Just as he was about to speak, she hushed him, and both listened to a crackling and rustling from the underbrush that advertised the passage of humans.
'Listen,' she whispered hurriedly, laying her hand suddenly on his arm, as if pleading. 'I shall be finally Anglo- Saxon, and for the last time, when I tell you what I am going to tell you. Afterward, and for always, I shall be the baffling, fluttering, female Spaniard you have chosen for my description. Listen: I love Henry, it is true, very true. I love you more, much more. I shall marry Henry… because I love him and am pledged to him. Yet always shall I love you more.'
Before he could protest, the old Maya priest and his peon son emerged from the underbrush close upon them. Scarcely noticing their presence, the pries,t went down on his knees, exclaiming, in Spanish:
'For the first Cirne have my eyes beheld the eyes of Chia.'
He ran the knots of the sacred tassel and began a prayer in Maya, which, could they have understood, ran as follows:
'O immortal Chia, great spouse of the divine Hzatzl who created all things out of nothingness! O immortal spouse of Hzatzl, thyself the mother of the corn, the divinity of the heart of the husked grain, goddess of the rain and the fructifying sun-rays, nourisher of all the grains and roots and fruits for the sustenance of man! O glorious Chia, whose mouth ever commands the ear of Hzatzl, to thee humbly, thy priest, I make my prayer. Be kind to me, and forgiving. From thy mouth let issue forth the golden key that opens the ear of Hzatzl. Let thy faithful priest gain to Hzatzl's treasure Not for himself, Divinity, but for the sake of his son whom the Gringo saved. Thy children, the Mayas, pass. There is no need for them of the treasure. I am thy last priest. With me passes all understanding of thee and of thy great spouse, whose name I breathe only with my forehead on the stones. Hear me, O Chia, hear me! My head is on the stones before thee!'
For all of five minutes the old Maya lay prone, quivering and jerking as if in a catalepsy, while Leoncia and Francis looked curiously on, themselves half — swept by the unmistakable solemnity of the old man's prayer, non- understandable though it was.
Without waiting for Henry, Francis entered the cave a second time. With Leoncia beside him, he felt quite like a guide as he showed the old priest over the place. The latter, ever reading the knots and mumbling, followed behind, while the peon was left on guard outside. In the avenue of mummies the priest halted reverently not so much for the mummies as for the sacred tassel.
'It is so written,' he announced, holding out a particular string of knots. 'These men were evil, and robbers. Their doom here is to wait forever outside the inner room of Maya mystery.'
Francis hurried him past the heap of bones of his father before him, and led him into the inner chamber, where first of all, he prostrated himself before the two idols and prayed long and earnestly. After that, he studied certain of the strings very carefully. Then he made announcement, first in Maya, which Francis gave him to know was unintelligible, and next in broken Spanish:
'From the mouth of Chia to the ear of Hzatzl so is it written.'
Francis listened to the cryptic utterance, glanced into the dark cavity of the goddess' mouth, stuck the blade of his hunting-knife into the key-hole of the god's monstrous ear, then tapped the stone with the hilt of his knife and declared the statue to be hollow. Back to Chia, he was tapping her to demonstrate her hollo wness, when the old Maya muttered:
'The feet of Chia rest upon nothingness.'
Francis caught by the idea, made the old man verify the message by the knots.
'Her feet are large,' Leoncia laughed, 'but they rest on the solid rock-floor and not on nothingness.'
Francis pushed against the female deity with his hand and found that she moved easily. Gripping her with both hands, he began to wrestle, moving her with quick jerks and twists.
'For the strong men and unafraid will Chia walk,' the priest read. 'But the next three knots declare: Beware! Beware! Beware!'
'Well, I guess, that nothingness, whatever it is, won't bite me,' Francis chuckled, as he released the statue after shifting it a yard from its original position.
There, old lady, stand there for a while, or sit down if that will rest your feet. They ought to be tired after standing on nothing for so many centuries.'
A cry from Leoncia drew his gaze to the portion of the floor just vacated by the large feet of Chia. Stepping backward from the displaced goddess, he had been just about to fall into the rock-hewn hole her feet had concealed. It was circular, and a full yard in diameter. In vain he tested the depth by dropping lighted matches. They fell burning, and, without reaching bottom, still falling, were extinguished by the draught of their flight.
'It looks very much like nothingness without a bottom,' he adjudged, as he dropped a tiny stone fragment.
Many seconds they listened ere they heard it strike.
'Even that may not be the bottom,' Leoncia suggested. 'It may have been struck against some projection from the side and even lodged there.'
'Well, this will determine it,' Francis cried, seizing an ancient musket from among the bones on the floor and preparing to drop it.
But the old man stopped him.
'The message of the sacred knots is: whoso violates the nothingness beneath the feet of Chia shall quickly and terribly die.'
'Far be it from me to make a stir in the void,' Francis grinned, tossing the musket aside. 'But what are we to do now, old Maya man? From the mouth of Chia to the ear of Hzatzl sounds easy but how? and what? Run the sacred knots with thy fingers, old top, and find for us how and what.'
For the son of the priest, the peon with the frayed knees, the clock had struck. All unaware, he had seen his last sun-rise. No matter what happened this day, no matter what blind efforts he might make to escape, the day was to be his last day. Had he remained on guard at the caveentrance, he would surely have been killed by Torres and Mancheno, who had arrived close on his heels.
But, instead of so remaining, it entered his cautious, timid soul to make a scout out and beyond for possible foes. Thus, he missed death in the daylight under the sky. Yet the pace of the hands of the clock was unalterable, and neither nearer nor farther was his destined end from him.
While he scouted, Alvarez Torres and Jose' Mancheno arrived at the cave-opening. The colossal, mother-of- pearl eyes of Chia on the wall of the cliff were too much for the superstition-reared Caroo.
'Do you go in,' he told Torres. 'I will wait here and watch and guard.'
And Torres, with strong in him the blood of the ancient forebear who stood faithfully through the centuries in the avenue of the mummy dead, entered the Maya cave as courageously as that forebear had entered.
And the instant he was out of sight, Jose Mancheno, unafraid to murder treacherously any living, breathing man, but greatly afraid of the unseen world behind unexplainable phenomena, forgot the trust of watch and ward and stole away through the jungle. Thus, the peon, returning reassured from his scout and curious to learn the Maya secrets of his father and of the sacred tassel, found nobody at the cave mouth and himself entered into it close upon the heels of Torres.
The latter trod softly and cautiously, for fear of disclosing his presence to those he trailed. Also his progress was still further delayed by the spectacle of the ancient dead in the hall of mummies. Curiously he examined these men whom history had told about, and for whom history had stopped there in the antechamber of the Maya gods. Especially curious was he at the sight of the mummy at the end of the line. The resemblance to him was too striking for him not to see, and he could not but believe that he was looking upon some direct great-ancestor of his.
Still gazing and speculating, he was warned by approaching footsteps, and glanced about for some place to hide. A sardonic humor seized him. Taking the helmet from the head of his ancient kin, he placed it on his own head. Likewise did he drape the rotten mantle about his form, and equip himself with the great sword and the great floppy boots that almost fell to pieces as he pulled them on. Next, half tenderly, he deposited the nude mummy on its back in the dark shadows behind the other mummies. And, finally, in the same spot at the end of the line, his hand resting on the sword-hilt, he assumed the same posture he had observed of the mummy.
Only his eyes moved as he observed the peon venturing slowly and fearfully along the avenue of upright corpses. At sight of Torres he came to an abrupt stop and with wide eyes of dread muttered a succession of Maya prayers. Torres, so confronted, could only listen with closed eyes and conjecture. When he heard the peon move on
