Bert Wilson at Panama Part 13

It was not a long walk to the engineer's tent, and they made short work of it. Needless to say, Mr. Hartley was more than glad to see them, and expressed himself cordially.

"Sit down, sit down!" he said heartily, after he had shaken hands with them. "I've been looking forward to this visit with great pleasure. I'm used to a pretty active life, and I hate to be laid up even for a day.

The doctor tells me I've got to have a complete rest for a few days, though, and I suppose he knows best."

"Well, the doctor isn't always right in these cases," said Bert, with a smile, "although he probably is in this. I remember a good joke I heard about that once."

"Go ahead and tell it to us," urged Mr. Hartley.

"Oh, it's about an Irishman, Mike we'll call him, who had been sick for a long time. At last the day came, when, to all appearances, he had finally given up the ghost, and the family physician was as called in more as a matter of form than anything else. He made the customary tests, and at last p.r.o.nounced poor Mike dead. But just then Mike suddenly sat up in bed. 'You're a liar, docther!' he said. 'Oi'm not dead at all, at all.' But at this point his wife stepped up. 'There, there, Mike,' she said, soothingly, 'lie down again. The 'doctor knows best.'"

There was a roar at this.

"Ha, ha!" laughed Mr. Hartley, "that's a pretty good one. That man must have held a large life insurance policy, I should say, judging by his wife's conduct."

"Very likely," grinned Bert. "But I can't vouch for that."

Mr. Hartley then related one or two of his pet stories, and soon they were all on the best of terms. After a while the conversation drifted around to local topics, and the boys were much interested in Mr.

Hartley's description of places and happenings in the country bordering the "big ditch."

"Yes, there are more curious and unheard of places in this little strip of country than in any other place I know of, comparable to it in size,"

he said. "Why, if a quarter of the stories the natives tell are true, it is a veritable wonderland. And I think some of them are true. With my own eyes I have seen some of the things they talk about."

"Tell us of some of them, won't you?" requested Bert, and the engineer seemed nothing loath.

"There is one experience in particular that comes to my mind," he said, "that I have always meant to follow up at the first opportunity. It was while quite a party of us were out hunting, with three of the natives as guides. It was along toward the beginning of operations on the ca.n.a.l, and we were held up by a delay in delivering some of the machinery, so had plenty of time on our hands. Well, as I say, we started out bright and early one morning, led by the three guides, who had brought a strange story into camp. They told us of a ruined city they had discovered in the heart of the jungle. According to them, this old town covered miles of territory, and was presided over by some demon who claimed the lives of all who penetrated within its boundaries. And we were led to give some credence to their story by the fact that while they agreed to guide us to the city, they expressly stipulated that we should not require them to guide us further than its boundaries. They would stay outside, they said, and take the news of our death back to camp. They seemed to have no doubt that the demon would 'get us,' and you may be sure our curiosity was greatly excited.

"I and four others of the corps of construction engineers resolved to run this mysterious devil to the ground, and so, as soon as we could make the necessary arrangements, started out. We soon entered the jungle, and made steady progress. As far as we could judge we went almost due south.

We traveled with hardly a stop other than long enough to eat, that first day, and only stopped when darkness made further progress impossible.

"We were up bright and early the next morning, and about noon caught our first glimpse of the ruined city. Way down a clearing in the jungle, we could see tall white pillars, many of them partly hidden by creeping vines.

"We all broke into a run, and in an hour or so were on the outskirts of the old city. And believe me, my lads, at one time that had been a city with a capital C! It had evidently been laid out in well ordered streets and squares, and everywhere houses were bordered by the remains of what had been great temples and buildings. Most of them were on the ground, mere heaps of ruins, but a few were still standing, at least in part, and we could get a faint idea of what the old city must have been in those far off days of its prime. At present, though, it seemed to be the abode only of wild things.

"We gazed in wonder at this sight for some time, and then held a pow-wow.

We had a long discussion as to whether we should start exploring at once, or wait till the next morning.

"We finally decided on the latter plan, as, in spite of our blastings about wanting to shake hands with the presiding devil, we really had no great hankering to meet him after dark. Of course, we none of us believed in that 'devil' business, but still we had no doubt that some secret menace hung over the old city. The guides were positive on this point, and as they had been right so far, we were inclined to give their opinions some consideration."

Here Mr. Hartley paused as though to gather his thoughts, and the three boys, who had been listening intently to his narrative, drew a deep breath.

"My!" exclaimed Tom, "make out we wouldn't like to have been with you then."

"Yes, I daresay you would," said Mr. Hartley, with a smile, as he noted the eager longing in the eyes of his listeners. "I think it would have been an adventure after your own heart. But wait till you hear the rest, and you may be glad you were not along."

"I doubt it," said Bert, "but go on with the story, if you please, Mr.

Hartley."

CHAPTER XI

THE DESERTED CITY

"Well," resumed Mr. Hartley, "we made camp, as that appeared to be the desire of the majority, and turned in, as soon as we had eaten supper.

We were all dead tired after the long journey, and I guess none of us were troubled in our sleep by thoughts of the strange spirit of evil that ruled the city, according to the natives. It's a lucky thing, sometimes, that you can't see into the future. If we could have done so that night, our sleep might have been less sound.

"We were awakened by the guides, who had already prepared a good breakfast for us, and you may be sure we all ate heartily, both because it tasted good and because we wanted to start out on our exploration in good trim.

"The meal despatched, we entered the ruins by what had apparently at one time been a great gate, but which now was nothing but a twisted heap of stone. Evidently the city had been encircled by a wall, but this had crumbled away and was overgrown by the tropical vegetation.

"Of course, we had to leave the guides behind us, as they positively refused to pa.s.s the boundaries. This didn't cause us much worry, however, for we knew from experience that, when it came to trouble, they were of little use.

"The ruins lay before us apparently devoid of any human inhabitants. At first we didn't know which way to go, but finally decided to make straight for what looked to have been the center of the town. As well as we could make out, all the streets seemed to converge toward that point, which had no doubt been the public square.

"We followed this plan, but as we went along were often tempted to alter it. More than once we pa.s.sed some building that seemed in better repair than the others, and of course we wanted to explore it. But we thought it would be no use examining lesser ruins, when greater ones were at hand. For, as we got nearer the center of the town, we could see that the square was occupied by a building much more pretentious than any we had seen so far. From a distance it had looked merely like a jumbled ma.s.s of ruins, but when we at last stood before it we could see that such was far from being the case.

"To be sure, the building was in a ruinous condition, but, probably owing to its having originally been built in a more solid fashion even than its neighbors, it was in comparatively good preservation. Even the roof appeared intact in places, and we marveled as we gazed at it. Great columns rose tier after tier, interspersed with solid walls of granite, until they supported a roof at least eighty or a hundred feet from the ground. The facade was ornamented profusely with carvings of men and animals, some of them very well done, indeed.

"We realized that this building and its fellows must have been the production of some highly developed form of civilization, and many were the speculations as to who the ancient people could have been.

"But we soon got tired of looking at the outside, and were all seized with a desire to explore the wonderful place. Its main entrance was little obstructed, and there was nothing to prevent our going in. It was as black as pitch inside, although the sun was shining brightly, and we cast about for same means of lighting the interior. We secured some resinous f.a.gots from a great tree that had sprung up near by, and found that they burned brightly and would serve our purpose perfectly.

"Each one of us armed himself with one of these, then, and took another along in reserve. In this fashion we invaded the ancient temple, for such we believed it to be, not without, it must be confessed, a rather chilly feeling in the neighborhood of the spine. At least, I felt that way, and I have no doubt the others did, too. However, we all carried revolvers, and felt confident that if the mysterious 'demon' attacked us, we would be able to give him a sharp argument.

"Nevertheless we kept closely together, and were inclined to believe firmly in the old adage that 'in numbers there is strength.' We had no difficulty in climbing over the fallen blocks enc.u.mbering the entrance, and soon found ourselves fairly on the inside. The place had a damp, earthy smell, and the air was very close and oppressive. It was black as pitch, too, and the light from our improvised torches did little to dispel the gloom.

"However, it would never do to back out now, so we advanced cautiously, stumbling every once in a while over some fallen piece of masonry. Our footsteps rang and echoed under the great vault that we could hardly see, so lofty it was. It seemed almost sacrilege to disturb the silence of this building, that had probably not echoed to human footsteps for centuries.

"We kept on, nevertheless, until we were halted suddenly by an exclamation from one of the men in front.

"Look, look!" he exclaimed, pointing with a trembling finger. We followed its direction, and I distinctly felt my hair rise on my head.

For there, high up near the roof, two green eyes glared down at us with a baleful sparkle! They glinted and glowed, and a gasp went up from our little party.

"'By all that's holy, what is it?' whispered Tom Bradhurst, my special friend.

"No one answered, but we all got a tight grip on our revolver b.u.t.ts. We gazed, fascinated, at those two lambent points of light, fully expecting to come to hand grips with the 'demon' then and there. As nothing happened, however, we plucked up courage enough to advance cautiously, and were soon near enough to make out the cause of our fright. The eyes were two great emeralds set in the head of a colossal idol carved out of a great block of solid granite! The image must have been at least thirty feet high, and the emeralds were each as large as a robin's egg.

"'Great Scott!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bob Winters, another of our party, "that thing has scared me out of ten years of life, and I'm going to have my revenge.

I'm going to climb up there and get those emeralds, if it takes a leg.

Why, there'll be a fortune in them for all of us."

"We tried to dissuade him, for our nerves had been shaken, and we didn't want to monkey with the confounded things. Bob was always a dare-devil chap, though, and set on having his own way. So he went at it, climbing nimbly up the front of the image, until he was in a position to touch the great emeralds. Then he drew his hunting knife and commenced prying away at the stones to dislodge them.

"Suddenly he gave the most unearthly shriek it has ever been my lot to hear, threw his hands up over his head, and started sliding down the steep front of the statue. While the shriek yet rang in our ears, a great section of what had appeared to be solid rock flooring at the base of the idol opened inward, and our comrade's body hurtled through the aperture and disappeared from our sight. His hunting knife rattled on the stones at our feet, and then all was silence.