Part 15 (2/2)

I rushed down these steps with a loud, glad cry, and below I hastened like a madman, here and there, pa.s.sing along the walls, crossing at random that wide, gloomy subterranean room.

Everywhere was gold, stacked upon the floor, piled against the walls. I saw golden chalices and cups, bracelets, rings and girdles; great jugs of gold and golden basins, besides bars and ingots that one might have counted by the thousand.

I know not why it was, but the very sight of it made me dizzy, as I staggered blindly about that wondrous place. At times I slipped and stumbled, and at other times I fell between those glittering stacks, to find myself--as Amos Baverstock had said in my hearing--knee-deep in the very stuff that has made the world as wicked as it is.

And then, at last, I sat down upon I know not what, save that it was gold. The very sight that I had seen had exhausted me far more than all my travels and privations. I felt sick at heart and weary. I looked about me with tired and dreamy eyes.

It seemed to me strange--now that I had beheld this wonder--that I had endured so much for sake of it. How had it come to pa.s.s that men prized so highly what after all is no more than yellow metal? Here was enough of it, in very truth, to serve the needs of a nation; and here it had lain for four hundred years--and the world was none the worse. How little of this vast treasure would be enough for me, or even Amos Baverstock, in spite of all his greed!

It frightened me--and that is the truth of it. I could not think what I should do if all this precious wealth were mine. And then I wondered if I had any right to call it mine just because it was mine for the moment to gaze upon, to regard in breathless bewilderment and fear.

You may behold that which you never own, as you may own that which you never see. Boy though I was, so much was clear to me as daylight. Nor had I any reason to suppose that I was the first to look upon this marvel, since the fugitives from Cuzco, centuries ago, had carried it across the mountains to hide it in this secret place. John Bannister himself, perhaps, had looked upon it, though he had never told me so. If it belonged to any living man, all this wealth was his.

I felt by now as if I were about to faint; and besides, my torch was burning low. And therefore I got unsteadily upon my feet and walked into the little outer room, and thence ascended the steps in the broad light of day. And there I stood breathing deeply, with my eyes closed and my mouth parched as if by thirst.

On a sudden I cast my burning torch into the brook before me, and fell upon my knees and prayed to G.o.d. I prayed aloud, as if the living trees and running water and the red stones about me could all hear my prayer.

And it was the Lord's Prayer that I had learned at my mother's knee; for, boy though I was, I felt that which I had looked upon was the very pith and kernel of all temptation to which, since Eden, humanity was heir.

CHAPTER XVIII--I FALL IN WITH A FRIEND

I sat for many hours that morning, idle and oppressed by a feeling as of emptiness. What use to me was all the wealth that I had seen--or, for the matter of that, to any one? I had no means at my disposal to take a millionth part of it away.

And then I remembered Amos, and thought it my duty to take what steps I could to see that that dread man should never solve the riddle of the Red Fish, though it was unlikely he would find the place without the aid of my fragment of the map.

The sight of all that gold had, as it were, unnerved me--filled me with a kind of weariness of life. I cannot say exactly how it was, but I know that I had lost, on a sudden, all my energy and enthusiasm; and it was late in the afternoon before I bestirred myself and got to work.

I lowered the great slab and covered it with earth, which I trampled down with my bare feet. Then I went into the woods and dug up plants with my Indian knife, and these I stuck in the ground so that I made a little garden. One shower of tropic rain and they would take root and grow, and thus hide all trace of how the soil had been disturbed. And looking up at the sky, where it was visible here and there between the branches of the trees above me, I saw that such a shower was coming.

The rain fell that evening, when I was camped once more in the woods towards the east, having gone back the way that I had come, following the course of the Brook of Scarlet Pebbles. I took shelter from the rain beneath a tree, the great leaves of which formed a veritable roof above me, so that not one drop of water fell upon the fire that I had kindled.

I ate my simple meal, and then lay down, not to sleep, but to think and to listen to the rain, beating with a noise like many drums upon the leaves.

Well, I had seen the Treasure of the Incas. With my own eyes I had beheld it. And I asked myself if I were any the better for it, and could not see that I was. For gold is mud, and part of man is mud; and yet there is a great G.o.d who is above, around and within us all. And that night, as I lay awake in the woods, listening to the drumming of the rain, I tried to think out such problems as man has not yet begun to understand--problems that, perhaps, he may never solve on this side of the grave.

No doubt, the constant propinquity of danger had made me serious for my years. I had lived for many months in the wilderness, and my pulse now beat in rhythm with the earth. The forest, the majestic mountains I had seen at sunrise, the sky of stars above the plain--all these were mysteries to me, wondrous and eternal. But there was neither eternity nor mystery in the work of man; in gold, in the rusted sword of Orellano's soldier, or Cahazaxa's Temple.

I saw quite clearly now that this hidden treasure was no affair of mine.

I had lived happily for months as Nature meant me to, and the sum total of my wealth had been my blow-pipe and the knife that Atupo, the priest, had given me. I now understood--far better than I had done at the time--all John Bannister had told me of his dread of cities and of people. I, too, would like to live my life far from the abodes of men, with the little shy things as my friends, in the chamber of the Wild.

For the very sight of the Treasure of Kings had frightened me. Four hundred years it had lain there, beneath the ground, like a great, harmful dragon; and it seemed to me that to let this monster loose upon the world would be a bold thing to do--to saddle my conscience with a load of responsibility such as I was never strong enough to bear. I wished now that I was not one of the few who had solved this precious riddle.

And yet I was not sure of anything, for the gold tempted me sorely. I was tempted more than I can say. If I had now learned to understand something of John Bannister's ideals, I saw also, with alarming clarity, the motives that swayed the deeds of Amos Baverstock. Gold to him was a living force, the origin of all his strength and evil, the prompter of his actions. Once or twice that night was I tempted to return to the Red Fish that I might feast my eyes again upon the Treasure.

I told myself that I had not seen enough of it. I was like a drunkard who had tasted wine. I wondered what worth it had in coinage that I knew, and I set to thinking how I would spend so vast a sum.

But these were thoughts only of the night-time, in the darkness and the silence of the woods. I fell asleep at last, sick at heart and wretched; but dawning day came to me with comfort, and I continued on my journey with new hopes and prospects.

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