The Web of the Sun (Adventure Magazine, 1922)/Chapter 5

by T. S. Stribling

 

V

EZEKIEL BIRDSONG'S second man-sized miracle, sent a certain thrill of conviction down Lassiter's spine. Against all probabilities, the colporteur had found a method of descent. It began really to look as if circumstance molded itself around the fellow's convenience. This upset the Stendill agent in an odd manner.

Indeed, one may generalize and say that miracles are abhorrent to humanity at large. The inexplicable wears a sinister countenance. It is abhorrent because a human being is essentially a calculating creature, and a miracle connotes an incalculable power. All primitive religious rites are efforts to placate that power to regularity.

Later human sophistication added a moral tinge to religion. That is to say, Man promises to exercise stability of character if he can rely upon the Deity to use the same self control. The relation thus becomes contractual and both parties are bound. By dint of setting a good example before Heaven, modern clergymen have almost entirely suppressed the miraculous. They have regularized the pantheon—almost.

At any rate they have been so successful that a certain school of men has sprung up who claim there never was and there never will be such a thing as a miracle. This, of course, is not only folly, it is ingratitude. They do not consider the trouble the sacerdotes have taken to suppress these aberrations.

These scientists claim to believe in law. Smite a scientist with a miracle and he clings with a sort of pathetic trust, that it all happened through law—an unknown law, that would work ex post facto if ever discovered. This, surely, is madness. Laws are not allowed to work ex post facto; the United States Supreme Court is very clear on that point.

Scientists may justly be called a sect of men exercising blind faith and wilful disregard of the truth against all the canons of reason. Yet among them may be found many lovable and child-like characters.

However, Lassiter was not a scientist. He had no such sustaining faith in a mythical law. He was a hard-headed financial agent, a promoter, an opportunist, who seized on the passing face of circumstance and made the most of it. He acknowledged a miracle grudgingly when he saw one.

And this was a miracle, this rope leading down into emptiness. In an effort at rational explanation, his brain attacked the problem with rat-like persistence. Even if the rope had been of the most ordinary human origin, the probability that the expedition would have stumbled upon it was remote—but for a horseman to bring a lariat, glue it to the cliff and disappear thus leaving Birdsong a mode of descent——

Lassiter stared around the vast burnt pass up which he had clambered; the enormous scarp of the volcano became tinged with a nightmarish quality.

Ezekiel Birdsong, on the other hand, was not even curious about what his comrades were investigating. He accepted it as a matter of fact. He simply said to the Colombian—

“Praise the Lord, Brother Nunes, you've found the way down.” Then he walked to the edge and sized up the situation from a mechanical point of view and said—

“We'll have to tie loops on these bundles and slide 'em down. I can't climb back for every pack.”

Nunes and Birdsong cut up the harness of the dead mules to make traveling loops for the packs. Lassiter sat and smoked and tried to Euclidize the problem before him.

The man who killed their mules escaped by means of this rope. He did not use a flying-machine. The theory of a wonderfully advanced civilization was probably false.

The assailant probably came up out of the abyss—with his horse. Killed the mules and retreated back into it—with his horse? Was dragging a dead mule to the abyss—what for? Was mule an article of diet down there——?

The Stendill agent flung away his cigar. He was getting nowhere.

At this moment Nunes looked up from his work on the loops.

“I don't see how Señor Lassiter will climb down if the precipice gives him the vertigo?”

Mere thought of such a climb threw the promotor into a sort of panic. He began casting about for objections.

“How'll we get out after we get in?”

“Ride out, señor, just as the man did who killed our mules.”

“Ride up this precipice?”

“Señor, you know the man did not ride out up this cliff. He came out by some trail to attack us, and slid down the rope quickly because I was firing at him.”

This was a more nearly reasonable explanation than Lassiter's own.

“How did he know we were just here?”

“No doubt he saw our camp-fire last night.”

Lassiter thought up another objection.

“I'm afraid that rope won't hold us. It's merely glued to the stone. That's all—a little pat of glue.”

“You know, Brother Lassiter, it's bound to hold one man up, if it will lower a gaucho and his horse.”

“But look here, Birdsong, how under high heaven could a man and a horse get down that rope?”

“Just leave that mystery to God, Brother Lassiter, and accept his blessings——”

“Confound it, we're leaving too many mysteries—this thing's getting on my nerves——”

He stood staring into the emptiness of the crater, and presently added—

“No man on earth could lower a horse a hundred-and-fifty feet without a derrick!”

“But, senor, we watched him do it—Ehue. If I live to get back to Quito it will be a proud day when I can say that I, Dom Pedro Balthasar Nunes, saw the King of the Jivaros pick up his stallion by the horn of the saddle and lower it a hundred-and-fifty feet into a volcano.”

Lassiter walked over and ventured to lie down on his stomach and peep over the ledge again. Once more the height made him feel squeamish, but he held his eyes resolutely to their task. To lower a horse to the ledge beneath him, even a derrick would have failed. It would have been necessary to swing the animal inward about fifty feet, land it with precision on a ledge too narrow for a horse's footing. And after that—what went with the horse?

Nobody went down into the abyss with a horse. Yet something had attacked their camp and had escaped down this rope. It had appeared to be a man on horseback. It had used a lariat.

If not a human being, then some monster, some devil, some centaur spawned in the Andes came up with ropes, with a swift and inscrutable method of inflicting death—His head ached with this endless, futile reasoning that went in circles and got nowhere.

THE Stendill agent lay on his belly and stared around at the encircling cliffs. They slept in the brilliant sunshine like some vast amphitheater awaiting the first movement of its tragic games.

Nunes also appeared to be thinking hard. He tied the loops with a preoccupied air and sat with head tilted to one side, so the smoke of his cigaret would not trail up into his eye, long after the fire had gone out. With the tying of the last loop, he threw away the stub, arose and cleared his throat a trifle self-consciously.

“Well, señores, my mules are dead.”

Both Americans looked up at this unnecessary announcement.

“Yes, Brother Nunes?” interrogated Birdsong.

“So I suppose—since my mules are dead why—” he spread his hands and drew down his lips, Latin fashion—“I suppose you have no further use for me.”

Lassiter was discomfited—

“Sure we will! We want you to go along. We can easily arrange a new salary basis.”

“The harvest is white, Brother Nunes, but the laborers are few.”

The Colombian did not look at his protesting friends, but brushed at a speck on his greasy green velvet jacket—

“I am a muleteer, Señor Birdsong, not a priest.”

“But look here,” put in Lassiter, “we need a cook——”

“Nor a cook.”

“Then somebody to help with the packs.”

“I am a muleteer, Señor Lassiter, not a mule.”

“You are not going to turn back on us, Brother Nunes?”

“Well—si, Señor Birdsong.” And after a moment's hesitation—“It does no good to give away the little books.”

“That rests with God, Brother Nunes.”

“Si—certainemente——”

There came a pause. Nunes stood frowning at the deserted tent and the dead mules.

“There is no way to carry on the books, Señor Birdsong, without the mules.”

“We'll find more mules ahead, God willing, Brother Nunes. If we don't, I'll carry them pack by pack a hundred yards at a time until I have spread the blessed Word clear into Brazil.”

Nunes nodded solemnly.

“Si—si—I have heard Of saints, Señor Birdsong—the padre has told me of the blessed saints, but—I am a muleteer.”

“So you will turn back, Brother Nunes?

“My mules are dead, Señor Birdsong.”

The colporteur stood looking at the Colombian with his expressionless face.

“May the grace of God go with you, Brother Nunes, and may He keep watch over you! Now I'm going down, and I'll ask you to shoot down my packs, one by one, so I can get them off without tearing them.”

“Si, señor, with all my heart!”

Nunes was evidently ashamed of himself, but when the muleteer cut himself off from the expedition, it occurred to Lassiter this was really the most sensible thing to do. The promoter was surprized he had not thought of it himself. So assuming a diplomatic manner he began:.

“Look here, Birdsong, Nunes hasn't a bad idea. Why shouldn't all of us go back to Bujeos, fit out more mules and find a better route through the mountains?”

“He that putteth his hand to the plow and turneth back, Brother Lassiter——”

“Aw, here now—” the Stendill agent was annoyed at once at this Biblical quotation—“there's got to be some reason to this thing. We can go back, start over——”

“Brother Lassiter, do you suppose I'd let my Lord and Master stretch a miraculous rope down this bottomless pit for me, and then refuse to go down it? Ain't that a sign my work's down there?”

The Stendill agent made a gesture of protest.

“Our mules are dead.”

“He slew our mules to try our faith, Brother Lassiter.”

“A man in my business,” said the promotor drily, “doesn't work by faith—he goes after what's in sight.”

The colporteur considered him.

“Does that mean you are deserting God's cause, too, Brother Lassiter?”

The word “deserting” annoyed the New Yorker. It seemed ill-chosen and unnecessarily harsh.

“I don't think it wise to go on.”

“The wisdom of men is foolishness with God, Brother Lassiter.”

“I don't mind saying your plan looks like bally foolishness to me—relaying a lot of Bibles into Brazil—— It's mad!”

The colporteur's hard-molded face betrayed neither pique nor regret. Lassiter felt uncomfortable under the stare of his wide-open black eyes. After a moment he arose, walked over to his clothes pack and got out a package of letters.

“Let us part friends, Brother Lassiter,” he said in his perpetual even-tempered drawl. “If we part now, I don't believe we'll ever see each other again on this earth, but I hope I'll meet you in——”

“Yes, yes,” interposed the promoter uncomfortably.

“I hope you don't mind taking these letters back to Guayquill with you, Brother Lassiter, and posting them to Mollie—” He handed over the pack. “Let's see, the postage will be thirty-four cents—” He reached in his pocket and drew out a greasy purse and started to count the exact change.

The Stendill agent made an annoyed gesture.

“For ——'s sake, Birdsong, put up your money—I swear, you have the least sense of proportion—I don't want you to pay me thirty-four cents!”

Birdsong handed over the bundle without further words. The letters evidently had been written at different times. The top one bore the address in almost illegible pencil writing—

Mrs. Mollie Birdsong (saved and sanctified) Birdsong, Ark.

Birdsong shook hands with the two men in a wooden way. Then he asked Nunes to hold his feet and lower him until he could reach down; and catch the rope below the glue.

The Stendill agent watched the feat. Notwithstanding all the strange things that had come up on this journey, the lowering of Birdsong over the cliff was one of the most fantastic.

The colporteur was short and had to be lowered a long way. The two men worked with the nonchalance of steeple jacks. The saddle-colored Colombian, holding the heels of the Arkansan, inched him farther and farther over the brink. Birdsong's head, shoulders, then his whole torso sank out of sight. By this time Nunes was braced heavily to prevent his man from plunging a mile straight down.

“A leetle furder, Brother Nunes,” drawled the colporteur.

“An inch more, señor,” squeezed out the Colombian in a strained voice, “and you'll pull loose!”

“An inch more, Brother Nunes. God'll strengthen yore grip.”

Lassiter stared as the straining muleteer gave another inch. Sweat stood out on his face. Prickling sensations went up and down Lassiter's back. He wondered if the glue would hold——

“All right, Brother Nunes,” came the drawl.

Next moment Ezekiel Birdsong vanished head foremost over the ledge.

As he went out of sight, the question formed in Lassiter's mind, how was it possible for that other man, the slayer of the mules, to reach the rope in black darkness, in a moment's time, if it required such exertions from two such athletes—it would require monkeyish activity—monkeyish—a new possibility flickered before Lassiter. Was the crater a land of great anthropoid apes—an ape on horseback—an ape that could make these strange lariats——

Every explanation that Lassiter could conjure up held a delirious quality. The breath of the ice fields high overhead breathed down on the brooding man. He shivered.

WHEN the Bible packs had been shot down to the Arkansan, Balthasar and Lassiter remained on the cliff, their labors at colporteurage come to an end. Neither of them peered over the cliff at the tiny ant-like, figure toiling at the bundles far below them. But although he refused to look, Lassiter saw the little orange-striped man distinctly.

The men on the cliff avoided each other's eyes. Nunes rolled himself a shuck cigaret, then sat tapping and tapping it on his thumb nail. Lassiter drew out his pigskin case, and his fingers automatically went through the performance of choosing and applying a cigar to his lips, and lighting it. High overhead, about two-thirds of the height of the mountains, circled three or four black specks inspecting the motionless forms of the mules, and the equally motionless men.

The flavor of Lassiter's cigar reminded him of Birdsong's remark in Bryant Park that God did not like the odor of tobacco, that He preferred lilac, because Ezekiel and Mollie had been married under a lilac bush in Arkansas. How anthropomorphic!

The promoter visioned that marriage—the circuit rider in rusty black; the bride and groom with rustic finery concealing their vital bodies, while above and behind them glowed the lilac—a certain sense of futility, of emptiness, that comes at times to all unwed men, fell over the promoter.

Here he was, thirty-nine, sitting on this vast infernal lava drift, and there was not a person in the world to whom he could send letters, if he meditated plunging to destruction, except his resignation to M. L. N. Morrow. Perhaps he ought to have married one of the stenographers——

And he was soft, with a core-reaching softness that comes of thirteen years at paper work. He was so soft that he was allowing a fanatical colporteur to scramble down alone into an extinct volcano, along sinister ropes, toward a murderous agency that inflicted death in the most mysterious manner, that dragged dead mules and vanished down enormous cliffs at midnight—and this colporteur was a kind of friend, too; crude and annoying, but still a friend—so this was the knight errant, the adventurer, who, thirteen years ago had entered the Stendill offices seeking romance! This deserter.

Lassiter tossed away his cigar and arose.

“Balthasar,” he said briskly, “I think I've made a business mistake. I've really got to go down—” he flipped his thumb toward the chasm—“after all. Pure business with me—”

The promoter hesitated. The saddle-colored green jacket sat appraising him. After a moment Lassiter went on:

“I'm going to tell you why I came out here—I'm looking for locations to open supply depots for airships.”

Balthasar nodded casually—

“Airships——”

“Yes, did you think I was a muleteer?”

“No, absolulemente—I wondered——”

“Well, that's it, and it just struck me that this crater would make a wonderful hangar and tourist depot. No heavy winds can strike a ship down there. The place is large enough to maneuver in. It is one of the most magnificent scenes to be found on earth——”

Balthasar nodded soberly:

“Si, señor, I have been thinking about señor Birdsong, too. I am like you, señor; never before did Dom Pedro Balthasar Nunes desert his camarado for man or devil.”

The promoter was faintly piqued when he saw the Colombian placed no credence in his account of the aviation project. However that was of no moment; Lassiter set about getting certain belongings of his down the rope; then he would rejoin his fellow adventurer. He shouted this news down to Birdsong. From far below he heard an indistinct—

“Praise the Lord.”

NUNES contrived a sort of ship's ladder made out of harness to get the Stendill agent over the lip of the precipice to the rope. Then the Colombian put loops around Lassiter's chest and knees and looped him to the line as if he had been another bundle. He fixed leather guards for Lassiter's hands and showed him how to hold the rope. Lassiter backed down to the ladder, and by looking carefully at the pat of glue, kept his head.

Then he loosed the little companionway, and the glue and cliff rushed upward pulling a long silky rope through his hands. It seemed to Lassiter he was descending with the speed of a free fall. The little ledge sprung at him and struck him a jarring blow. He sat there, tied to his rope, jolted and somewhat stunned until Birdsong loosed him.

Nunes sailed down as gracefully as a swallow. He held the rope with his legs and one hand while he waved his sombrero with the other. Birdsong took occasion to speak a word of warning about “the filthy vanity of the flesh.”

For some queer reason this stricture rather pleased both the friends. They were warm from the glow of self-sacrifice.

Birdsong had cached all his Bibles except one pack. Now he chose two more packs, a little one for Lassiter. The caching was simple, a mere piling of the books in the cavetto of this vast entablature that ringed a twenty-mile circumference.^[1] There was no danger to the Bibles from rain or snow on account of the overhang.

Lassiter hefted his pack, got it on to his shoulder and moved tentatively down the ledge he had seen from the rim.

It was considerably wider than he had thought, and it caused him to renew his speculation concerning the possibility of landing a horse on its surface. The horse might have stuck, but the question arose why any one would want a horse in such a place. It did not seem to be a road down after all. Lassiter was forced to walk with his pack of Bibles on his outer shoulder, and to hold on to the cusps, or air pockets, in the outsweep of lava above his head. The ledge dwindled to a shelf, and after forty or fifty yards, the shelf became a mere wrinkle in the face of the mile-high wall.

It occurred to Lassiter, as he inched along that this little fold could very well slant back up the cavetto, or turn straight down, or tail out to nothing in the vast concavity. He had assumed, since a rope led to it, that' it was a path down. But as the way grew less and less practicable, he realized that he was down there, and he could never reclimb that hundred and fifty feet of rope and regain the rim.

His fingers grew tired of clinging to the abrasive lava, and sore. If the thing that attacked the camp were a monkey, how could three men with packs hope to duplicate its simian descent? A kind of amazement grew in Lassiter that he had followed Birdsong so rashly. On the heels of his amazement followed the repentance of a man who has committed a generous, impulsive act.

There is a cliché current in moralistic circles that no one ever regrets an unselfish act. In reality few deeds bring more bitter penitence. When a man acts selfishly and loses, he has the consolation of knowing he did the best he could for himself.

It was a mistake of the head, not of the heart. But when he acts charitably, he is nearly always motived by some unaccustomed impulse that springs abruptly into action, moves him to some rash goodness, then cooling, leaves its victim to meditation and remorse.

So Lassiter crept along, abusing himself for having wandered into this vertical cul de sac, for marooning himself, on the face of a gigantic cliff. Birdsong on the other hand footed the wrinkle with entire self-confidence. And even that displeased Lassiter. Why had he followed such a goatish fellow? So profound was his disgust, it actually tickled his pneumogastric nerve into the first faint flutterings of nausea.

Around a turn in the precipice, sure enough, the unevenness they followed smoothed out, but at its end, another silken rope dropped to a thread-like walkway sixty or seventy feet below. It became evident, after all, they were following a hazardous, but defined trail down this mile of concavity.

The two men passed their packs to Birdsong, who shot them down, then the colporteur went; Nunes strapped on Lassiter's loops, and the promoter followed the missionary. After them came Nunes with a flourish.

Along this crease Lassiter was forced to lift his inner foot high and bend his knee outward before it had room to pass between his outer leg and the cliff. His Bible pack raked the wall and pressed him gently outward.

The Stendill agent kept his eyes rigidly on his footing, its ups and downs, and in equalities. He tried to receive no impression of the landscape far below him.

But he could not avoid sensing the illumination of his situation. The cliff that swung out over his head shut off all sunshine, but a strong greenish reflection beat up from the landscape below on the under side of the cliff. It poured up through his legs. He could see it shining under the brim of his sombrero.

No matter how rigidly he avoided seeing the landscape, that up-beating brilliance registered the enormousness of his height in every nerve of his body. He could feel the chasm in the calves of his legs, along the inner sides of his arms, in his diaphragm. He could imagine himself falling—falling interminably down this abyss of light. His head felt queer.

He was not sure whether his fingers had found a cusp and were holding to the cliff. It came to him as a sort of discovery that he had stopped climbing and was standing unsteadily clinging to something. His hands and feet seemed detached, and a long way from him.

Then he heard Nunes and Birdsong shouting from vast distances. Birdsong's voice said:

“Take his pack, brother Nunes, and lean him right forward on mine—Lemme run my right arm through that loop—all right, careful now—If anything happens to us, brother Nunes, I hope I'll meet you up yonder where they ain't no more sorrow nor troub——”

SYNCOPE produces no perceptible hiatus in the flow of consciousness, merely a jump, a dislocation, a picking up of ordered impressions out of nowhere.

When Lassiter regained his senses, he discovered first that the temperature had greatly increased. When he gained a little more concentration, he saw he was far down the side of the cliff, and the flat green at the bottom, of the crater had resolved itself into the crests of trees with cultivated plots up near the northern half of the circle. The lake near the center of the vast amphitheater was of considerable size and lay beneath him, as blue as sapphire.

Birdsong arose from where he sat and was about to pick the promoter up again when he saw Lassiter's eyes were open.

“Are you all right?” he asked cordially.

The Stendill agent was thoroughly ashamed. He got himself weakly together.

“This is a —— of a stroke I pulled,” he said in a sick man's aspirate.

“You'll be O. K. pretty soon. Not so high here.”

“Don't see how you ever got me down?”

“I never could have, Brother Lassiter, if the Lord hadn't strengthened my arm, bless His holy name!”

Lassiter looked up. He had evidently been shot down a tremendously long silken rope that had landed him here. He was now at the top of the detritus that had fallen from the overhang and the going from there down was rough but not dangerous. He picked himself up presently and started shakily down through the huge boulders.

The three men disturbed an eagle nesting among the stones. The great bird launched itself into space with a whistling of feathers and flapped with slow strokes through the diamond-like sunshine toward the forest below. A few hundred feet down, they observed two young vicunas playing among the cliffs. Later, they stopped at a spring set with ferns and drank.

They were just climbing down into a sub-tropical country. After the bleak Andean scenery this kindliness of nature was as grateful as sunshine to beggars.

Lassiter's spirits began to revive. The commercial possibilities of the situation impressed him. Here were the temperature, the sunshine and glamour of the Riviera in an Alpine setting. Almost involuntarily he began projecting a tourist folder describing the place. He could see a clump of royal palms on the southern edge of the lake that would make a good picture.

On the front of his folder, he would have a picture in color showing the great reddish height of the volcano's wall with mountain peaks towering above its rim. The beauty and vastness of his surroundings went through his nerves like a cold wind, and yet at the same time he continued thinking of his brochure. He thought of it just as an artist thinks pictures when looking upon magnificence. It was his profession. He would call it, “See the Riviera in the Andes.”

Lassiter surveyed the scene with a sort of exaltation. Out near that lake he would construct an enormous tourist hotel. There would be sailing and fishing on its waters. Golf links would ring its blue expanse. A motor drive would follow the sixty-mile circuit of the cliffs——

By this time they were approaching the sunshine that lay beyond the shadow of the overhang. Birdsong and Lassiter were abreast with Nunes a little distance ahead.

Birdsong walked so sturdily and was so much shorter than Lassiter that the promoter felt a return of shame that he had forced this little man to carry him down the cliff.

“How far did you pack me, Birdsong?” he asked after a moment.

“Not far, Brother Lassiter, from about right up there—” he pointed at a distant indeterminate spot in the towering cliffs—“to about there”—the top of the detritus.

The promoter stared up and shivered.

Birdsong noted the rigor and proceeded in his nasal drawl:

“Why don't you make ready to meet your God, Brother Lassiter? You're a sinner and you know it.”

Lassiter looked around impatiently at the question. Birdsong continued:

“The only sure thing in life is death, Brother Lassiter. All of us has got to die. Your time may come before morning; hadn't you better get ready to meet your Maker?”

It annoyed Lassiter to have Birdsong talking of death. Death, whose black robes he had brushed half an hour ago, had again withdrawn itself to a respectful distance. In his heart, Lassiter felt that death would show a certain consideration for the worth and consequence of Charles Lassiter. Death would come at the end of a long and useful life. It was crude of Birdsong to bring up such a remote unpleasantness. So he changed the subject by asking—

“What is that droning sound, bees?”

Birdsong listened.

“It sounds like Mollie spinning.”

They were rounding a huge fallen boulder. Nunes, who was in front, came to a stop just beyond the obstruction. With a gesture he drew the attention of his comrades.

ABOUT fifty feet down the slope, among a scarlet grouping of poinsettias stood a vast brown man. His back was to the trio.

His huge tun of a body had the humpbacked look characteristic of the exceedingly obese. He had no neck. A great head fitted down into an expanse of shoulders. His straight black hair was done up into a sort of knot on top of his head, and was decorated with a blue heron feather.

At first he seemed to wear no clothes, but as he made certain bending movements in his work, a breech clout became visible among the rolls of flesh about his hips and buttocks. The invisible clout, quipa-palm sandals and the feather formed his raiment.

He sweated prodigiously. Drops of sweat trickled down his brown bulk as if he stood under an invisible fountain. In the brilliant sunshine these trickling drops gave him the appearance of being sequined with moving jewels. When he bent his arms, his elbows were but the gentlest of curves.

The colossus was engaged in an operation as delicate as he was gross. He was tying, or rather sticking, a long glistening cord from one flaming poinsettia to another. He had quite a network. Among the flowers droned dozens of humming birds. They made a blur of color moving about among the scarlet racemes.

While the men stared, one of these living jewels settled on a cord to rest. It stuck. The fat man waddled to it and picked off the little captive before it had time to gum its wings. He bit off its head. Then he pressed in his abdomen with a grunt, stooped and laid the beheaded bird in a basket. The basket glowed with other humming birds. It was half full. Its brilliancy was greater than that of jewels.

As the mammoth straightened, he caught a side glimpse of his audience. He came to a stand, took four paddling steps to turn his bulk and face his observers.

The eyes that regarded Lassiter were shining black slits in a rolling brown expanse. His jowls spread out over his chest. Yet with it all there was a poise, a dignity about the naked brown man as ponderous as his corpus.

Nunes removed his sombrero and began in his usual Quichua:

“Señor, you see before you three-alms men of God, not priests but honest thieves who come begging you to receive a little book of miraculous virtues. This holy book is good for aches, wounds, sores, scalds, boils, ulcers, carbuncles, the dengue, marasmus and the calentures. A tea made from its leaves removes the discomforts of pregnant women. Balky donkeys have been known to labor willingly when the dust off of this sacred volume was blown into their ears. A long drought was miraculously broken by——”

There was much more to Nunes' oration and the vast man heard it to the end with a mountain-like patience. When the Colombian came to a definite stop, the behemoth disregarded it all with a completeness that was droll and turned to Lassiter.

“Where did you men come from?” he asked in a queer sort of Quichua.

“From over the rim, señor,” Lassiter made an upward gesture.

The colossus nodded—

“A man came over the rim once before, señor; no doubt he was a kinsman of yours.”

Lassiter was amazed at this deduction and was about to answer when the giant proceeded in his purring baritone—

“He was pale, like you, a kinsman, no doubt——”

Again Lassiter started to demur, but the purr wandered on:

“No doubt he was your kinsman, and that you are now searching for your kins-people here in Motobatl. I am sorry to say, señor, you will find few of your kins-people left. There is only your kinsman's great grandson, a great granddaughter, your eighth cousin; his third nephew once crossed, your seventh cousin twice removed; his great niece, Prymoxl, who, poor woman is now heavy and sad with her sixteenth child, and there is Prymoxl's daughter, Tilita, your seventh prima—if you will follow me, I will show them all to you and allow you to hold long conversations with your kinsfolk. Just follow me.”

Here the vast man lifted his voice and called—

“Quiz-Quiz!”

A little hunchbacked Indian came out of a tangle of flowers, where he had evidently been asleep.

“Bring my basket.”

Then, with a sort of elephantine courtesy he motioned the men to follow him and moved off through the poinsettias into a park of tropical trees.

This deluge of genealogy left Lassiter entirely at loss. It was too detailed for a sweeping denial. Then a thought crossed his mind that perhaps there was some covert reason why he would do well to enter this strange place as a kinsman. If they were the Jivaros, being kin might save him from being cooked. He could make nothing at all of it. Finally, he said tentatively, over the dripping brown shoulder, as a sort of straw to test the wind:

“I'm afraid I shan't have time to see so many kinsmen. Tomorrow, I go on east into Brazil.”

The behemoth honored this communication by stopping dead still, making six rotating shuffles and facing the New Yorker.

“Go east?”

“Yes, señor.”

“Out of Motobatl?”

“Into Brazil, señor.”

The colossus stood staring at Lassiter out of an impassive face. After several moments he said:

“You are indeed a kinsman of that ancient man who came into Motobatl-one-hundred-and-ninety-seven years ago. He too, desired to get out of Motobatl. I have his whole story knotted into a quippus by my great grandfather, Gogoma, whose name I have the honor to bear.”

Here he made a slight bulbous bow.

“My great grandfather gave your great grandfather thirty-three strands from the center of the web of the Sun in order that your great grandfather might lime eagles and fly out of Motobatl. Your great grandfather limed eagles for five years. He was a joyful man during those years, so says the quippus, and when he captured an eagle, he would come to my great grandfather and say, 'Holy Gogoma, I am a happy mortal, I am another eagle nearer home.'

“In five years he caught twelve. Then he bade my grandfather adieu, took his eagles up to a high cliff and leaped off. But the eagles struggled in different directions, and your grandfather fell and was dashed to pieces. That is why he never returned to his people, and why you are here.”

During this grotesque recital, the modern Gogoma panted heavily ahead, sweating profusely. Whether the whole anecdote were concocted for the occasion or not, Lassiter did not know, but it expressed an alarming state of fact—or fiction.

“Do you mean, señor,” he asked blankly, “that there is no way out of Motobatl?”

“There has not been, señor,” purred the fat man casually, “since the priests carved the temple of the Sun. How warm it is today.”

 

1. The circumference of the truncated volcano, Motobatl, is twenty-two miles and one hundred and seventy yards at the rim, north and south, and three hundred yards less than that figure, east and west. At its base it is exactly twenty-three miles north and south; twenty-three, two hundred and thirty east and west. Mr. Lassiter's descriptions are necessarily impressionistic. This and other corrections are made in no spirit of captiousness, but merely to give any interested reader or traveler correct details.