Treasure of Kings Part 27

"A fit end for such a man," said he. "He himself was as evil as any snake, though he had courage of a sort; for I remember him well, when he faced the mutineers on board the _Mary Greenfield_. And what of the map?" he asked, turning suddenly to Bannister, who shrugged his shoulders.

"We do not know," he answered; "but in default of certain evidence we must presume that that little fragment which we brought with us all the way from Suss.e.x went down into the water when Amos was crushed to death."

"So then," said William Rushby, who was of a practical turn of mind, "no one is any the wiser, so far as the Big Fish is concerned?"

"No one," said Bannister, "save we five, and I do not suppose that any one of us will ever care again to undertake such an expedition."

I looked at Mr. Gilbert Forsyth; for I was inclined to think that he was the only member of our party who was likely to persevere upon the quest of the Greater Treasure in spite of any promise he had made.

I was surprised at the att.i.tude he had a.s.sumed; for there was something in it that jogged my memory, that took me back to the day when I had first seen him and Baverstock and Joshua Trust. For he lay upon his back, with his hands clasped behind his head, and one knee thrown carelessly across the other. But how different was he now! He no longer wore his highly polished boots, his double-breasted waistcoat, and his hat tilted at a jaunty angle on his head. He was in rags and tatters, burnt and blistered by the sun, deprived of an ear where the skin was all white and scarred owing to his having burnt it. And yet he yawned in the same lazy fashion.

"I've had enough of it," said he. "I want nothing better than a land of chimney-pots and gas-pipes. I shall rejoice at the sight of a policeman."

And he yawned again.

Rushby, we found, was in no better plight than before. It was quite impossible for him to walk. We saw at once that we must carry him; and as delay would profit us nothing, we set forward that very afternoon, heading in the direction of the hills towards the east.

It was a silent, almost a saddened, party that crossed the plain to Cahazaxa's Temple. We took it in turns, two at a time, to carry Rushby; and on that account we could not make many miles a day. We crossed the suspension bridge, and at last came within sight of the great ruin, whence from the hill-top we looked down upon the forest, wherein we had all risked our lives so often, in the heart of which I had lived for weeks with the wild men of the woods.

I asked Bannister how it was that they had treated me so kindly, when it was these same people who had murdered Atupo's friends.

"Curiosity," said he; for he could explain most things. "The South American savage is not by any means as curious as the African; but you must remember that the men who found you had never before set eyes upon a white man. They probably looked upon you as a kind of G.o.d. With the Peruvians, it was different. Though the forest folk never ventured to the Temple, they had regarded the priests for years as their natural foes."

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 hardships 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 comradeship. 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.