The Glyphs/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
What I could have said at that moment could scarcely be written or spoken by any one with a regard for the proprieties. And all I could have said would have been inadequate through lack of vocabulary. I stood there too heavily charged to speak a single word. Wardy broke the spell by a roar of inordinate laughter.
“Well,” said I hopefully, “if the worst comes to worst, we can go back to the island temple and get it correctly, can’t we?”
“I—I—I daren’t take you back!” exclaimed the doctor helplessly. “Ixtual would desert, rally his people, and we should all be killed! You don’t know how difficult it was to—to”
There was something so pitiable in his dejection, and disappointment, and self-accusation that I hadn’t the heart to be angry with him.
“I wouldn’t care for myself,” he blurted, “but I promised you two men that I would do my best to see that you were reimbursed, and, but for your help, I could never have come here! And I am afraid that you, Hallewell, spent all you had, and—damn it!—I hoped to make you rich because you have been so decent, and kind, and considerate to me! Now I have bungled the whole affair and you will”
“Don’t you mind it at all, old chap!” I interrupted. “You did your best. It isn’t your fault it all. Besides, we can get enough out of here, without attracting any attention at all, to more than pay the expenses of all of us and—I think I ought to climb up and dig out this thing’s eyes. They look like diamonds to me. But if they’re only cut crystals, we can at least get away with a few gold bricks, and mind you, a hundredweight of gold is worth about twenty thousand dollars. So we shall play even, or better, anyhow.”
“And you don’t need to worry about my part of it at all,” declared Wardy generously. “I’ve got enough to get along as it is without an ounce of gold from here. Not too much, but enough. Besides—I did get some shooting, after all! That black jaguar’s pelt is very rare. Very rare! Now for his eyes, Hallewell. Dig ’em out, and if they prove to be diamonds, they can be recut and Here, if I climb up on the top step could you stand on my shoulders and reach them?”
And then there happened something that I have never clearly understood. Doctor Morgano laid beseeching hands oh our arms and implored us to give him one more chance.
“It is desecration!” he declared. “It is, in its way, a sacrilege! Don’t do it—yet! It mustn’t be done until all other measures have failed. Let me try again. I am positive that there is another chamber somewhere. The glyphs told me so. I tell you that there is something here that hurts at the thought of your proposed action!” And he thumped his heart with both hands as if to emphasize his appeal.
It all seemed very foolish, but both Wardy and I, after one interchanged look, acceded to Morgano’s wish. He fell to making other counts and other pressures. One after another failed, then we all tried.
“It’s a certain tablet of gold that must be pressed,” said the doctor desperately. “Of that I am positive. That was invariably their construction for secret locking devices. Just one tablet in this case.”
“Then suppose we do it methodically,” I suggested. “Let’s start at the bottom row and press each one completely around the room.”
“That should get it sooner or later,” agreed Wardy, and now we fell to work, one behind the other, I on my knees attacking the lower layer, Wardy on his testing the next, and the doctor following in similar bent posture. It was back-breaking and tedious work. The chamber was inordinately large under such measurements. We were glad when we were able to stand on our feet, but the heels of my palms were getting sore and bruised by the continued thrusting of my weight against them. Hours of the unending count and pressure, and movement went on, and we were glad to stop for luncheon. We sat on the lower step and ate from our tins of sardines and drank water, and said but little. Wearily we resumed our task, like laborers whose muscles are overfatigued by protracted, physical effort. Long before this we had laid our electric torches aside and depended solely upon the light of the lantern and our sense of feeling in that gloomy chamber. We had made the complete round of that circular chamber so many times that I was rendered giddy by trying to recall the count. We had worked from our knees upward to a crouching position on our feet, then to one of less restraint, and then to rounds where we had stood erect. Now we reached upward for round after round and our bruised palms were a source of more thought than anything else, and then we came to a time where, owing to his short stature, the doctor could no longer reach and press. Wardy and I continued alone. The packs were under my feet in the last round I made, and then for a time the giant alone laboriously counted and pressed while the doctor and I, seated on the lower step, watched him. He got to the limit of his reach and now in turn he stood upon the folded packs.
Long before this we had all fallen to silence. So the place was very still when he said, with characteristic lack of exuberance: “Here it is. I’ve got it, I think. Thirty-second from the bottom. Fifty-eighth from the end. The doctor made a mistake; but—it gives! By Jove, it gives! Here goes!”
And he put both bruised hands against the slab of gold and thrust his full weight forward. The savant and I were on our feet, eager with expectance. We had seized our electric torches and the place was now bright with light. A whole section of golden brick, regularly outlined in jagged detail, swung inward, slowly, ponderously, and stopped, exposing an opening leading into another blackness beyond. All three of us rushed toward it and through it. We had entered the treasure house of a race.
A great cavern opened before us. Tier on tier in huge squares and slabs, like mere pigs of iron, ingots ot gold were stacked about us. Stacked higher than our fingers might reach. We could not compute their depths, for they were as computable from where we stood as rows of wood in a wood vender’s warehouse. Unconvinced by sight, we rushed forward and felt them to assure ourselves by the sense of touch that all was real in this dull-yellow amassment of metal. Each bore its stamp—a mere glyph, as the doctor told us, testifying the name of the minter and the weight of the bar. Likewise each bore the impress of a stamp in the likeness of the god whom the Maya nation worshiped, as if to say “his gold.”
We halted, standing together as if for companionship, we three in the center of the great treasure vault, and flashing our torches here and there like three men in the center of a great wine cellar of old striving to appraise the depth of our visible surroundings.
“Good Lord! What a lot of it!” exclaimed Wardy in a strangely subdued voice. “Enough to upset the world.”
“The accumulation of an entire people, an entire race, for centuries,” said the archæologist, his voice sounding awed and hushed.
“But something we can’t carry out under surrounding conditions,” I added hopelessly. “The biggest store of gold in the world, and quite useless to us! Is that another doorway through there?”
I had discovered that down at the far end of this treasure vault was another narrow, black slit.
We moved toward it, still for some unaccountable reason keeping close together as if for mutual protection against that golden god outside whom we were defying. We entered a smaller chamber where again were great slabs of metal which we inspected.
“This is silver, I think,” said Wardy, after scratching one with his penknife. “Strange that there’s so little of it compared with the gold!”
“Silver was a more precious metal than gold to the Maya,” said the doctor. “It was by far the rarest of the two metals to them. There’s another chamber beyond this, I think. Isn’t that a doorway at the end?”
Again we advanced like three conspirators and again we entered another chamber. So complex and yet so defined is the human estimate of valuation that for a moment we stood disappointed when we saw no tiers of metal; nothing but rows of square stone caskets. The doctor rushed to one of these, stopped, flashed his light, and shouted, almost exultantly: “These are sarcophagi! The tombs of generations of dynasties and in the very burial chamber of those who ruled for thousands and thousands of years. The discoveries in Egypt are nothing at all by comparison. I know it! Each one has his tablet telling the history of his reign, I am fairly certain.”
In an ecstasy of discovery he dropped his torch from his trembling fingers and its glass trinkled in fragments on that ancient floor. He did not seem aware of his loss. He rhapsodized in a voice that was shrill and high, a voice that screamed and rebounded from the walls above as it was thrown back upon our ears.
“Egypt? Egypt was young—perhaps unknown—when these kings were brought to rest in this place! The blank history of civilization—of the globe—is here before us. We have opened the gates of missing knowledge! If there ever existed an Atlantis here is the proof. If civilization advanced eastward instead of westward, now we may know. If the fabled Garden of Eden, where the human race began to lift its intelligence above that of mere beasts, ever was, here we may find proof of its location. Tablets! Glyphs! On each sarcophagus. Records in imperishable stone.”
Wardy and I saw that he was staring at what was undoubtedly a mummy in a sitting posture, swathed, wrapped, dried, and hideous.
“If there’s another chamber beyond this,” whispered Wardy, “we ought to be going into it. I’m not and never have been fond of graveyards of this sort. Shall we drag him on, or go back?”
“Let’s see it through,” I protested, and we led rather than seduced the doctor forward in our unusual enterprise.
It was again easy. No door with ingenious secret mechanism barred our way. Indeed, there was no door at all, but merely an opening leading to the final chamber of this series of sacred Maya vaults. We saw that it was nearly square, small by comparison with those we had traversed, and that its floor was covered with small stone chests, each in an exact place, each with its carefully carved stone lid, each sealed with some royal emblem.
“Well, here goes!” said Wardy, as he laid his fingers on the first and gave a herculean tug that brought the lid away.
We craned our necks forward, Wardy from sheer curiosity, and I in the hope of finding portable treasure. All that we saw was merely a collection of plain golden cups with a figure of the god worked thereon in silver.
“What? What is it? What have you found?” cried the doctor, rushing to us and picking up the larger cup. “Was there no inscription anywhere?”
“On the lid, I think,” replied Wardy, turning it over for the doctor’s inspection, and the latter fell on his knees before it.
“Very interesting,” he said with enthusiasm. “Very interesting, indeed. This was a ceremonial service used by a certain high priest of the temple during his life, thereby rendered sacred, and unused by any of his followers. What is in these other caskets?”
He went to the next and read the hieroglyphics on the lid.
“This contains the service used by his predecessor,” he said, and when Wardy pulled off this top there was another and even less pretentious set of cups. We went from one to another, Wardy opening each in turn by the savant’s request, and all the time my spirits and hopes were falling like mercury influenced by a blizzard. It began to seem that the great treasure of the Mayas consisted solely of gold and silver, all of which, under the circumstances, was about as useless to me as so much lead. We made the entire round without finding other than similar services in the caskets. We examined the walls of the chamber, seeking other doors, and convinced ourselves there was none. Finally we returned to the other chamber, or temple, and I stood staring upward at the sole jewels we had discovered, those in the eyes and on the breast, of the image.
“It seems a pity,” said the doctor as if he had read my thoughts. “It is like sacrilege to injure such a priceless antiquity!” He spoke with such profound sadness that I knew he would never be reconciled to my vandalism, although he might submit to it, knowing my financial needs.
“It does that,” agreed Wardy, readjusting his monocle and standing on tiptoes to better view the head of the image above him. Suddenly he exclaimed: “Look! If I’m not mistaken the pavement at the base of his nobs here is identical, but on a smaller scale than that one we went for at the foot of the big stone chap over on the island.”
The doctor, as if imbued with a great hope, fairly jumped forward.
“You are right! You are right! It is!” he exclaimed, and, brushing us aside, stepped onto the pavement and began to move his feet over the pattern. He hesitated, and then soliloquized: “The ixton sign was one we stepped on, and the lower sector of the Acona and“” He bent over and closely studied the pavement, and then muttered: “Ah, here they are! Not quite in the same positions as those in the Great Temple. We will try them.”
Both Wardy and I leaned forward in a state bordering on suspense as the savant carefully planted his feet on two marks and rested his weight on them. They gave slightly, and we heard a noise that sounded as if it came from the back of the image. I ran hastily around it, but to my extreme disappointment discovered nothing. The doctor left his place and joined me. Wardy sauntered after him, and we stood there turning our lights upon the walls. They were unchanged.
“Something must have gone wrong with it—and yet the characters moved under my feet,” insisted the doctor.
“And I was certain I heard a noise of some sort behind here,” Wardy insisted. “Let me step on them. Perhaps your weight was not sufficient.”
He put his suggestion into execution; but the stones did not move farther, nor did they recede to place. There was no further noise.
“Well, all we can do is to return here with axes and demolish this pavement and learn what’s gone wrong,” I said desperately and at the same time remembering how short we were of food, the difficulties that might ensue through Ixtual’s superstition, and a dozen other annoyances to be met.
“It seems so,” said the savant with greater dejection than ever. “But at least let us consider that before picking the stones out of this marvelous effigy. If I can but influence Ixtual” And I knew then that he, too, had thought of the dangers of our position. Then he brightened as if all thought of treasure had vanished, and after raving about the lids of the stone caskets in the inner vault, pleaded with us to give him time to make quick notes from those lids before departing.
“Think of it,” he said, “we have opened a full and complete treasure house of history. What matters it if we find nothing more than that and”
Wardy looked at me and shrugged his huge shoulders.
“Well, if you wish to make notes, I think you should begin quickly. The oil in the lantern won’t last forever, and in addition we shall probably exhaust our batteries before we reach camp again. I doubt if we have more than half an hour to spare for further notes. Let’s get at it!”
And then with a shout that echoed and reëchoed throughout those grimly silent chambers, Doctor Morgano began running forward toward the rear wall of the inner vault. Running behind him we saw that a narrow door that had been so adeptly concealed as to defy detection, had swung inward, exposing another chamber. We hastily pushed it farther open, and an astonishing sight met our eyes.
One side of this long, narrow chamber was hung with royal or priestly vestments that had been there through all the ages in this hermetically sealed wardrobe, and these, bit by bit, were crumbling into dust and falling, leaving nothing but their masses of metallic embroideries; withering away before our eyes under the invisible touch of the air. The doctor brushed his hat off, clutched his hair with frantic fingers, and broke into a stream of invective.
“Oh, that I might have got here in time to see them. The priceless vestments! All that was needed to complete our knowledge of the very garments they wore! Dust—dust—crumbling to dust they are.”
I think that Wardy feared our companion might lose his reason, for now he put his hand on the doctor’s shoulder and said soothingly: “But it’s not as bad as it might have been. Man, you had a chance to see approximately how they were shaped and what they looked like! Between us we can make pretty fair drawings of them from memory. Of course you’ll not be able to reproduce details, which I suppose is a pity; but you got some of the outlines, didn’t you?”
The doctor ceased his lamentations but said regretfully: “That is true! But think how much more I could have seen had I been here on the instant the door opened and the free air began to enter. It’s a pity! Almost a calamity that I, who am now the greatest living authority on Maya history and customs, could not have seen these also.”
But my interest in vestments had been of scant duration and my eyes were scanning the room. I pushed past my companions and across it to the end, for there I had seen what looked like a stone door in the wall, covered with seals. Before the doctor could see what I was doing and utter one of his interminable protests, I caught the stone handle and jerked violently. A door opened, exposing a cabinet, and it was my turn to shout with exultation. Under the white light of my electric torch there glittered and scintillated in infinite variety of flashing color—the collected jewels of the Maya treasury! Undreamed-of riches lay beneath my hands. They lay in great and orderly array, as if deposited there in those past dead centuries by trained, careful, and reverent hands. Great girdles and crowns, bracelets and anklets, chains of state and priestly scepters fashioned at the tops like rays of the sun—all the priestly paraphernalia that had lent the glory of pomp and display to the long lines of autocrats who in those far-off days had ruled the destinies of that ancient civilization. Heavily and crudely fashioned, but seeming in its very solidity an expression of power and undisputed sway, the collection lay there ready for the touch of human hands after ages of rest.
“Great Scott!” muttered Wardy. “I’ve seen several lots of crown jewels, but this is more worth looking at than any of them!” He ended with a long-drawn whistle.
The doctor appeared speechless and acted as if apprehensive lest these, too, might crumble like the robes on the wall.
I bent forward and looked at a shelf beneath and there beheld unmounted gems, diamonds undoubtedly. Beneath that was still another containing a miscellaneous collection of rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and opals. Carefully we took them out and spread them on the floor. An appraisement disclosed the fact that the ancients had very primitive ideas of cutting facets, but nearly all the stones were of sufficient size to bear recutting by modern methods. There were but two very large diamonds, but all were of that singular blue-white quality which were for so many years mined in Brazil. None of us was expert in jewels, but any of us had sufficient knowledge to know that the unmounted gems alone represented a fortune, measured by even modern standards of wealth.
“Those,” said the doctor, pointing at the unmounted stones, “we can, of course, take; but it is an outrage if these others are ever broken up. Such destruction of incomparable specimens of ancient handiwork would be nothing less than abominable!”
“In any event we must hurry out of this!” exclaimed Wardy. “The lantern is beginning to flicker. Wish we could have found a tin of oil.”
I hastily tore one of the bags to shreds and wrapped the mounted jewels in them lest they get marred by rubbing, and placed them in a bag, then collected all the uncut stones into the other, protecting the larger ones as best I could in separate wrappings. We hastily closed the cabinet door, went outside, and pushed the door leading into the treasure chamber shut and heard a dull snap.
“One could never by accident guess that it was there,” said Wardy, taking a last glance at it, and then we moved rapidly outward into the temple. The god glared at me as if angry that I had ever contemplated robbing him of his eyes. We saw that the stones that operated the secret door behind had resumed their places in the pavement. And then we almost ran from the chamber, stumbling through the long passages and panting up the flights of stairs with but one torch to light our way. One battery gave out, and then the other. We stopped and inserted the only spare one we had to restore the dimming light, and hastened ahead. It was defective and began to flare yellow before we reached the great levers opening the outer door. It expired just as Wardy found the end of the huge beam and threw his weight upon it, and for a trembling moment we were in darkness. Then the door slowly opened and we looked out to discover that the sun had set and we were in the twilight of the outer world.