Part 27 (2/2)

We remained for two weeks at the Temple, during which time Atupo personally attended to Rushby's wound, bathing it with a decoction made from a herb that he procured in the forest. Whatever this was it proved, at any rate, effective; for the wound soon healed, and the boatswain was at last able to walk with the aid of a stick.

We then set forward upon our journey towards the west, bidding good-bye to the quaint people whom we had already learned to love. We crossed the plain and that marvellous suspension bridge that had existed for centuries, and stands--for all I know--to this day, as evidence of the bygone civilisation of a great and ancient people. We came to the valley in which lay the Wood of the Red Fish; but we pa.s.sed so far to the south that we did no more than see it dimly through the thick morning haze that lay between the hills. And after that we entered into a country very different from any we had yet seen--a land of high mountains and deep valleys, clothed with trees.

We were days upon our march across the Andes. We were obliged to progress by easy stages, because Rushby was half a cripple. There, in the highlands, we found a mild, simple people, engaged in agricultural pursuits, tending large flocks of llamas, or Peruvian sheep. From village to village we went, like beggars, and were always treated with hospitality and kindness.

At last we gained the crestline of those immortal mountains, and could see, both to the north and to the south of us, peak upon peak, rugged and inaccessible, towering like giants into the sky. Thence we descended to the narrow tableland, where the gra.s.s was knee-deep and native villages were many.

All this was a journey of several weeks, and yet, in more ways than one, something in the nature of a pleasant picnic after the hards.h.i.+ps and the perils we had been called upon to face.

Sleeping night by night beneath the stars, wayfarers among the glorious and rugged hills, we had learned the art of comrades.h.i.+p. We found that there was good even in Forsyth and the sleepy, idle Vasco; and fortunate, indeed, is he who never travels in worse company than that of men like Bannister and Rushby.

And so, upon a certain day at sunset, I was strangely conscious of a feeling of sadness when I knew that we were come to the end of our adventures, and that we soon must part. We stood then on a steep bluff, and looked down upon a narrow strip of sea-board, populous with towns and hamlets, with fertile fields between; and so we came to the seash.o.r.e, and saw the sun go down upon the wide and golden Pacific Ocean.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”AND SO WE CAME TO THE Sh.o.r.e AND SAW THE SUN GO DOWN UPON THE WIDE AND GOLDEN PACIFIC OCEAN.”]

And now my story is told. Since those days I have ventured often in the wild places of the world--upon great open s.p.a.ces, amid the summits of unknown mountains, in dense, steaming forests--but never again have I journeyed to the Wood of the Red Fish. Nor, to my certain knowledge, did any of the others.

In that, as in much else, we thought alike. Let the Inca gold lie in the dust, where it has lain for above four hundred years. He who will may yet go forth to find it. As for me, whenever I remember that dread Wood I see the gold, stacked and glimmering in the torch-light, and I hear the wild, mad laughter of Amos Baverstock as he fled before us, and see him once again and hear his piercing shriek, when he was caught in the silent, stealthy coils that crushed that evil man to death before our very eyes. And I ask G.o.d to have mercy on us who are yet alive, and to save us from a like living and ending.

THE END.

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