour after dark on the following night.

“Daego’s pit-pans may not come that night,” said Pant. “We have no means
of telling. But we will watch, one night, two, three if necessary.”

“Yes, a month,” said the girl.

“And your father’s men will be there?”

“Yes.”

“Depend upon it, the trap will be set.”

“Thank you, so much. And my father thanks you. The best and truest of our
people thank you.”

Once more the girl vanished into the night.

Next evening, just after nightfall, three strange dories might have been
seen stealing from the mouth of the creek. Behind them, wriggling and
twisting with the ripple and flow of the water, came a serpent-like
affair hundreds of feet in length. The dories came from the Carib sail
boats. They were strongly manned by Carib crews.

Leaving the creek, they moved slowly up the river. When they had reached
a point a mile above the mouth of the creek, they turned their prows
toward shore. Once there, they tied the long trailer to a Yamra tree.

This accomplished, they paddled rapidly back to the spot where the other
end of the trailer was bumping the shore. Having attached this end
solidly to a group of overhanging trees, they returned again to the other
end. After unfastening this end, aided by the current and their own
sturdy rowing, they brought this end to the opposite bank. There they
anchored it.

“The trap is set.” Pant said this with a sigh of relief. “The night is
ideal. No moon. Clouds drifting over the stars. It will be very dark. If
they come, their very fear of light will be their undoing.” At that he
ordered his men to row him back to the other shore. There for some time
he busied himself with the fastenings of that end of the “trap.”

“There!” he breathed. “A single stroke of the axe, and it is done.”

“They will come very late at night if they come at all,” he told his men.
“Time for another thing. Doesn’t really matter whether I’m here or not.
The trap will spring.”

He was eager to be away after the big cat whose tracks, freshly made the
night before, had been seen in the mud of a small stream that crossed the
trail to the river. At realization that he was so near, the Caribs had
been thrown into panic. Some of them had been for manning their crafts
and drifting down stream at once. But upon receiving Pant’s promise that
within forty-eight hours the skin of the killer should be drying against
the wall of the cook shack, they had gone back to work.

It was a rash promise, but Pant resolved that he would make good. So this
night, armed only with his rifle and a common flashlight, he made his way
over the river trail to a place of hiding he had prepared.

He had covered half the distance, when on pausing to listen, he caught
the faint sound of footsteps on the moss covered trail.

His heart skipped a beat. Someone was following! Who could it be? Was it
a curious Carib? Hardly. They were too much afraid of the killer. Was it
an enemy from across the river? Such a thing was possible.

Stepping noiselessly to one side, Pant waited. Straight on came the one
who followed.

“Sounds like two,” Pant said to himself.

“Sounds——” he hesitated a moment. “It don’t sound like—it sounds—yes, it
is! It’s old Rip himself!”

And so it was. Rip, the burro, once a bag of bones, now well fed on
bread-nut hay, sleek and fat, had chosen to follow his young master on
his hunt for a killer.

“Now, why did you follow?” Pant said with a chuckle. “What am I to do
with you? If I tie you up here the killer may get you. I can’t spare time
to take you back. I know what I’ll do; I’ll take you along. We’ll fight
it out together with the big cat.”

For this resolve Pant will always have cause to be grateful; and yet, in
a way, the affair was to end rather sadly.

With the burro standing patiently beside him, he had remained in hiding
for a full half hour when, without warning, there had appeared in the
trail not five yards before him the very creature he had come to seek.
There stood the killer!

So sudden was his appearance that Pant had little time to prepare for the
attack. He had only seized his rifle and had no time to aim and fire,
when, with a scream that was blood-curdling, the big cat launched himself
through the air.

Expecting nothing so much as to be torn to bits by the claws and fangs of
the beast, the boy dropped his rifle and threw himself back into the
bushes. As he did this, unconsciously his right hand reached for his
machete and drew it from its scabbard.

Surprise followed. The death dealing compact of the flying cat did not
come. For an instant Pant’s senses reeled. Then, like a flash, it came to
him. The tiger had launched himself against the burro. Feeling the
machete in his grasp, without reasoning as to the outcome, Pant sprang to
battle.

It was well that he did. A strange thing had occurred. As the tiger
sprang, the burro had reared upon his hind feet. In this way he had
struck the great cat squarely in the head with his sharp hoofs. The blow
had been a stunning one and as Pant entered the battle he found the
jaguar just returning to consciousness. This task he never quite
completed, for Pant’s machete, coming down with savage force, all but
severed his head from his body.

“That settles you,” he muttered. “I’ve kept my promise.”

Then, overcome by nervous exhaustion, he settled down upon the damp
earth.

As strength slowly returned he thought of his companion, the burro.

Creeping over to where he lay, he put a hand upon him. Then he lifted the
animal’s head, to allow it to drop limply back.

“Neck broken,” he sighed. “Poor old fellow! You could save my life, but
in that fleeting second you could not save your own.”

Rising, he gathered green leaves and covered the faithful creature’s
body. Then, seizing the jaguar by its hind legs, he prepared to drag it
to camp.

“Show ’em!” he muttered. “Guess this will satisfy ’em!”

Since the spot on the bank at which he had set his strange river trap was
not far away, he dragged his burden in that direction.

Arrived at the spot, he turned the carcass of the “killer” over to one of
his Caribs. Having told him to drag it into camp, he sat down beneath a
cocoanut tree that hung over the river.

“Wait here and see what happens,” he said.

There is no time so still as night on a tropical river. Shut off by dense
virgin forests from every breath of air, damp, oppressive tropical heat
seems to place a blanket of silence over all. The great river, with its
sweep of waters, is as silent as the stars in the heavens. The whole
universe appears to sleep.

Pant felt all this as he sat there listening and watching by the river.
This was an eventful night. Would they come? Would the trap serve the
purpose for which it was intended? So he questioned as the silence hung
over all.

Now that vast silence was broken by the bark of an alligator. Did that
mean that they were coming?

Of a sudden, as he waited, there rose out of the silence a strange sound.
Pant was all action at once.

With a look of mingled joy, determination and anxiety on his face, Pant
seized his axe and lifting it high, severed at one blow the rope which
held that end of the long trailer that now spanned the river. Instantly,
caught by the current, the whole long streak of brown swung toward
midstream. Even as it did so, between it and the other shore there
appeared a long black shadow.

“They come! It will work!” whispered Pant, dropping on his knees to
watch.




                              CHAPTER XIX
                        CAPTURING A BLACK SHADOW


The black shadow which Pant had seen making its way up the river under
cover of night, was a pit-pan, electrically driven. In his conclusions
regarding this he had not been mistaken.

The thing which Pant had launched against the black shadow was a log
boom. It was in this very boom that he hoped later to carry his 50,000
feet of mahogany down the river to the sea. Now he had set it to an
unusual task. A log boom consists of a hundred or more logs, ten inches
in diameter and twelve to twenty feet long, joined at the ends by steel
chains until the whole affair is several hundred feet in length.

So dark was the night that the crew of the pit-pan did not see the
approaching string of logs until it was right upon them.

Of the five men on board, two, by the sudden compact, were thrown into
the river. It was with the utmost difficulty that the remaining three
were able to prevent their unwieldy craft from capsizing. In the end it
swung about until it lay full length against the log boom which, tugged
at by the current, was rapidly swinging toward the Mexican shore, where
waited ten officers of the law.

After giving way to wild burst of anger, the men began tumbling chests of
goods into the river.

Before this task was half completed, they were interrupted by the
occupants of a dugout, who, swinging alongside, commanded them in the
name of the law to desist.

Pant was now sure that he had not been mistaken in the mission of the
black shadow.

“If they were on some lawful business why should they pitch their goods
into the river?” he asked himself.

“Yes, we have them now. We are giving Daego some of the trouble he so
richly deserves. This night’s work will do much for Quintanaroo. But what
won’t Daego do to us!” he said, wrinkling his brow as he pushed his dory
from its place of hiding. “He knows well enough whose log boom that is.
There is not another on the river save his own.”

For some time as he drove his dory across the stream toward the spot
where his boom was fastened, the boy reflected upon the cost of doing the
right thing, the thing that in the end would result in the most good to
the greatest number. Surely one does not engage in the battle for right
without placing himself in a place of great peril.

“Ah, well!” he exclaimed, strong-hearted at last, “as someone has said,
one may trust God for the outcome. The only question we need to ask,
moment by moment, is: ‘This thing I do, is it right?’”

Arrived at the end of the boom, he cut it away and allowed it to drift
toward the mouth of the creek where his Caribs awaited it.

At the camp he found great excitement. The same words were on every lip:
“The killer has been taken! Pant is a great hunter. He has killed the
man-eater with a machete! Surely there was never such a boy before!”

As for Pant, he divided his time between good-naturedly disclaiming any
bravery or skill on his part, and mourning for his burro.

An hour passed. The Caribs settled down for the night. Then Pant and his
Carib captain sat beneath their mosquito bar netting, with a candle
between them, talking low and earnestly.

“The killer is dead,” said Pant.

“He is.”

“Open warfare has been declared.”

“It has.”

“Will there be a fight?”

“There will.”

“When?”

The Carib shrugged his shoulders. “Who can tell?”

“From now on,” said Pant slowly, “our men will be divided into two
companies; those who work and those who watch, ready to fight.”

“That will be wise,” said the Carib.

At that they blew out the candle and went to sleep.

Next evening the Spanish girl’s dugout was again bumping the shore at the
mouth of the creek trail. Her father was with her this time. Pant showed
them down the trail to a palm-thatched cabin. There, seated around a
table of roughly hewn mahogany slabs, they talked of the previous night’s
doings.

The deputy, a short, solid looking man, with small, twinkling eyes,
assured Pant that he was profoundly grateful for the part he had played
in the affair.

“They were Daego’s men,” he went on. “When we had fished the two who went
overboard out of the water, we identified them, every one.

“That is not all,” he smiled. “Someone was careless. On a case of
ammunition we found the shipping tag assigning it to Daego. So, the case
is quite complete.”

“Has Daego been arrested?” asked Pant.

“No. Truth is, no one seems to know where he is gone.”

“But he will be arrested?”

“Probably not,” the deputy spoke slowly.

“What! Not arrested!”

“He is a British subject. The relations between Mexico and Honduras have
not always been the best. It would be a hazard. To arrest and try him
would be a danger.”

For a moment Pant felt like repenting the action he had thought of as
being done for the good of all. To risk one’s happiness, perhaps one’s
very life, and then to have nothing come of it, that was bitterness
indeed.

The deputy, having read the look on Pant’s face, was speaking again: “Do
not worry; your work was not in vain. He shall be punished. And for one
so greedy as he, his punishment will be severe indeed. His concessions
shall be taken from him. Within thirty days he must remove his wagons,
his tractors, his chicle kettles, everything that belongs to him. His
mahogany, which is at the river’s bank, will be held in bond by the
Government.”

Pant’s chair, which had been tilted back, came down with a thump.
Concessions revoked! He had not thought of that. Those concessions were
so vast in extent that his mind could scarcely take them in. Someone had
told him that Daego had made a quarter of a million dollars the previous
year on chicle.

“And that is the price he pays for his paltry gains from illicit traffic.
Surely one pays heavily for the steps that make him a law-breaker.”

“My friend,” said the deputy, “you are alone here with this boy, Johnny
Thompson, and your Caribs?”

“Yes, sir. Johnny’s been away for some time. But, trust me, he’ll be
back! He always comes back.”

“Have you much money?”

“Very little.” Pant wondered what the deputy was driving at now. “But we
represent a man who is rich,” he added as an afterthought.

“Ah!” the man breathed. “And he is interested, perhaps, in industrial
development?”

“He wishes to develop his mahogany interests here. We came here to prove
it can be done.”

“You are right. It can be done,” the other said decidedly. “Much more can
be done than that. His tract, though very fine,—the very best,—is small.
Across the river, far up as you can go, we are rich in forests, mahogany
that has scarcely been touched; sapodillas that will yield a million, two
million pounds of chicle a year. With chicle at fifty cents a pound at
the dock, that should yield a profit.

“Our province needs developing. Our people need the work and the pay that
it brings. We have not the capital. We have the forests.

“In a word,”—the man leaned forward, his eyes sparkling eagerly, “in a
word, if you two boys can find us a man with money who is as honest as
you, and who has at heart the good of all people, as you have, it will be
possible for him to secure in Quintanaroo concessions which in time will
bring him as much gold as Cortez hoped to win when he invaded Mexico. The
question is: have you the man?”

For a moment Pant sat there silent, like one in a trance. So sudden was
this proposal, so vast the possibilities, that his mind refused to grasp
it.

“I—I think we can find the man,” he stammered at last. “You—you will give
us time?”

“If only Johnny were here!” he said to himself.

“How much time?”

“Sixty days.”

“Ninety, if you need it. Quintanaroo can wait long; any land can afford
to wait a long time for an honest man.

“And now,” he said, rising, “I think we must go.”

He shook hands solemnly with the boy. His daughter gave Pant a friendly
smile. Then they were away over the trail to their boat.

Two hours later Pant might have been found still sitting before his rough
slab table, and still he appeared to be in a trance.

He was fighting, fighting an impulse to run away, to dash down the river
in his motor boat and away to the Belize radio to flash the tremendous
news to a man who had financed their little enterprise up Rio Hondo.

Then, into his mind there came a picture in an old book of fables; a
picture of a dog standing on a bridge over a river. In his mouth was a
piece of meat. In the river was a reflection of the meat much larger than
the meat itself.

“The dog dropped the meat to snap at its reflection, and lost all,” Pant
mused. “I hope these concessions are not mere reflections of possible
wealth; but I know that our fifty thousand feet of red mahogany logs are
not. To-morrow we must get out another five thousand feet.”

Even at that, while he made his way to his bunk, his heart all but failed
him. He dreaded the fight he was sure would come, the fight to a finish
with Daego’s men.

“If only Johnny were here!” he again repeated. “Where can he be? That
black man over in Daego’s camp said Daego had driven him into the jungle.
Surely no jungle can hold Johnny Thompson!”

Of this last he could not be sure. A Central American jungle is an
awesome and terrible place.

“If he were here,” he went on, “I could tell him the good news of Daego’s
undoing and of those wonderful concessions that are all but within our
grasp.

“And if only he could lead in the fight that’s sure to come! Daego will
fight. It will be a battle to the bitter end. Some have gone down the
river, but there are plenty still.

“Oh, well!” he sighed at last. “Johnny may not be here, but his ghost is.
He’ll throw terror into the hearts of those blacks yet.”

That night the ghost of the air did strange things; very strange indeed.




                               CHAPTER XX
                          CENTURY OLD CAVERNS


Johnny was still in the land of the lost Mayas. The city he and Jean had
discovered was not the city of Jean’s dreams, the golden metropolis of
long ago, yet there were signs of past glory all about them. Massive
ruins that had once been a pyramid, elaborately carved shafts reaching
toward the sky, great squares and slabs of stone, all told of the glory
that had departed.

“Think what it must have been!” said Jean as, on their third day among
the Mayas, she sat high upon a carved rock and allowed her eyes to roam
over the ruins of what must have been a majestic temple. “Just think what
it was! Such a labyrinth of corridors! Such chambers! Such secret
recesses. One might have been lost among them for hours!”

There was a rocky wall running along one side of the city. This merely
suggested a prison. But for all that, it might as well have been a prison
wall. They were prisoners. They had learned this on the second day. With
the vision of the red lure burning brightly in his eyes, Johnny had
proposed that they find the way over which they had come, and try
following it back. They had experienced little difficulty in finding the
trail, but once they came to the spot where it entered the jungle, they
had found it completely blocked by grim little brown men. These offered
no violence, but neither would they move aside and allow them to pass.
They blocked the way and shook their heads.

“Orders of the Chief,” Roderick had said. “I expected that.”

So their first attempt at escape had failed.

Prisoners though they were, they had been given the range of the city and
the surrounding open spaces where corn waved in the bright sun, where
banana plants reared themselves to the sky and cocoanut palms waved long
plumes in air.

No guests could have been treated more royally. The best of food, wild
turkey, deer, armadillo, the best of meats, the finest of corn cakes, the
most delicious of fruits were served to them. At night they lay upon beds
that rivaled the couches of kings. For all this, they were made to know
that they were not to leave the land of the Mayas.

“Not ever?” said Jean with a wrinkled brow.

“Perhaps never,” Johnny said solemnly.

“Johnny, we were mad.”

“You are right. We were quite out of our heads when we came here. But
what’s the fun of living if you can’t have some adventure?”

“Yes, there is joy in it!” exclaimed the girl, springing down from her
perch on the carved rock. “And to-day, since we can’t leave, we will
discover something wonderful in the midst of these ruins.”

They did. Something came of it, too, I assure you.

It was in the midst of an all but impenetrable growth of palms and vines
which, spreading over a crumbling heap of ruins seemed to wish to hide a
secret, that they made the discovery, and having made it, entered upon
one of the strangest and weirdest adventures any of them had ever known.

As they crawled on hands and knees, here forcing their way between the
spreading leaves of a nut palm, there tearing away a wild fig vine, they
came at last upon an opening. Before this opening sagged an old, decayed
door. There was scarcely room to crawl between the heaps of rocks that
blocked the way, but once one was inside he found that he had entered a
damp, dark hallway that, extending far as his electric torch would reach,
suggested mystery and romance.

Johnny was the first to enter. Jean and Roderick followed. There was a
moment of hushed silence as they stood there breathing silently as if
listening for voices that had long been stilled forever.

“I’ll wager the place hasn’t been visited except by bats since the year
one,” said Johnny.

As if to prove that at least part of his prophecy was true, there came a
whirring of wings and one of those great vampire bats, terror to all
living things in Central America, flew by so close that the current of
damp air stirred by his flight lifted their hair.

“The secret corridor,” Johnny said. There was a solemn note of mystery in
his voice. “To what chambers of treasure does it lead? We may yet be the
richest Mayas in all this little hidden kingdom.”

“Yes, and I’d take a broken sixpence for my share, could I but return to
my father’s camp,” said Roderick, disconsolately.

However downcast her brother might be, Jean was still game. “Come on!”
she exclaimed. “We will find the god of the rising sun, the god of the
noonday sun and all the other gods with the gold and jewels that enrich
their chambers. We’ll find the chamber of the ancient princess. What
shall we not find. Come on. C’mon! C’mon!” Seizing her brother by the
arm, she fairly dragged him down the corridor which, to those who came
from the hot dryness of tropical day, seemed to possess the chill
dampness of perpetual night.

On tip-toe, lest perchance they might waken the spirits of other
centuries, they began their march down the wide corridor. Only the
diffident snap-snap of great bats disturbed the silence of the place.
Walking in deep, age-old dust, they made no sound. So, awed into silence,
gripping one another by the arm, they marched on until, having covered
some two hundred feet, they came to a sudden halt before what appeared to
be a solid stone wall. Certainly it was stone, and it looked as solid as
the Rock of Gibraltar.

“Well!” Jean exclaimed.

“The end,” muttered Johnny.

“Now,” said Roderick in a relieved tone, “I hope we may go back to the
sunlight. I don’t like these beastly vampire bats. I’ve been told they
can kill an ox by sucking his blood. They’ve been known to drive the
entire population of a village from their homes. What would you do if one
of the bally rascals made a grab at your throat?”

“Take him by the ear and give a good sound scolding,” said Johnny.

“Hold on a bit,” he said as Roderick started back, “let’s have a look.”

He began flashing his torch from floor to ceiling, from corner to corner
of the dungeon-like place.

“Not an opening,” he sighed. “Not a suggestion of an—wait! How does it
happen that this stone at the end is fully a yard square, while all the
rest of the wall is made up of small rocks?”

Taking a heavy cane which Roderick had insisted upon bringing into the
place, he struck the broad stone a resounding blow. At once the place was
alive with echoes and whirring wings.

“Sounds hollow,” he muttered.

He pressed the end of the stick against the top of the stone and gave it
a shove. To their surprise the stone, which to all appearances was a
door, dropped slowly and noiselessly downward until it formed a sort of
threshold over which they who dared might walk.

“Oh! Ah!” Jean murmured.

As if expecting a million vampires to spring at him from the dark,
Roderick started back.

As soon as she could recover from her surprise Jean set one small foot on
the stone threshold.

“No,” said Johnny, placing a restraining hand upon her shoulder, “let me
go in and look about a little. Not that I wish to be first, but it
might—might not be quite—quite safe. You are a girl. In a way, I’m your
protector.”

“I—I understand,” said the girl as she favored him with a smile that was
altogether new to him.

In spite of all his efforts at self-control, Johnny’s knees trembled a
little as he stepped upon the rock. It was strange to be moving forward
alone into a subterranean chamber which, to all appearances, had not been
visited for centuries. What would he discover there? Was this the secret
hiding place of princes, a temple of worship or a dungeon prison? What
would he discover there; rare old furniture, moulding to decay; gold,
jewels, or only skeletons?

“Probably nothing,” he told himself as he moved forward.

After he had taken three steps he halted for a second. There was
something strange about the rock upon which he stood. It appeared to have
a greenish cast, but being eager to discover the contents of the chamber,
he pressed on without investigating further.

The electric torch which he carried had an adjustment which enabled one
to throw about him a dim light or a bright one. At the present time it
shone but dimly. As he attempted to flash it to full brilliancy the catch
stuck and the lamp continued to shine but dimly.

Still impatient, he pressed forward down this more deeply mysterious
corridor, which appeared somewhat broader and shorter, almost to its end
before he discovered anything of interest. Then of a sudden he found
himself all but upon some object which, sending forth a dull yellow
lustre, appeared to hang in air. Most mysterious of all, from the center
of this there came a tiny but peculiarly brilliant light.

“It can’t be,” he told himself, starting back. “A light burning through
all these centuries! That would be to discover the origin of light
itself. That—”

He broke short off. His hand trembled so he could scarcely hold the
torch; his knees shook violently. The room had suddenly blazed forth with
an intense green light. At the same time there came to his startled ears
a piercing scream.




                              CHAPTER XXI
                                TRAPPED


The thing that had happened to Johnny Thompson was absurdly simple; at
least part of it was. Unconsciously, as he moved forward in the dimly
lighted room, he had continued to fumble with the catch of his
flashlight. Suddenly, as he stood before the mysterious thing of yellow
glow and a tiny light, his torch had flashed on in all its strength.

So much was very simple. The explanation of the green glow was simple,
too, once he read the secret of it. But who had screamed, and why? That
was not so easy to answer.

The reason for the peculiar green glow was to be found in the composition
of the walls and ceiling of the room. They were of a peculiar green which
had great reflective power.

“Jade!” Johnny exclaimed after his first surprise was over. “Solid green
jade. At least the walls are set with jade.”

Who had screamed? This was the problem which concerned him most. To his
utter astonishment, as he flashed the light about he failed to at once
discover the entrance through which he had come.

“Turned around a bit,” he told himself as coolly as he could. “Take a
point and circle about until I am looking at that point again. In that
way I’ll see all the walls.”

In choosing his starting point his eye fell upon the thing of the yellow
glow. He discovered at a glance that this was not suspended in air as he
had thought, nor was there a miniature light burning in it. It was a
statue or an image of a god; a rather hideous god with a hooked nose, a
large stomach and hands on which were fingers like an eagle’s tallons. In
one of these hands rested a stone of some sort that reflected light in a
peculiarly brilliant manner.

“Gold, and perhaps a huge diamond,” Johnny speculated in spite of his
anxiety.

Then he began to make the circle of the walls with his light. First the
wall to the right of him was slowly and carefully surveyed, then the wall
which had been to his back. No opening. His breath came short and quick.
A third side was covered. In his agitation he set the light zig-zagging
up and down. Was he somehow trapped? Who had screamed?

Half the last wall was covered, two-thirds. The suspense seemed
unbearable. Then, with a sudden sigh of relief, he started forward.

Before him was an opening. It did not seem quite the same, but it must be
the one. In his eagerness and anxiety he fairly ran.

Now he was half way across the room, and now at the wall. He was about to
step forward and out to freedom and friends when, to his astonishment,
his foot splashed down into water. It was with the utmost difficulty that
he avoided plunging head foremost into a deep pool that lay just before
him.

Once he had recovered from this shock he cast his light over the pool
only to discover that the back side of the pool, which was some ten feet
across, was solidly walled in, as was the room itself.

Obeying some unknown instinct, he dropped upon his knees and directed his
powerful light straight down into the pool. For a moment he gazed
intently downward, then started back in horror.

The thing he had seen almost made him faint. At the bottom of that pool
he had caught the gleam of gold and the green light of jade ornaments,
and in the midst of these a horrible, grinning human skull.

“This,” he told himself after he had control of himself again, “is a
sacrificial pool. The gold and jade were a sacrifice. When? Who can tell?
And the owner of that head? The door is closed. I am trapped. When will
my time come?”

At that very moment there came, faint and indistinct, but unmistakable,
the notes of a call:

  “Whoo-hoo-hoo,
    Whoo-hoo-hoo,
  Whoo-hoo-hoo.”

As in a dream he recalled the day they had practiced that call, he and
Jean, back there in the jungle.

Alert, straining his ears for the next note, telling himself that when it
came he would locate the singer and thus begin the task of finding a way
out, he waited.

A moment passed; another and yet another. The silence became unbearable.
He stamped his feet to break the awful spell. Then he became conscious of
another sound—a slow tap-tap-tap-tap. Always a second apart, never any
louder, never coming more softly, this mysterious tap-tap-tap in time
became more maddening than the silence. Still at strained attention he
waited for Jean’s call which did not come.

“What can have happened?” he murmured at last. “Can other ears than mine
have heard that call and silenced it, perhaps forever?”

He found himself filled with sudden anger, a raging hate of the Mayas.

“What manner of treatment is this,” he asked himself, “after I saved
their princess from a terrible death?”

This anger lasted but for a moment. He next found his mind filled with
wonderings. In the deep dust of the outer corridor there had been not a
single footprint. How could the living Mayas have set such a trap as this
without leaving traces of their coming and going?

“They couldn’t,” he reasoned. “I have been trapped by that ancient god,
or at least by those who, centuries ago, set him there.”

Again he listened, and again he caught that endless tap-tap-tap.

“Water falling,” he said. “But where?”

He began a careful search of the chambers. He examined every nook and
corner with elaborate care, but aside from the pool, found not so much as
a spot of dampness.

“And yet,” he told himself, “the sound is unmistakable. There is dripping
water somewhere. Must be within the walls.”

Once more he set himself listening for Jean’s call. A quarter of an hour,
a half hour he waited and listened, but it did not come.

“What can have happened?” he muttered at last. Then he thought of the
flashlight. The battery was good for just so long, then would come
complete darkness. When would that be? He could not tell. Shuddering, he
muttered:

“Might better be now.”

With that he threw off the catch. Sudden darkness followed, but the after
image remained. Sitting on the damp floor, staring into the dark, he
seemed still to catch the greenish glow of the walls, the yellow gleam of
the god and the white flash of jewels.

Have you never attempted to fall asleep while from some distant spot
there came with maddening regularity the drip-drip-drip of water? If you
have, then perhaps you can share in a degree at least the feeling of
Johnny Thompson as he sat there alone, a prisoner of other centuries,
listening to that baffling sound within the walls.

Yet, impossible as it may seem, he was able for whole moments to forget
the entire situation. In those moments he saw again his camp on the Rio
Hondo. He talked with Pant and laughed with him at his ridiculous donkey.
He urged his Caribs on to more splendid efforts, saw the piles of
magnificent timber, mahogany, the red lure, piling up, and counted the
days that must pass before they would send these logs plunging in the
river, fill their boom and go drifting silently away.

Yes, there were blessed moments of relief; but always the haunting
darkness, the nerve-racking drip-drip came pressing its way once more
into his consciousness.

                            * * * * * * * *

What was happening during all this time outside the door that had so
mysteriously closed? The scream which Johnny had heard was Jean’s.
Anxious for his safety, she had watched that hole in the wall from the
time he disappeared. The green flash of light which appeared at the
moment when his torch flashed on had alarmed her; but this was nothing to
the thing she saw a moment later. Slowly, silently, as if impelled by a
powerful invisible force, the stone, which for centuries had closed the
opening, was slowly rising. The opening was half closed before she could
recall her scattered senses. Then, without a thought for her own safety,
she sprang for the entrance. It was Roderick who, with cooler judgment,
had pulled her back. Then it was that she gave forth that piercing
scream.

After the scream, white-faced and silent, she had stood watching until
with an almost inaudible thud the massive rock dropped into place.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Roderick said reassuringly. “I’ll push it open as
Johnny did.”

Seizing the heavy walking stick, he pushed it against the door just as
Johnny had done. But, though he heaved away at it with all his might, he
did not move it so much as a fraction of an inch. Nor did the girl’s
slight, but frantic strength, added to his, avail. The door was closed,
closed and sealed for all eternity so far as they could tell.

After many futile efforts they sank weakly down upon a great flat rock,
Roderick to sulk and to remind Jean, as is a brother’s right, that this
whole affair from the time they found Johnny in the hut was a piece of
foolishness. Jean sat in sad silence. This silence did not last.

The picture of that morning in the jungle, the rocks, the wild turkey,
came back to her and she suddenly remembered the call.

“We—we agreed on a call we’d use in case we were lost from one another,”
she said to Roderick. “I—I guess that was meant for now. If he hears it
and locates us by the sound he may find a way to open the door from the
inside.”

Standing to her full height and directing her voice against the unfeeling
walls, she sang their call:

  “Whoo-hoo-hoo,
    Whoo-hoo-hoo,
  Whoo-hoo-hoo.”

The echoes of that call had died away and she was parting her lips for
another when, of a sudden, her brother seized her arm.

“Hist! Listen!” he whispered.

Faint, indistinct, but unmistakable, there came the silent pit-pat of
footsteps on the dust-padded corridor. Jean’s call had brought someone.
But who?




                              CHAPTER XXII
                              MAGIC POWER


In strained silence the brother and sister stood listening, waiting in
the dark. Roderick had snapped off the small pocket light which he
carried.

The sounding footsteps in the distance became hesitant, uncertain.

“Sounds as if the person, whoever he may be, were a stranger to the
place,” whispered Jean.

“Why shouldn’t he be? Place hasn’t been visited for hundreds of years.
Look at the dust.”

“But he followed us.”

“Yes. I wonder why.”

For a long time after that they waited in breathless silence. All the
time the person, who now halted, now moved a few steps forward, was
coming closer and closer. Who could it be? What did he want? Did he know
the secrets of this mysterious place, of the magic door? He might. There
was hope in that.

“Oh, switch on your light,” Jean whispered impatiently. “What’s the use?
He’s bound to find us in the end.”

Realizing the truth of this, Roderick snapped on his light and sent its
rays gleaming straight down the corridor. As it fell full upon the face
of the one who had followed them there came a half-suppressed, shrill cry
of a child. It was none other than the daughter of the great chief, the
one whose life Johnny had saved.

“Wianda!” exclaimed Jean, calling the girl’s name as she started forward
to embrace her.

Unfortunately, this name was the only word they had in common.

For a moment the Indian girl’s eyes roamed from one to the other, then
with a sudden gesture she held up first three fingers, then only two, as
much as to say:

“There were three of you. Now there are but two. Where is the other?”

For answer, Jean took up the heavy walking stick, and after pointing at
the stone door, made as if to push it back.

The girl’s eyes opened wide in surprise. Then as her face became
thoughtful she backed away to sit down upon the flat rock. There, for
five minutes, with head bent low, hands pressing her temples, she sat
perfectly still.

“Thinking it out,” whispered Roderick. “I wonder what she will do.”

In spite of her fears for Johnny’s safety, Jean felt a certain great
confidence in this child’s ability to solve the puzzle and set her hero
free. Why not? Was she not a native of the place? Did she not know the
secrets of the land?

“And yet,” she thought with a sinking heart, “why should she? She is
little more than a child, while the secrets of this place, if one is to
judge by the dust and crumbling decay of rocks, are old as time itself.”

Suddenly the Indian girl leaped to her feet. With a swift movement she
crossed the corridor and pressed her ear against the stone door.

As she stood there listening, across her face there spread such a smile
of joy as it had seldom been Jean’s privilege to see.

Then the Indian girl motioned for Jean to put her ear against the stone
door as she had done.

What she heard was a faint tick-tick-tick, or the drip-drip-drip of
water. She could not tell what it was, the sound was so very faint.

Her heart beat wildly. What could it mean? Why had the Indian girl become
so suddenly joyous? Was it a token, this ticking or dripping? Was it a
sign that all would be well? It was all very strange, all so unreal that
she found herself all but overcome.

On her wrist Jean wore a small watch. In her idle hours she had amused
herself by teaching the Indian girl to tell the time of morning, noon or
evening by it. Now, to her astonishment, she found the girl alternately
pointing to the three o’clock mark on the dial, then away at the stone
door.

“It’s one o’clock,” said Jean. “What can she mean?”

“Probably means that at three the door will open of its own free will,”
said Roderick, who with his usual skepticism placed little faith in the
native girl.

“I’m starved,” he grumbled. “Let’s get out of this vile place and find
something to eat. Thompson’ll get out of that hole some way. Leave it to
him. Any way, we can’t help any.”

“We can’t be sure of that,” said Jean soberly.

“You may leave if you wish. As for me, I will stay here as long as this
native girl does. I’m not going to be shamed by such a little brown one
as she.”

Roderick sauntered sulkily up and down the corridor for a moment, then
sank down upon a rock with a sigh.

As for the Indian girl, after listening once more at the door, with the
look of joyous satisfaction on her face she sat down in composure to
wait. Wait for what? What was to happen in two hours? Jean could not so
much as guess. So, without trying, she sat down beside the native girl.

To her surprise she found after a time that by listening intently she
could catch the faint tap-tap-tap. It was weird, mysterious, fascinating,
that steady continuous sound that was so much like the ticking of a
clock, yet somehow so different.

“What can it mean?” she asked herself. “Can it be that those ancient
people held some secrets of motion and power of which we know nothing?
Does that door, like the door to a bank vault, open and close to a time
schedule? And could it be working after all these years?

“How—how impossible!” she breathed.

The Indian girl heard the sound of her whisper and, as if understanding
the meaning of it, put a hand upon her knee as much as to say:

“All things are possible.”

“And yet,” Jean went on to assure herself, “it is impossible. Even were
it all true, how could this child know the secret of it all?”

At that moment there flashed through her mind things Johnny had told her
about the ancient Maya civilization, of their culture, their sculpture,
their architecture, their art expressed in the working of precious metals
and polishing of jewels.

“They had mastered the art of writing, too,” she told herself, “and had
great libraries. Many of these were destroyed, but some remain. Who knows
but these, their descendants, have read from these scrolls the secrets of
this strange underground cavern?”

So she reasoned, hoped and waited. A half hour passed, an hour, an hour
and a half. As the hour of three approached even the skeptical Roderick
grew restless. He rose and paced the floor. Jean pulled him down.

“I can’t hear the tap-tap when you are walking,” she said.

“Listen!” she exclaimed in an awed whisper. “It—it’s stopped!”

That was a dramatic moment. The Indian girl knew, too, for her face had
suddenly become animated with some great emotion. Gliding swiftly to the
white girl’s side, she placed her fingers on her lips.

Instantly Jean read her meaning. She sprang to her feet, and at once
there came from her throat the clear notes of their call:

  “Whoo-hoo-hoo,
    Whoo-hoo-hoo,
  Whoo-hoo-hoo.”

Johnny Thompson, sitting alone in the dark, heard and sprang to his feet.
The next moment as the call was repeated again and again, he found
himself feeling his way by following the sound closer and closer to the
singer.

Jean had kept up the call for three minutes when, after holding up a hand
for silence, the Indian girl lifted the stout stick as if it were a
fairy’s wand and pressed it against the top of the stone door.

Amazed, stupified, the brother and sister stared in silence as the great
rock began to fall back.

Back, back, back it moved until it lay flat upon the floor. At that
dramatic moment, smiling like a fairy prince released from an enchanted
prison, Johnny stepped over the threshold, free.

Could Johnny be pardoned if he embraced his fair deliverers? Well, he
must be, for that is exactly what he did, both of them, and the action
seemed to him a part of a beautiful ending to a horrible dream.

As they turned once more toward the rock that was a door, they saw it was
again rising slowly, and with a silence that suggested great power.

“Come on,” said Johnny with a shudder. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Yes. We must,” said Jean, leading the way.

As she glanced back from time to time, Jean saw that Johnny walked as one
who is lame, or who carries a heavy burden on his hip. Being a person of
unusual judgment, she asked no questions. As they left the outer opening
and made their way through the bush to the outer air, Johnny was rather
longer than the others in emerging. When he did appear he had lost his
limp. Again Jean read the signs, but asked no questions.




                             CHAPTER XXIII
                        THE PASSING OF THE GHOST


The night following the capture of Daego’s pit-pans, Johnny’s ghost
behaved very strangely. On this night, as on many other nights, Pant
crossed the river to discover, if possible, some further details
regarding Daego’s plans and to ascertain more accurately the strength of
his forces. Their quota of logs would soon be filled. They must then make
up their raft within the boom. This must be towed down the river. Would
Daego, with his depleted forces, dare attempt to take over the camp
before that time came? Once the logs were afloat, would he manage in some
way to break the boom? These were vital questions.

On this particular night Pant did not join Daego’s men. Instead, he hid
in a low clump of palms; close enough to catch the conversation of one
small group.

“Reckon ole ghost walks agin to-night?” said one.

“Yea, bo! He’ll walk.”

“’Tain’t’ no harm come to us, not yet.”

“You all hain’t sayin’ ’t’ain’t goin’ t’ happen?”

“Hain’t sayin’ nothin’.”

“Oh, look ayonder. There it are.”

Sure enough, there was the ghost. With his waving gown all gleaming
yellow with light, his shining red eyes, his dark face and his lugubrious
rattle accompanied now and then by a piercing wail, Johnny’s ghost seemed
more fearsome than before.

The chicleros grew suddenly silent. Even the sighing palms ceased to sigh
and the last scream of a parrot died a sudden death.

It was an awesome moment. In that moment a strange thing happened.
Instead of hovering there above the palms, the ghost began to rise. As he
rose the dull rattle, as of bones in a coffin, increased in volume, and
the wail, high-pitched and terrifying, rose to a piercing scream.

Then, more terrible than all, as he rose higher and higher, his red eyes
grew dimmer, his glowing robes melted into the floating clouds, his
scream sounded fainter and fainter.

“Oh, my Massa!” groaned the black man who but a moment before had
professed little fear of the ghost. “Oh, my Massa!” he wailed, rolling on
the ground in his agony of fear. “Oh, my Massa, he’s gone! It’s his last
warnin’. He’s gone up. Now death and disaster sure do come!”

As if in proof of this, there came from far in the distance the dull roll
of thunder.

As for Pant, he hastened to his dugout and paddled rapidly across the
river. His mind was in a whirl. What had happened? He wanted to know,
needed to know, badly indeed. Not so badly, however, but that he had time
to pause and listen as the dip-dip of paddles sounded over the hushed
waters of Rio Hondo. As he waited and watched black streaks passed down
the river.

“Three of them,” he exulted. “That last trick was best of all. Three boat
loads. Must have carried ten men each.”

As he came near the cabin that had been Johnny’s office, and in which so
many strange doings had come off of late, he spied a dim light there.

On looking in he saw a single candle burning on a work bench. Slumped
down in a rude chair made of packing boxes, was old Hardgrave.

At first the boy thought him asleep, but upon hearing footsteps the old
man stirred, then looked up.

“It’s you, Pant,” he said slowly. “So it’s only you.”

Then of a sudden, sitting straight up, as if recalling bad news, he
groaned:

“Pant, he’s gone!”

“Who’s gone?”

“The ghost—Johnny’s ghost is gone. Left us tonight. Left us cold.”

Pant stared at the old man for a moment. “Can it be,” he thought to
himself, “that the mere mechanical creation can seem to its creator to
take on real life and a personality?”

To Hardgrave he said quietly: “I saw him go. It was weird, I can tell
you. And I shouldn’t take his going too much to heart. Fully thirty of
Daego’s men went down the river just now. This last was too much for
their superstitious minds.”

“Thirty! Did you say thirty?”

“Fully that many.”

“Then, Pant,” the old man sprang to his feet. “We’ll beat ’em yet, Pant.
We’ll fight! We’ll fight!”

“Of course we will,” said Pant.




                              CHAPTER XXIV
                             BLIND DRIFTING


Late in the evening following his startling adventure in the ancient Maya
temple, Johnny tapped at Jean’s door.

“Hist!” he whispered. “Go get Rod and come to my room. Got something to
show you.”

A few moments later, in the privacy of Johnny’s room, lighted only by a
flickering taper, the brother and sister stood before a mysterious
something which stood upon a stool and was covered by a cloth.

“See!” Johnny exclaimed as he lifted the cloth.

They started back in surprise and wonder. Made of pure gold, with a jewel
gleaming from his hand, the Maya god, an awesome creation, stood before
them.

Determined that his adventure in the temple, which had come so near being
a tragedy, should not be without its reward, Johnny had dared to take the
god from the place of its long concealment. He had succeeded in bringing
it from the corridor to the bush where he had hidden it until he could
smuggle it safely through the darkness.

“That,” he said in an awed whisper, “is the only ancient Maya god ever
discovered; he is the god of the rising sun. There are no such gods in
the museums of the world. This one, aside from the gold and the jewel
which seems to be a roughly cut diamond, is priceless as a curio and as
an example of ancient art. And that,” he exclaimed as he wrapped the
cloth about it and hid it in a dark corner, “makes me all the more
anxious to get away from this hidden city of wild people.”

“You’re not thinking of taking the thing with you!” exclaimed Roderick in
dismay.

“Of course we shall!” Jean looked at her brother in utter disgust. “What
do you think?”

“Think!” exclaimed Roderick. “I think it will get us into a great deal of
trouble.”

“Trouble? Who cares for trouble?”

“I am going to the chief the first thing in the morning,” said Johnny.
“I’ll try to tell him or his daughter, by maps and signs, all about my
camp on Rio Hondo and the urgent need of my getting back there. The
princess likes us. She’ll do anything she can for us. Somehow we must
escape.”

                            * * * * * * * *

To be drifting down a strange tropical stream at night is enchanting,
haunting, and mysterious enough; but to be drifting down that same stream
with your eyes so completely blindfolded that you only know it is night
because you have been told so, surely this is the most mysterious of all.

Johnny Thompson, Jean and Roderick were passing through just such an
experience. For hours, many hours, seeing nothing, now led by the hand,
now drifting in a dugout, they had traveled. Where were they going? Home?
Going to some more remote corner of the Central American jungle where
there was no danger of their being discovered?

Not one of the three could so much as guess. They only knew they were
going somewhere and were on their way. Such a strange way, too; over
paths that were so overhung with vines and palm leaves that they must be
constantly dodging to avoid them; now on a small stream where the danger
of being caught by vines and dragged overboard was still greater, and now
out upon a wider stream where from time to time a sudden burst of
sunlight warmed their faces, they traveled on and on. For Johnny
especially, the short portages made on foot were extremely difficult, for
always he carried his pack on his back. He dared not trust it to another.
In its very center was the golden god of the rising sun.

It had turned out strangely, his resolve to have it out with the old
chief about allowing them to return to the Rio Hondo. First, by the aid
of many small sticks and stones and a tiny artificial stream, he pictured
to the young princess his coming up Rio Hondo in search of mahogany, his
early success, defeat, a second venture, the treachery of Daego, the
probable condition of his camp at the present moment and the need for his
speedy return.

He had watched with much concern the face of the chief as his daughter
presented the cause to him. That she was telling much, perhaps a great
deal too much, he guessed from the changing expression on the old man’s
face. A frown was replaced by a smile. This was followed by a look of
surprise, if not of consternation.

“She’s not telling about Rio Hondo,” Johnny had whispered. “What do you
think?”

“Yesterday. The hidden corridor,” Jean had whispered back.

“That’s exactly it!” Johnny exclaimed.

At once he regretted having entrusted the girl with his mission. “If she
tells too much she may get us into greater trouble,” he whispered to
Jean, and at that moment he thought of the golden god.

“Of course,” he whispered to Jean, “it’s mine by right of finding. These
people did not build this ruined temple, nor did they make or inherit the
god. It’s been lost for centuries. Can’t tell about their queer ideas and
customs, though.”

Had that plea of the princess gotten them into trouble, or was it getting
them out? This was the question which Johnny asked himself over and over
as they drifted, blindfolded, down that river in the night.

It was strange, fascinating, weird, this eternal drifting, drifting,
drifting on into the night. Now the sudden brush of a palm leaf told him
they were traveling close to the bank; now a mad forward plunge followed
by low exclamations, told of rapids; and now the distant bark of a dog
somewhere on land suggested a cabin and some few scattered inhabitants.

They were quite a goodly company, this Maya band which escorted him from
their city to some unknown destination. Johnny, with his white
companions, rode in a large pit-pan. There were other crafts. From time
to time he caught the sound of their dipping paddles, heard their low
cries of warning as one boat came perilously near another. Twice they had
made camp. At such times as this, blindfolded though he was, Johnny was
able to estimate the number of men.

“About a hundred,” he had said to Jean.

“Quite a band,” she had agreed. “Wonder why so many?”

“Who can tell?”

The princess was with them. He heard her voice from time to time. The old
chief, too, perhaps. He could not be sure of that.

Wondering dreamily how it all would end, and wishing with all his heart
that Jean at least was out of it all, he fell into a doze.

From this he was awakened by a sudden movement of the boat. It was as if
the hand of a giant had seized the prow and suddenly turned it through a
quarter of a circle, then had given it a powerful shove.

For a second the boy’s head whirled.

“Wha—what has happened?” Jean whispered.

Johnny chuckled. “We’re in a larger river, much larger. In fact, it is a
great river, and something tells me——,” his words came swift and eager
now, “that it is the good old Rio Hondo!”

“Johnny, it can’t be!”

“It could be, and is!” said Johnny emphatically. “I haven’t ridden that
old river for nothing. She has a way of teasing and tossing your dugout
while she whirls it forward that no other river ever had.

“Besides,” he added with another chuckle, “I can smell the water. It
actually _smells_ black.”

“What’s that?” the girl exclaimed suddenly.

“Sounds like thunder,” said Johnny.

                            * * * * * * * *

It was thunder, the forerunner of a storm. It was not a local storm,
either, but one of those wide sweeping storms that tear at the timber on
all the headwaters of a great river. Pant, at the edge of his camp, where
he was assisting in shooting the last of the mahogany logs into their
boom, heard it and his face grew thoughtful.

The hour of great suspense came at last. Their boom was loaded. They were
ready to go down the river. Daego had not yet led his men to the attack.

“We’ll get away in the darkness,” Pant said to his Carib foreman, fairly
dancing about in his eagerness to be away. “We’ll give old Daego the
slip.”

Tivoli’s only reply was a sweep of the hand toward the blackening sky. As
if in answer to his signal, there came crashing down upon them one of
those sudden storms that are known only in the tropics.

“We’ll get away under cover of the storm,” said Pant. “That will be
better still.”

“You don’t now these tropical storms,” said Tivoli. “All night in the
rain fifteen men must work; fifteen men must rest, sleep beneath canvas
in hammocks. Even with fifteen men we may not save the raft, tied up
right here. You do not know the tropics. There will be water in the
river, water in the sky. Which is river? Which is sky? You cannot tell.
The river will rise like a tide. There will come down snags, great trees,
palm trees, mahogany, yamra, black tamarind, santa maria, many, many
snags. All night long, at the edge of the raft, we must fight these snags
away. There will be no sleep for Tivoli tonight, and perhaps no logs for
Mr. Johnny Thompson after that, either.”

Tivoli was right. Such a storm as this was! Nothing of the kind had ever
been witnessed by the boys before. Flash after flash of lightning, water
in sheets, in streams, great avalanches of water that one could all but
swim through. Rolling thunder vied with the increasing roar of black
waters. And after that came the snags! And how those Caribs did work!

All night, till the clock hand stood at three, they labored. Then the
water began to subside.

Then, exhausted, they threw themselves upon the bare logs and slept.

“At dawn we are away,” muttered Tivoli.

                            * * * * * * * *

All that night, regardless of the lightning that set the water all
agleam, in spite of the deluge of rain that fell, the Mayas and their
blindfolded captives drifted silently down that broad river which indeed
was Rio Hondo.

Awnings of cloth, cunningly treated with the juice from the bark of the
wild rubber tree, protected them from the rain. They were safe and dry.
The river carried them onward. What more need they ask?

                            * * * * * * * *

At dawn, as a matchless sunrise painted the east red and gold, there
appeared above Pant’s raft on the broad river a black line, a line not of
drift logs, but dugouts, dories and pit-pans. Each craft was loaded with
men, and as the sun sent its rays shooting across them they waved their
hands and let forth a bloodcurdling shout. In each uplifted hand there
gleamed a long bladed machete.

“They come!” said Tivoli in response to Pant’s call. “Let them come. See
that all the men are wakened quickly.”




                              CHAPTER XXV
                        THE BATTLE OF RIO HONDO


The battle of Rio Hondo will probably never be recorded on the printed
pages of the history of Honduras or Mexico, but to the last day of his
life it will remain indelibly stamped on Pant’s memory.

As he caught the white gleam of machetes against the morning sky, many
searching questions invaded his mind. He was about to engage in a battle
that might mean the death of some faithful Carib. Was there yet an
opportunity for parley, for compromise? No! It was too late. Yet, in
their previous actions had there been blunders? Had he been too hasty?
Could the fight have been avoided? These questions he could not fully
answer; all he could say was that he had believed himself to be acting
for the good of all.

“As for compromise,” he told himself stoutly, “there can be no compromise
with evil. This man Daego hesitates at nothing that he may gain a little
more wealth, wealth for which he has no need. The men we must fight have
sold their souls to him.” Having thus put himself at peace with his own
mind, he set calmly about the task of posting his men.

The purpose of the raiders was to break up his raft. If they could but
sever the encircling boom, his logs would be set free, each to find its
separate way to the ocean. They would then be lost to him forever.

One anxious glance he cast toward the approaching boats. One thing he
feared most of all,—firearms.

“He wouldn’t dare,” Pant told himself, as no rifle or pistol appeared in
the uplifted hands. “A fight between crews is one thing; wholesale
slaughter quite another. The laws of Great Britain are strict, her
officers tireless.”

His eyes gleamed with a touch of pride as he surveyed his small army of
defense. What stalwart fellows they were! How their dark arms gleamed in
the sun! From the belt of each hung a machete. These they had been
ordered to use only as a last resort. By the side of each, grounded like
a rifle, was a stout six-foot mahogany pike-pole. He had taught them the
last trick of offense and defense with these weapons.

So they waited as on came the invading host. In the hands of some he saw
the white gleam of sapodilla axe handles. With these axes they would
attempt to loosen a chain of the boom or chop a log of it in two. Others
balanced heavy sledges on the edge of their boats. With these they hoped
to sever the chains. Their machetes were for defense. They waved them to
intimidate the Caribs.

“Not so easily done,” Pant smiled grimly as his Caribs sent back a
ringing cry of defiance.

“Don’t let a man of them board us,” was the last word Pant passed along
the line. “If they gain a footing on the raft we’re lost. If one gets
aboard, double on him and pitch him overboard.”

As the dark line advanced it spread out fan-shape; then, with every
wild-eyed Spaniard of them all splitting his lungs in a savage yell, they
shot their crafts alongside.

With drawn machetes they leaped for the first mahogany logs that lay
against the boom. But what was this? As they swung their machetes
threateningly, they received a rain of blows that sent many a machete
whirling through space to find its watery grave beneath the black waters.

Against such an offensive they were not able to stand. Seizing their
paddles, they backed away to a respectful distance, there to hold a
council of war.

The result of this council Pant read as if it were an open book. With
machetes sheathed, but with axes and sledges at hand, the enemy spread
out to advance upon the raft from every side. By this Pant judged that
they hoped to scatter his men and to effect a break in the boom that
would not only set his logs free, but throw his Caribs into the river,
there to fight for their lives against pitching, grinding logs and
lurking alligators.

One move he had not anticipated became apparent soon enough. The instant
their boats touched, as the Caribs rushed at them with their mahogany
pikes, the Spaniards who were not armed with sledges and axes did their
best to seize the pikes and wrest them from the Caribs. In this, here and
there, they were successful, and always in the corner where this
occurred, the tide began to turn. It was one thing to prod and beat a
Spaniard; quite another to be prodden and beaten by him. In the meantime,
keen oars flashed here and there. There came the disheartening chop-chop
of axes and the thud of sledges that told that at any moment the boom
might be broken, the battle lost.

Heroic work was going on at every point. Outnumbered almost two to one,
the Caribs fought valiantly. With their wild shouts forever on their
lips, they seized fresh pikes when one was lost and fought with renewed
vigor.

Tivoli, their chief, seemed everywhere at once. His great strength served
him well. Here, where a sledge was battering dangerously at a chain, he
made a mighty thrust, swinging his pike sidewise at a Spaniard’s head.
The sledge splashed into the water. Danger at this point was at an end.
Here an axe swung in air to meet with Tivoli’s well aimed pike and go
spinning through air to join the sledge.

But for all this, the battle was going badly. Here and there a chain was
badly battered and in several places a log of the boom was half cut
through. Seeing his men outnumbered where ten Spaniards crowded a single
dugout, Pant, whose slight strength had lost him his pike at the very
onset, seized a pike aimed at his head and, gripping hard, executed a
flying pole vault right over the heads of the enemy and into the booming
waters.

The result was all that could be hoped for. The Spaniard, who still clung
to the pike, was dragged half out of the dugout, whereupon that unstable
craft promptly capsized, pitching ten lusty attackers, axes, sledges and
all, into the river.

Tivoli, too, lost his pike. Angered at this victory on the part of an
enemy, he watched his chance and when the Spaniard swung his pike to one
side, with bare hands and unarmed, Tivoli rushed at him and rained such
blows on his head as drove him to drop his pike and leap into the river.

This much for scattered conflicts. Victory here and there along the line;
more than one Spaniard in the river; but for all that, here and there the
boom was being dangerously weakened. The battle was going badly.

“Only a matter of time,” thought Pant, as he struggled back to the raft.
“A half hour; perhaps less. Then our work is all undone!”

                            * * * * * * * *

Just as the storm came to an end and morning broke, Johnny Thompson,
still blindfolded and riding among the Mayas, felt his boat swerve
sharply to the right and enter a small creek where overhanging branches
swept the awnings over the boats.

They had not gone far up this stream before their boat bumped the bank
and they were helped to disembark.

Imagine their surprise and joy when someone, very short, very laughingly
tugged away the cloths that blinded them and permitted them for the first
time in two days to see.

“See!” exclaimed the princess, for it was she who had unbound their eyes.
“See what a beautiful world we have brought you to!”

It was indeed a beautiful world. All a-glitter with raindrops flashing in
the sun, palms and giant tropical ferns had never seemed so lovely as
now.

Birds sang their best. Even the screaming parrots, that they might not be
entirely out of harmony, appeared to soften their discordant notes.

But into this symphony there crept a wildly disturbing sound. Dim,
indistinct, yet unmistakable, there came the noise of battle.

At the first sound of it, Johnny Thompson glanced wildly about him. Then,
having sighted down the creek a familiar bend in the river, he exclaimed:

“It’s Daego. The battle is on! They are not a mile from here. I must go!”

Seizing the prow of a boat, he pushed it into the stream, sprang in,
seized a paddle, and would have been away, single-handed, to enter the
conflict.

They dragged him back. The old chief tried to learn, from Johnny’s wild
flinging arms, what it was all about. In the end he appeared to
understand, for, after instructing his men to look to their weapons, he
ordered them into their boats. Once more the Mayas, a hundred strong,
swept down the river, grim, silent, determined.

So it happened that a second time that day Pant saw the river above his
raft lined with boats.

“Friends or enemies?” he thought. “Let them come. Without aid we lose.
More of the enemy cannot matter.”

As for Daego’s men, they watched the on-coming fleet with consternation.
Daego had no men up the river. They knew that. Who, then, were these?

As the fleet came closer, a figure standing in the prow of the foremost
boat became plainly visible. He was waving his arms and shouting wildly.
It was Johnny.

One of Daego’s keen-eyed Spaniards was the first to recognize him. With a
wild cry of fear he dashed for his pit-pan.

“There is the man who has died,” he shouted. “His ghost has been seen
many times above the treetops. Now he comes back. He is a ghost. Who are
these with him? They have gleaming spears. They, too, are ghosts.” So he
thought, and prepared to flee.

So thought they all. To a man they dropped oar, maul, pike, pole or
machete, and turned to flee.

When Johnny’s boat bumped the raft there was not a Spaniard within
gunshot.

But what was this? As he turned about to look at his companions in the
boat he saw only Roderick and Jean. By some skillful trick of boatmanship
or swimming, the Maya paddlers had left the boat. Now, some distance
away, the Maya princess was waving them farewell as the remaining boats
went speeding back up the river.

“That’s funny,” said Johnny.

“How—how strange and ghost-like!” murmured Jean.

“Nothing ghost-like about this,” said Johnny, as he patted his pack which
held the rare Maya god.

The joyful reunion that followed was cut short by the pressing business
of getting the log boom started down the river. The motor boat was
brought around, the Carib sail boats hitched on behind, and they were
away.

Hardgrave, who knew Jean’s father and the location of his camp, advised
her and Roderick to go with them down the river. This advice was not
unwelcome, especially to Johnny, who felt that he could never see too
much of the bonny Scotch girl.

They had made their slow way down two-thirds of the distance when a
strange procession caught up with and passed them. Motor boats, launches,
flatboats, and pit-pans moved by. Each was loaded to capacity with the
strangest cargoes. Here were four tractors on a flat-boat; there many
wheels that might have belonged to cannons, but did belong to logging
wagons; here a pit-pan loaded high with great vats and kettles that had
once held the boiling sap of the sapodilla tree. So they drifted by. It
was like the passing of a defeated army. And so it was. The defeated king
of the Black River was leaving the Rio Hondo forever.

Two weeks later, with his treasure of red lure safely piled at the
waterfront in Belize, Johnny met his millionaire friend, Roderick
Grayson, at the dock as a United Fruit steamer’s launch came in. Three
days later, in Johnny’s room at the hotel, Grayson met the Governor of
Quintanaroo and together they drew up contracts which were to mean much,
not only to Quintanaroo and Grayson, but to Johnny and Pant as well. In
each contract it was agreed that Grayson’s company was to pay the boys a
royalty, a wee bit of a royalty on their entire output and, though the
percentage is small, the output is destined to be large, and there is no
reason to believe that the two boys will lack for funds for travel and
adventure in the future.

The rare Maya god found its way to a museum in London. The proceeds from
its sale Johnny insisted upon dividing with Jean. There was talk of
spending the whole of it in a visit to London and the Old World by Jean
and her family, accompanied by Johnny and Pant.

At about this time, however, Johnny chanced to wander down to the
breakwater, where little boats anchor, and there he met a strange
seafaring man who had a strange tale to tell. And right there began one
of the most unusual adventures that ever befell Johnny Thompson. You will
find it all written down in our next book, “Forbidden Cargoes”.




                         The Roy J. Snell Books


Mr. Snell is a versatile writer who knows how to write stories that will
please boys and girls. He has traveled widely, visited many
out-of-the-way corners of the earth, and being a keen observer has found
material for many thrilling stories. His stories are full of adventure
and mystery, yet in the weaving of the story there are little threads
upon which are hung lessons in loyalty, honesty, patriotism and right
living.

Mr. Snell has created a wide audience among the younger readers of
America. Boy or girl, you are sure to find a Snell book to your liking.
His works cover a wide and interesting scope.

Here are the titles of the Snell Books:


                       _Mystery Stories for Boys_

  1. Triple Spies
  2. Lost in the Air
  3. Panther Eye
  4. The Crimson Flash
  5. White Fire
  6. The Black Schooner
  7. The Hidden Trail
  8. The Firebug
  9. The Red Lure
  10. Forbidden Cargoes
  11. Johnny Longbow
  12. The Rope of Gold
  13. The Arrow of Fire
  14. The Gray Shadow
  15. Riddle of the Storm
  16. The Galloping Ghost
  17. Whispers at Dawn; or, The Eye
  18. Mystery Wings
  19. Red Dynamite
  20. The Seal of Secrecy
  21. The Shadow Passes
  22. Sign of the Green Arrow


                     _The Radio-Phone Boys’ Series_

  1. Curlie Carson Listens In
  2. On the Yukon Trail
  3. The Desert Patrol
  4. The Seagoing Tank
  5. The Flying Sub
  6. Dark Treasure
  7. Whispering Isles
  8. Invisible Wall


                     _Adventure Stories for Girls_

  1. The Blue Envelope
  2. The Cruise of the O’Moo
  3. The Secret Mark
  4. The Purple Flame
  5. The Crimson Thread
  6. The Silent Alarm
  7. The Thirteenth Ring
  8. Witches Cove
  9. The Gypsy Shawl
  10. Green Eyes
  11. The Golden Circle
  12. The Magic Curtain
  13. Hour of Enchantment
  14. The Phantom Violin
  15. Gypsy Flight
  16. The Crystal Ball
  17. A Ticket to Adventure
  18. The Third Warning




                          Transcriber’s Notes


--Copyright notice provided as in the original printed text—this e-text
  is public domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
  dialect unchanged.

--Relocated promotional material to the end of the book, and completed
  the list of books in the three series (using other sources).