with a big nose and slightly crossed eyes.
Half an hour's energetic work revealed a pillar into which was incorporated a statue of sorts of a man elaborately dressed in a long belted tunic and with a complicated head-dress. The rest of the pillar was intricately carved with a design of leaves and what looked like over-sized insects.
I lit a cigarette and contemplated it for a long time. It began to appear that perhaps we had found Uaxuanoc, although being a layman I couldn't be certain. However, no one would carve a thing like that just to leave it lying about in the forest. It was a pity in a way, because now I'd have to go somewhere else to carve my helicopter platform -- the chopper certainly couldn't land on top of this cross-eyed character who stood about eight feet tall.
I went back to the edge of the cenote and started to carve a new path delimiting the area I wanted to clear, and a few random forays disclosed no more pillars, so I got busy. As I expected, the flame-thrower ran out of juice long before I had finished but at least I had used it to the best advantage to leave the minimum of machete work. Then I got going with the chain saw, cutting as close to the ground as I could, and there was a shriek as the teeth bit into the wood.
None of the trees was particularly thick through the trunk, the biggest being about two and a half feet. But they were tall and I had trouble there. I was no lumberjack and I made mistakes -- the first tree nearly knocked me into the cenote as it fell, and it fell the wrong way, making a hell of a tangle that I had to clean up laboriously. But I learned and by the time darkness came I had felled sixteen trees.
I slept that night in a sleeping-bag which stank disgustingly of petrol because the chain saw around which it had been wrapped had developed a small leak. I didn't mind because I thought the smell might keep the mosquitoes away. It didn't.
I ate tinned cold chicken and drank whisky from the flask Fallon had thoughtfully provided, diluting it with warmish water from a water-bottle, and I sat there in the darkness thinking of the little brown people with big noses who had carved that big pillar and who had possibly built a city on this spot. After a while I fell asleep.
Morning brought the helicopter buzzing overhead and a man dangling like a spider from the cable winch. I still hadn't cleared up enough for it to land but there was enough manoeuvring space for Rider to drop a man by winch, and the man proved to be Halstead. He dropped heavily to the ground at the edge of the cenote and waved Rider away. The helicopter rose and slowly circled.
Halstead came over to me and then looked around. 'This isn't where you'd intended to clear the ground. Why the change?'
'I ran into difficulties,' I said.
He grinned humourlessly. 'I thought you might.' He looked at the tree stumps. 'You haven't got on very well, have you? You should have done better than this.'
I -waved my arm gracefully. 'I bow to superior knowledge. Be my guest -- go right ahead and improve the situation.'
He grunted but didn't take me up on the offer. Instead he unslung the long box he carried on his shoulder, and extended an antenna. 'We had a couple of walkie-talkies sent up from Camp One. We can talk to Rider. What do we need to finish the job?'
'Juice for the saw and the flamer; dynamite for the stumps -- and a man to use it, unless you have the experience. I've never used explosives in my life.'
'I can use it,' he said curtly, and started to talk to Rider. In a few minutes the chopper was low overhead again and a couple of jerrycans of fuel were lowered to us. Then it buzzed off and we got to work.
To give Halstead his due, he worked like a demon. Two pairs of hands made a difference, too, and we'd done quite a lot before the helicopter came back. This time a box of gelignite came down, and after it Fallon descended with his pockets full of detonators. He turned them over to Halstead, and looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. 'You look as though you've been dragged through a bush backwards.' He looked about him. 'You've done a good job.'
'I have something to show you,' I said and led him along the narrow path I had driven the previous day. 'I ran across Old-Cross-eyes here; he hampered the operation a bit.'
Fallon threw a fit of ecstatics and damned near clasped Cross-eyes to his bosom. 'Old Empire!' he said reverently, and ran his hands caressingly over the carved stone.
'What is it?'
'It's a stele -- a Mayan date stone. In a given community they erected a stele every katun -- that's a period of nearly twenty years.' He looked back along the path towards the cenote. 'There should be more of these about; they might even ring the cenote.'
He began to strip the clinging creepers away and I could see he'd be no use anywhere else. I said, 'Well, I'll leave you two to get acquainted. I'll go help Halstead blow himself up.'
'All right,' he said absently. Then he turned. 'This is a marvellous find. It will help us date the city right away.'
'The city?' I waved my band at the benighted wilderness. 'Is this Uaxuanoc?'
He looked up at the pillar. 'I have no doubt about it. Stelae of this complexity are found only in cities. Yes. I think we've found Uaxuanoc.'
IV
We had a hell of a job getting Fallon away from his beloved pillar and back to Camp Two. He mooned over it like a lover who had just found his heart's desire, and filled a notebook with squiggly drawings and pages of indecipherable scribblings, Late that afternoon we practically had to carry him to the helicopter, which had landed precariously at the edge of the cenote, and during the flight hack he muttered to himself all the way.
I was very tired, but after a luxurious hot bath I felt eased in body and mind, eased enough to go into the big hut and join the others instead of falling asleep. I found Fallon and Halstead hot in the pursuit of knowledge, with Katherine hovering on the edge of the argument in her usual role of Halstead-quietener.
I listened in for a time, not understanding very much of what was going on and was rather surprised to find Halstead the calmer of the two. After the outbursts of the last few weeks, I had expected him to blow has top when
