The Inca Emerald Part 20

His slim body shot down out of sight in the dim, tepid water.

The seconds went by, with no sign of him, until he had been under fully three minutes. Just as they all began to be alarmed for his safety, his gray head suddenly shot two feet out of the water near where he had gone down. Puffing like a porpoise, with a few quick strokes he reached the edge of the raft and tossed on its surface something which clinked as it struck the logs.

There, gleaming in the sunlight, was a bird of solid gold, which looked like a crow, with outspread wings, and which was set thickly with rough emeralds as large as an ordinary marble.

With a cheer, Joe and Will gripped Jud's shoulders and pulled him over the side of the raft, where he lay panting in the sunlight, while the treasure was pa.s.sed from hand to hand.

It was nearly a foot long, and so heavy that it must have handicapped the old man considerably in his dash for the surface.

"Pretty good for a start," puffed Jud happily, as he too examined the gleaming bird. "Unless I miss my guess," he went on earnestly, "the great emerald that old Jim has got his heart set on is down there, too.

The bottom is pretty well silted over, but I scrabbled through the mud with my hands, an' when I struck this I figured out that I had just enough breath left to reach the top; but just as I was leavin', my fingers touched somethin' oval an' big as a hen's egg. It was pretty deep in the mud, and I didn't dare wait another second, but I'm sure I can bring it up next time."

For half an hour Jud rested while Professor Ditson told them treasure-stories which he had heard in his wanderings among the Indian tribes or remembered from his studies of Spanish archives. He told them the story of the galleon _Santa Maria_, which was sunk off the Fortune Islands, loaded down with a great altar of solid gold incrusted with precious stones; and of the buccaneer Sir Henry Morgan, who sacked Panama and burned and sank in the harbor what he thought were empty vessels, but which held millions of dollars in gold and jewels in double bulkheads and false bottoms, and which lie to this day in the mud of Panama harbor. Then, there was the story of the two great treasure-chests which Drake of Devon captured from the great galleon _Cacafuego_. As they were being transshipped into Drake's vessel, the _Golden Hind_, both of the chests broke loose and sank off Cano Island on the coast of Costa Rica. Still at the bottom of that tiny harbor, thousands of pounds of gold bars and nuggets and a treasure of pearls and emeralds and diamonds lie waiting for some diver to recover them.

Then Professor Ditson launched into the story of Pizarro's pilot, who, when the temple of Pachacainac, twenty miles from Lima, was looted, asked as his share of the spoils only the nails that fastened the silver plates which lined the walls of the temple. Pizarro granted him what he thought was a trifling request, and the pilot received for his share over two thousand pounds of solid silver.

"That's enough," said Jud, starting to his feet. "Here goes for the biggest treasure of all."

Down and down through the dim water he dived straight and true. Hardly had he disappeared from sight before great air-bubbles came up and broke on the surface, and a few seconds later wavering up from the depths came what seemed to be his lifeless body with staring, horrified eyes and open mouth.

As his white face showed above the surface, Will and Joe leaped in together, and in an instant had him out and on the raft again. In another minute the two boys were making good use of their knowledge of first aid, which they had learned as Boy Scouts. Working as they had never worked for merit badges, they laid Jud on the raft face down, with his arms above his head and his face turned a little to one side. Then, while Joe pulled his tongue out, Will, kneeling astride his body, pressed his open hands into the s.p.a.ces on either side of his ribs. Then, alternately pressing and relaxing his weight as the water ran out of Jud's mouth and nose, Will began the artificial breathing at the rate of fifteen times a minute, while Joe rubbed with all his might the old trapper's legs and body toward the heart. At the end of a couple of minutes of this strenuous treatment Jud gave a gasp and at last opened his eyes. Half an hour later he was able to tell what had happened.

"I didn't get more than half-way down," he said weakly, "when a great greenish-yellow eel, five feet long an' big as my arm, came gliding toward me. I tried to pa.s.s it but in a second I felt its cold, clammy body pressin' against mine. Then came a flash, an' somethin' broke in my head, an' the next thing I knew I was up here with you chaps workin'

over me."

Professor Ditson brought his hands together with a loud clap.

"That is what Dawson meant by saying the lake was guarded," he said.

"What attacked Jud here was a gymnotus."

"A Jim-what?" queried Jud.

"An electric eel," explained the Professor. "The old priests must have brought them up from the lowlands, and they have thrived here in this warm water ever since. It carries an electric battery in the back of its head, and a big one can give a shock which will stun a strong man. Wait a moment," he went on, "and I'll show you every electric eel within a radius of fifty yards."

As he spoke he fumbled in his knapsack and pulled out a cylinder two feet long, wrapped in waxed paper, with a curious little clockwork attachment at one end.

"I brought along two or three sticks of dynamite equipped with detonators," explained the professor. "They are really small depth-bombs. I thought," he went on, "that if the mud were too deep at the bottom of the lake, a stick or so of dynamite exploded there might stir things up. I'll set this one to go off half-way down, and the shock will stun every living thing in the water for a couple of hundred feet around."

Winding and setting the automatic mechanism so as to explode the bomb at a ten foot depth, the scientist carefully threw one into the water some distance from the raft. Two seconds later there was a dull, heavy _plop_, and the water shouldered itself up in a great wave which nearly swamped the raft. As it went down, scores of fish of different kinds floated stunned on the surface. Among them were a dozen great green-gold electric eels. As they floated by, Hen slashed each one in two with his machete.

As he finished the last one, Will began to strip off his clothes.

"I can dive twenty feet," he said, "and I'm going to have the next chance at the Inca Emerald."

"No," objected Professor Ditson, "Let Hen try it. He's a great swimmer."

Jud also protested weakly that he wanted to go down again; but Will cut short all further argument by diving deep into the center of the still heaving circle of widening ripples in front of the raft. Even as he did so, Hen, who had stood up to take his place, gave a cry of warning; but it was too late to reach the boy's ears, already deep under the water.

Just beyond the circle of the ripples drifted what seemed to be the end of a floating snag; yet the quick eyes of the negro had caught the glint of a pair of green, catlike eyes showing below the tip of a pointed snout which looked like a bit of driftwood.

"It's a big 'gator," he murmured to Professor Ditson, who stood beside him.

The latter took one look at the great pointed head and olive-colored body, now showing plainly in the water.

"It's worse than that," he whispered, as if afraid of attracting the saurian's attention. "It's an American crocodile. The explosion and the sight of the dead fish have brought it over from the farther sh.o.r.e."

Without paying any attention to the raft or the men, the great crocodile suddenly sank through the water, so close to them that they could see its triangular head, with the large tooth showing on each side of its closed lower jaw, which is one of the features that distinguishes a crocodile from an alligator. Even as they watched, wavering up through the smoky water came the white figure of the boy from the depths below, swimming strongly toward the surface, his right hand clasped tightly around some large object. Even as they glimpsed the ascending body, a gasp of horror went up from the little group on the raft. Before their very eyes, with a scythe-like flirt of its long, flattened tail, the great reptile shot its fifteen-foot body down toward the swimming boy.

Not until fairly overshadowed by the rushing bulk of the crocodile did Will realize his danger. Then he tried frantically to swerve out of the line of the rush of this terrible guardian of the treasure-horde. It was too late. Even as he swung away, the cruel jaws of the great saurian opened with a flash of curved keen teeth and closed with a death-grip on Will's bare thigh.

With a shout and a splash, the black form of the giant negro shot down into the water. Hen had learned to love the happy-hearted, unselfish boy, and, desperate at the sight of his danger, had gone to his rescue.

No man nor any ten men can pull apart the closed jaws of a man-eating crocodile. The plated mail in which he is armored from head to tail can not be pierced by a knife-thrust and will even turn aside a bullet from any except the highest powered rifles. Yet all the crocodilians--alligators, crocodiles, gavials, or caymans--have one vulnerable spot, and Hen, who had hunted alligators in Florida bayous, knew what this was.

Swimming as the onlookers had never seen man swim before, the great negro shot toward the crocodile, which was hampered by the struggling boy, locked his strong legs around the reptile's scaly body, and sank both of his powerful thumbs deep into the sockets of the crocodile's eyes. The great saurian writhed horribly as he felt the rending pain.

Inexorably the thumbs of his a.s.sailant gouged out the the soft tissues of the eye-sockets until the crocodile reluctantly loosed his grip and sought refuge from the unbearable pain by a rush into the deeps beyond the raft. As the great jaws opened, Hen unwound his legs from the armored body, and, catching Will in his mighty arms, shot up to the surface with him.

In another moment the boy, slashed and torn, but conscious, was stretched on the raft beside Jud, while Joe and the professor bound up the gashes in his thigh, which, although bleeding profusely, were not deep enough to be dangerous. As the last knot of the hasty bandages was tied, Will smiled weakly and opened his right hand. There, in the outstretched palm, gleamed and coruscated the green glory of a great oval emerald, cut and polished by some skilful lapidarist perhaps a thousand years ago. Lost for centuries, the gem which had been worshiped by a great nation had once again come to the earth from which it had disappeared.

Three weeks later, Professor Amandus Ditson lay sleeping in a luxurious bedroom on the ground floor of the rambling house of a Spanish friend whom he was visiting in the beautiful, historic, blood-stained city of Lima. In other rooms of the same house slept Will and Jud and Joe. Two days later the steamer would sail which was to take them all back north.

Pinto was already on his way back to his wife and children at Para, and Hen was visiting friends of his own in the city and intended to join the party on the steamer.

The silence of the night was broken abruptly by a grating, creaking noise, and into the room of the sleeping scientist through the veranda window stepped a great masked figure. As the electric lights were switched on. Professor Ditson awoke to find himself looking into the barrel of an automatic revolver.

"Give me the treasure from Eldorado," croaked a voice from behind the mask, "if you want to keep on livin'."

The scientist stared steadily at the speaker for a moment before he spoke.

"If you will take off your mask, Dawson," he said finally, "I am sure you will find it more comfortable. I was positive," he went on, as the other obeyed and showed the scarred, scowling face of the outlaw, "that I made a mistake in sparing your life."

"I'll spare yours, too," retorted Dawson, "unless you make me kill you.

I'm goin' to take the treasure an' light out. It would be much safer for me to kill you, but I won't unless I have to--just to show you how grateful I am."

"I appreciate your consideration," returned the scientist, quietly; "but you're too late. The treasure is not here."

"I know better," growled Dawson. "I've had you shadowed ever since you got here. It's locked in that leather bag, which never leaves your sight day or night, an' I'm goin' to take it right now."

Suiting his action to his words, and still keeping his revolver leveled at the professor, the outlaw pulled toward him a big cowskin bag, which, as he said truly, the scientist had kept with him night and day ever since he purchased it at a shop in Lima the morning of his arrival.

"Dawson," returned Professor Ditson, earnestly. "I give you my word as a gentleman that the treasure is now in the safe on the steamer which leaves the day after to-morrow, and I hold the receipt of the steamship company for it. Don't open that bag. There is nothing in it for you but--death."

"I'll see about that," muttered Scar Dawson. "Don't move," he warned, as the scientist started up from his bed. "I'll shoot if you make me."

Even as he spoke, he drew a knife from his belt and slit the leather side of the bag its whole length with a quick slash, and started to thrust in his hand.

As he did so he gave a yell of terror, for out from the opening suddenly appeared, wavering and hissing horribly, the ghastly head of the great bushmaster which the scientist had carried and cared for all the way from the Amazon basin. In another second, half its great length reared threateningly before the terrified outlaw. With one more yell, Dawson threw himself backward. There was a crash of broken gla.s.s, and by the time Will and Jud and Joe and their host, aroused by the noise, had reached the room, they found only Professor Ditson, coolly tying up the damaged bag, into which, by some means known only to himself, he had persuaded the bushmaster to return.

To-day, in the world-famous gem collection of Big Jim Donegan, in the place of honor, gleams and glows the great Emerald of the Incas. What he did for those who won the treasure for him, and how that same party of treasure-hunters traveled far to bring back to him that grim, beautiful, and historic stone of the Far East, the Red Diamond--well, that's still another story.