Calls from Henry and the Queen put an end to the conversation, for Leoncia and Francis quickly joined the others in gazing at the great web.
'Did you ever see so monstrous a web!' Leoncia exclaimed.
'I'd like to see the monster that made it,' said Henry.
'And I'd rather see than be it,' Francis paraphrased from the 'Purple Cow.'
'It is our good fortune that we do not have to go that way,' the Queen said.
All looked inquiry at her, and she pointed down to the stream.
'That is the way,' she said. 'I know it. Often and often, in my Mirror of the World, have I seen the way. When my mother died and was buried in the whirlpool, I followed her body in the Mirror, and I saw it come to this place and go by this place still in the water.' But she was dead,' Leoncia objected quickly.
The rivalry between them fanned instantly.
'One of my spearmen,' the Queen went on quietly, 'a handsome youth, alas, dared to look at me as a lover. He was flung in alive. I watched him, too, in the Mirror. When he came to this place he climbed out. I saw him crawl under the web to the day, and I saw him retreat backward from the day and throw himself into the stream.'
'Another dead one,' Henry commented grimly.
'No; for I followed him on in the Mirror, and though all was darkness for a time and I could see nothing, in the end, and shortly, under the sun he emerged into the bosom of a large river, and swam to the shore, and climbed the bank it was the left hand bank as I remember well and disappeared among large trees such as do not grow in the Valley of the Lost Souls.'
But, like Torres, the rest of them recoiled from thought of the dark plunge through the living rock.
'These are the bones of animals and of men,' the Queen warned, 'who were daunted by the way of the water and who strove to gain the sun. Men there are there behold! Or at least what remains of them for a space, the bones, ere, in time, the bones, too, pass into nothingness.'
'Even so,' said Francis, 'I suddenly discover a pressing need to look into the eye of the sun. Do the rest of you remain here while I investigate.'
Drawing his automatic, the water-tightness of the cartridges a guarantee, he crawled under the web. The moment he had disappeared from view beyond the web, they heard him begin to shoot. Next, they saw him retreating backward, still shooting. And, next, falling upon him, two yards across from black-haired leg-tip to black- haired leg-tip, the denizen of the web, a monstrous spider, still wriggling with departing life, shot through and through again and again. The solid center of its body, from which the legs radiated, was the size of a normal waste-basket, and the substantial density of it crunched audibly as it struck on Francis' shoulders and back, rebounded, the hairy legs still helplessly quivering, and pitched down into the wave-crisping water. All four pair of eyes watched the corpse of it plunge against the wall of rock, suck down, and disappear.
'Where there's one, there are two,' said Henry, looking dubiously up toward the daylight.
'It is the only way,' said the Queen. 'Come, my husband, each in the other's arms let us win through the darkness to the sun-bright world. Kemember, I have never seen it, and soon, with you, shall I for the first time see it.'
Her arms open in invitation, Francis could not decline. 'It is a hole in the sheer wall of a precipice a thousand feet deep,' he explained to the others the glimpse he had caught from beyond the spider web, as he clasped the Queen in his arms and leaped off.
Henry had gathered Leoncia to him and was about to leap, when she stopped him.
Why did you accept Francis' sacrifice?' she demanded. Because… He paused and looked at her wonderingly.
'Because I wanted you,' he completed. 'Because I was engaged to you as well, while Francis was unattached. Besides, if I'm not greatly mistaken, Francis appears to be a pretty well satisfied bridegroom.'
'No,' she shook her head emphatically. 'He has a chivalrous spirit, and he is acting his part in order not to hurt her feelings.'
Oh, I don't know. Remember, before the altar, at the Long House, when I said I was going to ask the Queen to marry me, that he bragged she wouldn't marry me if I did ask? Well, the conclusion's pretty obvious that he wanted her himself. And why shouldn't he? He's a bachelor. And she's some nice woman herself.'
But Leoncia scarcely heard. With a quick movement, leaning back in his arms away from him so that she could look him squarely in the eyes, she demanded:
'How do you love me? Do you love me madly? Do you love me badly madly? Do I mean that to you, and more, and more, and more?'
He could only look his bewilderment.
'Do you? do you?' she urged passionately.
'Of course I do,' he made slow answer, 'but it would never have entered my head to describe it that way. Why, you're the one woman for me. Bather would I describe it as loving you deeply, and greatly, and enduringly. W 7 hy, you seem so much a part of me that I feel almost as if I had always, known you. It was that way from the first.'
'She is an abominable woman!' Leoncia broke forth irrelevantly. 'I hated her from the first.'
'My! What a spitfire! I hate to think how much you would have hated her had I married her instead of Francis.'
'We'd better follow them,' she put an end to the discussion.
And Henry, very much bepuzzled, clasped her tightly and leaped off into the white turmoil of water.
On the bank of the Gualaca Kiver sat two Indian girls fishing. Just up-stream from them arose the precipitous cliff of one of the buttresses of the lofty mountains. The main stream flowed past in chocolate-colored spate; but, directly beneath them, where they fished, was a quiet eddy. No less quiet was the fishing. No bites jerked their rods in token that the bait was enticing. One of them, Nicoya, yawned, ate ja banana, yawned again, and held the skin she was about to cast aside suspended in her hand.
'We have been very quiet, Concordia,' she observed to her companion, 'and it has won us no fish. Now shall I make a noise and a splash. Since they say what goes up must come down,' why should not something come up after something has gone down? I am going to try. There!' She threw the banana peel into the water and lazily watched the point where it had struck.
'If anything comes up I hope it will be big,' Concordia murmured with equal laziness.
And upon their astonished gaze, even as they looked, arose up out of the brown depths a great white hound. They jerked their poles up and behind them on the bank, threw their arms about each other, and watched the hound gain the shore at the lower end of the eddy, climb the sloping bank, pause to shake himself, and then disappear among the trees.
Nicoya and Concordia giggled.
'Try it again,' Concordia urged.
'No; you this time. And see what you can bring up.'
Quite unbelieving, Concordia tossed in a clod of earth. And almost immediately a helmeted head arose on the flood. Clutching each other very tightly, they watched the man under the helmet gain the shore where the hound had landed and disappear into the forest.
Again the two Indian girls giggled; but this time, urge as they would, neither could raise the courage to throw anything into the water.
Some time later, still giggling over the strange occurrences, they were espied by two young Indian men, who were hugging the bank as they paddled their canoe up against the stream.
'What makes you laugh,' one of them greeted.
'We have been seeing things,' Nicoya gurgled down to them.
'Then have you been drinking pulque,' the young man charged.
Both girls shook their heads, and Concordia said:
'We don't have to drink to see things. First, when Nicoya threw in a banana skin, we saw a dog come up out of the water a white dog that was as big as a tiger of the mountains-'
'And when Concordia threw in a clod,' the other girl took up the tale, 'up came a man with a head of iron. It is magic. Concordia and I can work magic.'
'Jose,' one of the Indians addressed his mate, 'this merits a drink.'
And each, in turn, while the other with his paddle held the canoe in place, took a swig from a square-face
