# The Men of the Dark

Sections: II — III — IV — V — VI — VII — VIII — IX
THE MEN OF THE DARK
By Julian Hawthorne
ILLUSTRATED BY H. C. WALL
I WAS to take a Saturday steamer to Southampton, on my way to Kabinda, on the west coast of Africa. Near the village of Lissongo, on the Ubangi River, lives a certain chief, who is an old friend of mine and one of the finest men in the French Congo, if not in all Africa. I may have something further to tell about him sometime. My preparations to start were, I say, all but made, when I got an urgent note from Morley Robertson, begging me to accept an invitation which I would receive from Glendower's private secretary, requesting me to call at Glendower's Wall Street office (the invitation came by the same post).
"I have been preaching you to Glendower for months past," Robertson wrote. "You may have heard hints about the great South American scheme in which he is interested. I told him that you were the only man for the emergency. There will be glory and a fortune in it for you; so don't fail to call, and put your best foot foremost."
Robertson is a good fellow and was once respectable. But he got to know Glendower, and that took all individuality and independence out of him. You cannot chat with him five minutes on any topic but he will drag in the name of Glendower. His type is familiar; I need not further describe him. Unfortunately, he thinks he can confer no greater favor on his friends than to extol them and "recommend" them to his idol. Having no tact or discrimination, this fatuity sometimes gets him into trouble.
Glendower is regarded as the head organizer and field marshal of high finance in this country and is one of the (so called), busiest men in the world. This does not mean that he has ever in his life been worthily and beneficently busy, but only that he is one of our most inveterate and successful players at the great, fashionable game of money-making, possessing as he does a brain and temperament singularly adapted to that sort of misdirection of human energy. He is, in short, a chief factor and victim—both, in our prevalent wealth illusion. Now, for my own part, I have nothing but aversion for all that Glendower does and stands for, and I would take some trouble to avoid men of his kidney. I wished to have no part in his schemes in South America or elsewhere. But, on the other hand, poor Robertson had meant me a kindness, and I did not wish to hurt his feelings or to embarrass him with Glendower. I reflected that it would not take me long to make the call and to explain myself to the man of money, and the end of it was that I presented myself at the office at the hour appointed and sent in my card.
Glendower has the reputation of giving short audiences—the audiences are short and he is short in them. But he once said that this first audience with me was shorter even than he had anticipated.
Opening the door of his private room, I saw seated at the broad mahogany writing table a square-shouldered man of five and sixty, bald, with heavy eyebrows, which lent a fierce expression to the straight glance he sent me; a heavy mouth and a chin relatively small, veiled with a gray beard. His forehead was capacious; his general aspect hawklike—vulturelike, his enemies might have said. There was a self-conscious dignity and rigidity about him which reminded me of an Oriental idol, but I judged him to be in reality a man of emotions and quick temper, this side of him, which he disguised, having been meant by nature to balance the comprehending and organizing faculties of his intellectual part. Even before he spoke his bearing indicated that, in self-defence against parasites and petitioners, he had adopted the bullying habit, and I was on my guard, because, being upon the whole disposed to like him, I wished to spare him the mortification of running athwart my hawse.
He did not rise from his chair or offer his hand, but indicated the chair near him by a movement of the head, and said in a deep voice: "You are Captain Coventry? Sit down, if you please."
"Thank you," I said, and remained standing.
His black eyebrows twitched, as if heralding an arrogant rejoinder, but after a moment he resumed: "You are commended to me from a source I consider responsible. You must understand, to begin with, that any statements I make to you are in strict confidence."
He gave me time for reply, but as I made none he added, after another inquisitory glance: "If I employ you, you must guarantee me absolute obedience to orders, as well as secrecy. Important interests are involved, possible political complications, and hundreds of millions of capital. Your reasonable expenses will be paid; if your results prove satisfactory; you may become independent for life; if otherwise, you get nothing more." This he uttered in heavy, forcible tones, staring fixedly at me. As I still made no response, he demanded, with an impatient movement, "Do you follow me?"
"You seem to have made a blunder," I said, "but don't blame Robertson; he meant to do us both a favor. I came here out of consideration for him. I don't wish to hear your proposition; whatever it is. I couldn't accept it. I feel no interest in your objects, and I'm sure we can be of no service to each other." I spoke with the good humor that I felt, looking him in the eyes, which rounded with stern astonishment, and I added, "I'm willing to believe that you didn't know you were offensive and to regard this interview as never having taken place." Then I went out, felicitating myself upon being so quickly and justifiably rid of the Glendower incubus.
II.
That afternoon I left New York, and while I am on the ocean I will say a few words about myself necessary to make this narrative intelligible.
Meeting me in London, Cairo, Melbourne, Yeddo, or where not, you would give me no second glance; there is no disguise better than a suit of everyday clothes. I am under six feet, not noticeably broad-shouldered, of quiet demeanor, taciturn and low-voiced, and my face shows only the lean, aquiline contours of my New England ancestry. The rudiments of my mental training were got in a New England college; spontaneous reading has familiarized me with the literature of imagination of all ages, and I have theoretical and practical acquaintance with arts and sciences, including engineering and navigation (my title of captain is nautical, not military). Of diplomacy, too, I know something, and can speak the language and adopt the customs well enough for ordinary purposes of most countries that I visit. I feel genuine kindness for my fellow creatures, but have few friends, and of them one only who commands my whole confidence—a woman, of whom it is not now my cue to speak. Nor will I say more of my spiritual and religious complexion than that, in my theory and experience of life, the material world plays but a minor role. I love and seek untamed nature in men and things; ambition I have, but it is of the abstracted kind. I may as well add, to explain some passages further on, that I have never met a man, savage or civilized, who was, at all points, my match in physical strength, activity, and endurance. In this I take no pride, since, in serious emergencies I rely upon powers other than physical, but I do take real pleasure in it: it is often convenient, affords me healthy pastime, and surprises and amuses my friends. All this I set down here, so as to be quit of the topic and also to account for my introduction to Glendower, who is understood to be particular about the qualifications of the persons whom he selects to use in his enterprises.
III.
Three days after reaching London Glendower's card was handed to me at my lodgings in Gower Street, and in he walked, with his hand held out. I saw at once that this was the man and not the financier. He was smiling, but there was a curious earnestness and anxiety in his expression.
"I apologize," were his first words. "and this isn't about business, anyhow, not chiefly, but you're the first man who's snubbed me since I was a boy in college, and I had to make sure you were real. When I found you'd left New York I shut my desk and came after you. Going on to Africa, eh? Well, I'd have followed you there. This means more to me than you might believe."
We had a long talk—in fact, we were together thirty-six hours, after which he went back to New York, and I sailed, not for Kabinda, but for Buenos Ayres.
Glendower, with his professional bogy mask off, is a good man wasted. This game of business is an inhuman game, as I told him, and renders solitary and unsocial those who assiduously play it. I was touched by the boyish fervor with which this world-worn old slave of the very means whereby he sought to rule mankind grasped at the companionship of a man absolutely alien from all that was the substance of his life. With incoherent and awkward energy he poured forth thoughts and feelings long moribund in him, in which for years he himself had lost faith. It was pathetic. "I once met Chinese Gordon," he remarked. "You remind me of him in some way; you and he would have been a pair! With either of you within my reach I'd have been another man." On my side. I was frank with him. and we became friends.
Of the "business" he said: "Chili's best revenue is from the nitrate beds on the east side of the Tarapaca pampas, between the coast Cordilleras and the Andes. At present rates of working they'll be exhausted in fifty years, but the peculiarity of nitrates is that moisture dissipates 'em like snow, and if the drought that has lasted in that valley for twenty thousand years were broken the wealth of Chili would be gone like mist. But then the soil of the pampas—it used to be the bed of a sea—would develop immense fertility—grow fruit and vegetables enough to supply a continent. Millions of people could live paradisaical lives there, and the circumstances could be created."
"Yes," said I, "by tapping the Andean lakes on the north and west."
"It would pay better than nitrates in the long run," he went on; "only the Chilians aren't thinking of the long run, but of Now, especially as they calculate on having the Paradise after the nitrates are done with."
"Well, what are your calculations?" I asked.
"Chili's neighbors are her enemies," he said, "and would co-operate to down her. Money and a few engineers could let in those streams upon the desert—then vegetation, clouds, rain, and the end of the nitrates and Chili!"
"How will you do it? And what will you get from it?"
Thereupon he unfolded a project of really Napoleonic daring and ingenuity, of which the world may presently hear more, though not from me. Finally I told him that I would go over the ground for him and make a report, "but for private reasons of my own, different from yours," I added. When he began to make distant hints about remuneration I explained to him that I had inherited from my father a little money, which was invested in the fisheries and brought me an income of about four thousand dollars. So I could not accept even my "expenses," not to speak of the ridiculous fortune he had in mind. I had learned how to travel cheap, and, unless free-footed, I could accomplish nothing. Upon this understanding we parted, and now you know how I happened at this time to visit South America, where I had an adventure which, among many odd ones of mine, seems to me unique. It has nothing to do with that project of Glendower's, at least, not logically, but it discloses one of the many mysteries of the Andean chain, for a solution of which we might have to go back to a time antedating the Pizzarros, when the power of the Incas was supreme.
IV.
On the Glendower affair I saw persons and things in Buenos Ayres, Santiago, the Tarapaca, Lima, and other Peruvian places, and rounded up in La Paz, more than two miles above sea level, in the Bolivian Andes. There, having been occupied nearly a year, I made up my last report and was released to my own devices.
My chief crony in La Paz was an old German named Dichter, who had lived thirty years in the country and spoke Spanish with a strong Fatherland accent. Small, dry, and stooping was he to look at, with a round head stuffed full of sagacity; a Senator of the Republic and also eminent in the rubber trade. But on his human side he was sentimental and romantic, a student and a collector of old Spanish traditions and Indian legends. On such topics I was an indefatigable listener.
"All accounts agree," quoth he in his slow, emphatic, gutteral tones, "that somewhere in these mountains east of Illimani there is a veta madre surpassing any other in the world. Once in about a hundred years turns up somebody who has seen it. The last one, I knew him—Juan Coama; it was twenty years ago. But he—" Herr Dichter tapped his bulging forehead and shook his bony hand—"he was crazed, mein Lieber; nothing could he tell straight, only that there was treasure, immense, the mine of the Incas. How came he upon it, what happened then, he could not tell, but he spoke of demons who guarded it and tried to kill him. So also say the Indians of this place; it is one of their Maerchen!"
"That there are demon guardians?" said I, resting my elbows on the table.
"Well, it is like this," rejoined the Senator, after relighting the last inch of his cigar. "They have it that the great kings—the Incas—in order to reserve to themselves the secret of the big lode had isolated in the mine a number of workmen, with women, so as to establish a sort of hereditary caste, born, bred, and dying underground, with nothing to do but to get out the metal, seeing and knowing nothing of the outside world. This race, they say, still exists, cut off from the rest of mankind by the slipping of the strata, ages ago, blocking up the means of exit. In this seclusion they had acquired the character of gnomes, or demons, with supernatural powers."
"What do they live on?" I asked.
"Partly on their own old people and on a certain proportion of the children," replied Herr Dichter. "They also, no doubt, devour chance travelers who may fall into their clutches. But we may dismiss all that as foolishness; it is the veta madre that ..."
"There is only too much gold circulating in the world already," said I; "I care nothing about that, but the troglodytes"—I rubbed my fingers in my hair, the roots of which were crinkling at the conception which my imagination had drawn of them—"I would give all the gold for a sight of them!"
Others matters retired this conversation to the back of my mind, but I had occasion to recall it a few months later.
V.
I left La Paz the last day of October, meaning to journey across Brazil to Para, at the mouth of the Amazon, and thence work up to the west of the Guianas to examine the region of the great buttes. I set out with a single mule and a Bolivian Indian, Yotalu, a short, lithe-bodied, big-headed fellow, with a flat, good-humored face and a ragged sheaf of coal-black hair. He wore a poncho and a loin cloth and carried a bow and arrows and a knife. I had a hickory shirt and deerskin leggings under my poncho, and a long rawhide lariat wound about my waist; with the exception of a stout cudgel, I carried no arms, having found that savages can be controlled by the eye and the bearing. On the mule were packed a shelter tent, cooking utensils, beads and knickknacks for barter, and a few changes of clothing. In a belt under my shirt were some gold and silver coin and my letter of credit. Dichter and my other friends were astonished at the smallness of my outfit, but I relied upon my bodily efficiency and my experience. I expected to make the journey of about two thousand miles in from six to eight months, using the Madeira and Amazon rivers as carriers, as occasion served.
We took the trail in the early dawn, though the summit of Illimani, ten thousand feet above our heads, had already caught the rays of the sun. We turned his huge flank and set our faces northeastward. The road led down deep quebradas, or ravines, and the scene was sterile, naked, and sublime. Amid the prevailing masses of gray granite and black basalt I noticed a good deal of quartz and limestone, in some places showing the porous formation with which I was familiar in the West Indies. Yotalu went ahead, leading the mule, and I came after, rejoicing and expanding in the vastness and wildness of the surroundings. I was exhilarated by the thought that for more than half a year I should not look upon the face of a civilized man. Yotalu was to accompany me for a hundred miles or so only, afterward handing me over to another tribe with which he had affiliations. But I looked forward to making the greater part of my journey entirely alone.
At noon we stopped for dinner on a shelf of rock overhanging an almost vertical gorge, at the bottom of which a torrent rolled in music. We had brought from La Paz enough fresh provisions to last two days and a quantity of concentrated food in tins. There was no timber at this altitude for a fire, but Yotalu had gathered some jarilla scrub here and there, and as he squatted at his cooking I climbed to the top of a pinnacle of rock hard by, which hung on the side of the precipice like a turret on a medieval castle. Through a gap in the range this gave me a glimpse of the great valley below, palpitating in the heat of a tropical sun. The air I breathed was, in the shadow, as keen as that of Labrador.
I wore, strapped by a leather thong round my wrist, a small compass, two inches in diameter, but of excellent make, set in platinum. I unfastened it and placed it upon a level surface of the rock to get my bearings. The quebrada which we were following seemed to bear to the south, below, but still further down I could see what appeared to be its continuation, again deploying to the east and north. Doubtless, however, it would be easy to go astray in these tortuous defiles.
A condor, sailing down from the southwest, unconscious of my presence on what was perhaps one of his accustomed perches, alighted so near me that I could have seized his leg with my outstretched hand. But before I could make the attempt Votalu called to me from below that dinner was ready, whereupon the great bird, with a deep croak of surprise, pitched forward from his station and flapped heavily away. As he did so he revealed something that brought a croak of surprise from me—a broad gold ring riveted round his naked shank, with a bit of chain of the same metal attached to it. The next moment he had sailed away through empty space a hundred yards eastward; then, with a tilt of his wings, he disappeared round a gray profile of the ravine, a quarter of a mile off.
Thinking curious thoughts, I clambered down to Yotalu's dining room, and we ate our meal with good appetite. The Indian was an admirable table companion; he smiled much, confined his remarks to approving and congratulating grunts, and ate stupendously. It was not until dinner was done and we were readjusting the mule's load for departure that I asked him whether the people of his tribe were in the habit of taming condors and chaining them up with gold chains; it was an enlargement of falconry new to me.
Great and instantaneous was the change wrought in Yotalu by my inquiry. His amiable countenance was overcast with trouble and dismay, and he broke forth into ejaculations and utterances most voluble in his native tongue, different from the semi-Spanish jargon which we had been wont to use in our intercourse, the purport whereof was only partially intelligible to me. His smiles were gone, his gestures and bearing denoted lively uneasiness, and this excitement was succeeded by a mood of heavy depression.
By rallying him and breaking jests upon him I tried to restore his spirits, but it was long before he recovered any part of his composure. My Yankee curiosity is, however, insatiable under certain circumstances, and by degrees I began to get light upon the grounds of his manifest agitation.
These gold-ringed condors, it appeared, were not unknown to the local Indians, who called them devil-birds. There were a great many of them and they were trained to seize and carry off lambs and other small domestic animals and occasionally even Indian babies. They were never seen to devour their prey, but bore it away to some inaccessible retreat in the recesses of the mountains, where they delivered it to their masters, a hideous and bloodthirsty horde of fiends, or possibly—but this was a point I could not determine—the birds were themselves the fiends, temporarily disguised under the form of condors. Yotalu added that any person upon whom one of the devil-birds cast its eye was foreordained to calamity, and my adventure consequently made him augur ill for the prosperity of our journey. Verily, he looked to me as though he would fain embrace any pretext for getting quit of me and the burden of my sinister fortunes.
And it was at this juncture that I missed my compass from my wrist and remembered having left it on the rock turret at our noon camp, which was by this time some five miles in our rear. It was an instrument too useful to be abandoned, but it would not be safe to send back Yotalu for it in his present disaffected condition; it would be the last both of the compass and of him. I must, then, retrieve it myself, and by so doing I should gain the advantage of blocking his retreat back to La Paz, which I suspected him to be meditating. He would have no alternative but to proceed in our present direction, and it would be easy for me to overtake him before dusk—it was now near three o'clock. I was in my usual sound condition of w ind and limb and was confident of making an average of five miles an hour.
In telling him my purpose I added the suggestion that it was I, not himself, that the devil-bird was after, and that my temporary absence would therefore conduce to his own safety. My explanations did not put him at his ease, but he probably felt that there was nothing better to be looked for, and he dejectedly acquiesced.
As provision against accident I took from our stores before starting a waterproof box of matches and a roll of Italian moccolo. In one of my pockets I always carried a large clasp-knife with several blades. Thus equipped I felt equal to any emergency, but I did not know then as well as afterward what secrets those Andean ravines concealed.
At the bend of the path I turned and saw Yotalu standing beside the mule, observing me with a serious and even portentous air. I waved him encouragement, to which he responded by silently lifting his right arm, and the next moment I had the Andes all to myself.
VI.
To lighten my labor I had left my poncho behind with the Indian and the mule, and the cool, thin air, reaching my body through my shirt, made exercise delightful. I maintained a jog-trot up the rugged acclivity, and it was barely an hour when I saw the turret jutting out from the wall of the gray cañon.
Meanwhile, I had observed that a condor, though whether it were the same with which I had already made acquaintance I could not determine, was accompanying me in my ascent; sometimes he hung in the air over my head, with no perceptible movement of his wings; sometimes he would alight on a point of rock ahead of me, resuming his flight as I drew near. I was not unprepared, therefore, to find him perched upon the turret when I came in sight of it round a curve of the way. Nor did he forsake his position until I had actually begun to climb toward him. He then launched himself leisurely into the void and brought up, with much waving of his huge pinions, on the brink of the path below which I had lately traversed. As he swept past me at close range I caught the glint of gold upon his leg, and the moment's glance he sent me recalled by a fantastic freak the inquisitory look of Glendower when I first entered his office a year before.
If a man have any imagination, such perceptions in the solitude of desolate mountains lose none of their effect. I had laughed at Yotalu's extravaganza, but I knew that there are strange things in the world. And the spirit in a man has its epochs, in which unlikely contingencies and remote associations assume a significance which reason cannot interpret.
I found the compass where I had left it, and I lost no time in beginning my return. The condor, stretching his wings, preceded me. The sun, long past the zenith, was declining toward the west, and it threw his gigantic shadow wheeling along the cliffs. I was shod for the rocks and I held my way at a round pace, the steel rivets in my heels striking sparks from the granite, each impact driving a flat echo into the stillness. There were places where a slip would have had evil results, but I was under the sway of an exhilaration which seemed more psychical than physical; I never slackened my speed and made leaps which appeared preposterous. I shouted with delight and whirled my cudgel round my head like an Irishman at Donnybrook. The devil-bird, sailing with careless indolence in advance, as if he had assumed the function of guide temporarily relinquished by Yotalu, responded at times with his harsh cry, and my brain, intoxicated by vigorous motion in that fine air, amused itself with fancies of a secret bond between us, and even played with the odd notion, which is perhaps common to many, that by a slight additional exaltation of the will I would be enabled to rise from the solid earth and float like a soap bubble. Once or twice, indeed, this suggestion gained such power as nearly to lure me over the precipitous verge of the path, following insensibly the capricious divagation of the condor, but another influence (to which I have already alluded and which is always present in the deepest part of my consciousness), warned me back in season. But as I went on the prevailing rhythm of my movement gradually led my thoughts to the contemplation of interior scenes, until it was only my exterior faculties that took note of the actual environment—the snow-whitened peaks, the shadow-haunted abysses, the steep declivity of the winding trail, and the persistent winged creature ever suspended before me, like the mystic emblem of the Egyptian Osiris. So passed an hour, and another hour, and I was beginning to anticipate overhauling Yotalu, when of a sudden a vast boulder blocked my path and I came to a halt. At the same moment the condor uttered a cry and, plunging downward, disappeared in the lower recesses of the gorge.
The abrupt cessation of motion was confusing for a few minutes, an interval during which my soul resumed her accustomed seat and my sounding pulses subsided to their normal flow. My intoxication was past and I became fully cognizant of my situation.
The sun had sunk below the giant shoulder of Illimani, and the entire western slope of the Andes lay in twilight. The profounder depths of the ravines were already obscure. The silence filled the ears like adamant; even the whisper of the stream was hushed' it had apparently passed into an underground channel. Directly athwart the trail lay a rent-off fragment of the cliff, which might have fallen from above or might have been heaved into its position by some seismic spasm, comparatively recent. It rose several times as high as my head; the right end of it was jammed against the wall of the cañon; the other descended into the dry bed of the torrent. I looked back up the way I had come, but all seemed distorted and perplexed; the trail was lost in the general incline of the mountainside, roughened with the tumultuous tumble of amorphous rock-masses. The devil-bird had misled me, after all.
I thought it over. Plainly I had diverged from the right path; for Yotalu and the mule could not have passed this barrier. The point at which I had left it was indeterminable; it might be miles back. Should I return or go forward? Darkness was coming on; the attempt to recover the right trail might lead me more astray than ever, and I should not know it even if I found it. On the other hand, to go on would at least bring me down the mountain; it was probable that this had been a real trail before the obstruction occurred and could be taken up further down, and it was possible that it might rejoin at some lower level the road which Yotalu had followed. The choice I made must be made quickly. I resolved, if it were practicable, to go on.
A short scramble brought me to the top of the barrier. From there I looked down a vertical drop of about one hundred feet, but I saw that by edging along toward the north the height would be lessened. It took me ten somewhat risky minutes to reach the most favorable spot; a protuberance of the rock prevented me from seeing the bottom of the channel, but I estimated that it could not be more than seventy feet. My lariat was fifty feet long; by attaching one end to a projecting knob and sliding down, the fall could be chanced; there was no other way. I should have to leave the lariat, but that was one of the conditions to be accepted in this duel between the Andes and me.
I spent some time in finding a reasonably safe holding-place for my line; then very cautiously having unwound the slender thong from my body, I made it fast and began my descent. By and by I hung suspended over an abyss whose depth I could only conjecture. Certain memories and hopes near to my heart passed through my mind and I let go and dropped through the air. I seemed to drop a long way.
However, I alighted in a roughly circular basin, ten feet in diameter, filled to the brim with sand and accumulated rubbish, deposited there in past times by the torrent. It was a hard cushion, but it saved broken bones, and I rose none the worse for a few bruises. The loose end of the lariat dangled fifteen feet above my head. It may serve the turn of the next adventurer who follows my trail. Meanwhile, in my first bout with the mountain I had fared well and was ready for the next.
But my path now lay directly down the bed of the stream, which was much encumbered and prevented speed, especially in the gathering darkness. As I advanced the walls of the cañon approached each other and became steeper, leaving overhead a strip of sky, in which hung a bright star, which I took for Antares. I had made up my mind that I must camp alone and fasting, when I heard in the distances a murmurous sound, which grew louder as I went on, the sound of rushing water. The stream, which had passed underground above, had again risen to the surface. I deemed it of good augury; if I could keep to the water it must in time bring me to the great watersheds below and the tropical forest. In half an hour, after not a few stumbles and minor falls, I had reached the spot where the torrent welled up from the ground. It showed black, with whirling eddies streaked with lines of foam. It formed a wide pool, perhaps fifty yards across, from the further side of which the stream apparently pursued its regular course north and east.
I began picking my way round the margin to the right, when I came upon an oblong object floating out upon the surface, a short tether connecting it with the shore. It was a raft of some kind, and near it upon a boulder was squatting an odd figure, which I took to be a dwarfish man, black, with high shoulders and with no visible head. But as my feet crunched upon the loose gravel this questionable figure emitted a throaty screech and hurtled upward into the air—evidently my old companion, the devil-bird. I lost sight of him almost immediately, but he had given my nerves a twang that recalled the supernatural terrors of my infancy.
Whatever I might think of the devil-bird, there was nothing supernatural about the raft, which turned out upon investigation to be an Indian bolsa, a sort of double canoe, made of inflated sealskins, a vehicle common enough in the lowlands, but unheard of at this altitude. There it swung, however, as if provided for my need, and at the stern was the two-ended paddle with which the natives steer and propel such craft.
I reasoned thus: The bolsa could not have come down from above; it must have ascended from below; there must therefore be a possibility of making the return trip. It might be the property of the devil-bird, who might be a gnome in disguise, but even so he had done me a service of which I would not hesitate to avail myself. There was the contingency, of course, that I might be carried over some cataract and be dashed to pieces, but I had the courage of my extremity. I stepped into the canoe, slipped the painter and was off.
Of the features of this voyage I can give no circumstantial account, inasmuch as I could see very little and was conscious mainly of motion. The motion was swift and often much agitated; it was punctuated by collisions, and thrice I passed over rapids which were practically falls; no other craft could have survived such treatment. I was swung this way and that and I was wetted to the skin, but I was not thrown out and I stuck to the steering paddle. Meanwhile the black walls on either hand seemed to grow taller and closer together; at length the star vanished and the altered sound made by the waters apprised me that I had entered a cavern. The darkness was now absolute, but there was still the sense of forward movement. Presently, however, this seemed to slacken, and on dipping my hand over the side I found that the canoe was nearly at rest. I gave a few tentative strokes with the paddle, and with a light, grating noise the canoe grounded on a low bank.
VII.
Perfect darkness and silence act upon the mind somewhat as physical pressure does upon the body. Kneeling motionless in the bolsa, I felt as if I were in bonds. Or it was as if I were imbedded like a fossil, in black marble, alive, but impotent to move, even so much as to draw my breath. I could listen and that was all. But what was there to hear?
I was finally conscious of a muffled, rhythmical pounding noise, which seemed to come from a great distance; it was the beating of my heart. The oppression became suffocating. I threw my weight on my right knee, causing the bolsa to rock to that side; the ripple thus created resounded with extraordinary loudness and was repeated in numberless echoes, dying away in remoteness and again renewing themselves during several minutes. It was as if I were in the center of a vast drum, and certainly the space around me must have been ample. This perception broke the spell. I got to my feet, drew the canoe up out of the water and stood with the painter in my hand, waiting for the uproar which this occasioned to subside. When all was still again I pulled out the matchbox and struck a match. After the blinding effect of the glare had passed I lit an end of the moccolo and, raising it above my head, looked about me. What a wonder is light!
The infinite black void rushed together to assume form. The human spirit, till now an atom hung in blind space, regained dimension and locality. An irregular dome arched high above me, covered with sparkling points and diversified with pendent, tapering masses. Below extended a rocky floor, merging into the gleaming black mirror of the water. On the margin beside me rested the bolsa which had borne me hither and must be the means of my escape. For the stream, which flowed into the cavern, must flow out of it, and my only security lay in following it through all its windings. But miles might lie between this spot and the exit, and as light was essential to my progress, at least until the current assumed a decided flow, there was no time to waste; my moccolo would not burn more than two hours. I made my dispositions promptly.
I knotted the painter of the bolsa to the end of my staff (which I carried slung across my shoulders when not in use), pushed the craft back into the water and was thus able to walk on the margin, drawing the canoe along beside me. Holding the moccolo aloft in my left hand and with the staff in my right, I set forth without more ado. Unless the stream ran into a sinkhole, whither I could not follow it, there seemed to be no reason why I might not reach the outlet safely.
Relief from the preoccupation of life and death gave me leisure to observe the changing aspects of the cavern. It did not differ greatly from other caves which have been explored, with their marvels of stalactite and stalagmite, their rainbow crystals and their splendid mockery of fantastic architecture. But this was a magic cabinet, in which all metals and minerals had been assembled. Corridors branched out to right and left, giving glimpses that led to grottos of Aladdin. In some places springs oozed from the walls, embossing them with mosslike forms of bright tints. There were great alcoves of white spar, reminding me of the crystallized sugar candy which I used to covet in shop windows when a boy. The glassy stream reflected the arches and pendants, making a duplicate magnificence, the midway of which I moved. The weight of the mountain rested upon these pillars and architraves, but I forgot it in the illusion of airy traceries and aspiring lines of ornament. In so gorgeous a Plutonian palace Proserpine might have been content to spend a moiety of immortality.
From time to time I glanced at my compass and was reassured to find that the general direction in which the stream was leading me was still northeast. Presently, too, I noticed that the water had begun to slide gently forward, though I could otherwise detect no variation from the horizontal in the floor of the cavern. And I fancied, but it might have been fancy only, that faint sounds occasionally reached me, proceeding from I knew not what direction, but distinct from those which were caused by my advance. Sometimes they were like voices whispering dispersedly, or again like the light tread of unshod feet. And once, passing the entrance of a lofty corridor, I heard three metallic strokes, like a signal, but they were so swiftly merged and multiplied into softening echoes that their first suggestiveness was dissipated, though the thought remained that I might not be the first or the only mortal who had found a way into this treasure-house of nature.
All at once the channel of the stream narrowed and turned abruptly toward the north. At the same time the surrounding walls approached each other and the high vault was lowered, till I found myself in a tunnel of black basalt, down which the water swept with a deep murmur, and a breeze drawing through made the flame of the moccolo waver on the wick. There was no longer space to walk dry shod, and I was splashing onward mid-leg deep, while the bolsa, floating in advance, was tugging at the line. In a moment I slipped on a slimy pebble and fell flat, and the moccolo was extinguished with a hiss.
I was up again at once, with the moccolo and my staff still in my hands. Nothing serious had happened, yet I felt as if I had had a world snatched from me and received in return an abyssmal nothingness. It was impossible to relight my taper until I had regained dry land—and where might that be? I stretched out my left arm and moved cautiously forward. At length I felt the contact of the damp side of the tunnel. Keeping in touch with this, I forged onward, step by step, the bolsa all the while pulling like a living creature. There was, I repeat, no new cause for anxiety; nevertheless, a rush of strange emotions was surging within me. I can indicate this vague feeling no better than by comparing it to the attack of a flock of harpies striving to drag my wits asunder. Appositely enough, too, there recurred to my mind a grotesque old Irish superstition—that he who should trip and fall on All-Hallowe'en night was in fairyland when he got up again. This was the night of the hobgoblins, and I had certainly tripped and fallen.
The foolishness that is bound up in the heart of a child reappears occasionally in the man; fasting and nervous tension play tricks with will and judgment. In that black, bewildered, treacherous tunnel in the bowels of the mountain I had a silent but energetic struggle with the traitor that lurks in every man. Then that deeper influence once more resumed control. I reverently acknowledged her blessed succor, and I was not again recreant to the obligation of her nobility.
I went on again, and soon the recession of the wall on my left and the tread of my foot on the naked rock told me that I had arrived at the exit of the tunnel and was on the threshold of another chamber. I secured the bolsa and had recourse to the matches. The astounding scene which the light revealed paints itself in its every detail in my memory at this moment.
The chamber—floor, walls, and dome—was of white quartz, pure and sparkling: it was oval, about a hundred paces in length by thirty in width and of such regularity of form that art must have assisted nature. The stream which I had been following flowed across its southern end and passed out beneath an archway in the eastern side. The domed ceiling, which rose to ten times my height above the floor, displayed an emblem evidently designed to represent the sun; there was a broad disk of gold, from which descended with regularity long rays, reaching nearly to the base of the walls. At the north end of the hall rose a dais, or throne, on which knelt or squatted a figure about eight feet in height, with a long beard and barbaric ornaments, the whole carved grotesquely but powerfully in pure gold. Supported upon a low pedestal in front of this figure was a circular and polished plate of gold, the size of a large center-table. Behind the statue and the throne there was left a vacant space some yards in depth. The throne itself appeared to be of the same precious metal, curiously elaborated in aborescent forms, and extending from it on either side and seemingly incorporate with it was a solid parapet of five feet elevation, continued till it met the walls of the chamber on the right and left. This parapet—though I could hardly credit the testimony of my eyes—was likewise of gold, so that upon consideration I was impelled to the conclusion that throne and parapet, and possibly the statue also, were in truth bodily hewn out of a pure vein of the metal, which crossed the chamber and had been wrought in situ. If so, I stood in the presence of a mass of treasure equal perhaps in value to all the rest that men had collected since history began. A veta madre, indeed! This, then, was the mine of the ancient Incas and doubtless of the more ancient Piruas, in the twilight of old time. This was the spectacle that had crazed Juan Coamo twenty years before. The statue represented the great god Uiracocha, the Founder of the World, and in this lost and lightless cavern, where never a ray of daylight had penetrated since the creation, had been carved these symbols of the faith of the legendary Worshippers of the Sun! I stood long in a sort of trance, gazing amazedly, with no logical movement of thought, till the magic of wealth illimitable began to thrill in my blood. The eyes of the seated god, made of black agate, met my own, and seemed striving to dominate my soul. The heavy, projecting brows drew together under the high forehead; the flickering of the taper gave the stern features life, and for the second time that day the spirit of Glendower looked upon me. Was not he the modern incarnation of the great god of the Hatun Runas? Was not the god Glendower's prototype? Well, then, should I not treat him as cavalierly as I did Glendower?
VIII.
The visible and palpable presence of incalculable gold does, however, a sort of violence to the mind, comparable with what would be the effect of a miracle in nature. It outdoes precedent, reason, and imagination, and by the very vastness of its suggestions of material power bankrupts, as it were, the resources of the mind. Glendower, for all his potential efficiency, was personally only a man, and not a man of the highest type; it had been easy to resist him. But this Glendower of gold was the thing itself that the other stood for—the naked, undeniable, brutal fact. The dominion of the earth could not be offered in a shape more direct and defiant. Let me but follow back the stream to the open air, return to civilization, choose a body of helpers (Glendower himself by preference), and all that this god of gold could bestow would be mine. With this stupendous force to complement the mental and moral endowments with which nature and training had already strengthened me—now in the prime and pride of my life—what might I not accomplish!
I need not dwell on the visions which this deity of the lower earth conjured up before me' kingdoms of the world and the glory of them—they are sadly familiar to human nature. All the while the inmost recessess of my soul held the answer—in accepting this gift I must surrender the ideals and the faith of my life and yield myself a slave to the giver. Before coining into dollars this insolent effigy I must kneel down and worship him. And how, after such abasement, could I sustain the pure and simple majesty of her look to whom all in me that was worthy was bound? No. My immortal birthright was worth more to me than the contents of this Andean cavern.
Yet I compromised so far (being myself very full of human nature), as to resolve to take away with me some concrete evidence of the reality of this experience. The old Incas, for whose glory their slaves of the mine had, as I supposed, erected this image, had done with earthly riches and would not grudge me a memento. So, leaving the bolsa on the bank, I crossed the floor to the throne. I laid my hand upon it, and what at a distance I had mistaken for foliated carving was in truth the result of natural crystallization—the rarest of all conditions under which gold is found. The throne and the entire parapet were a virgin, untouched mass of the metal thus transfigured, and the vein doubtless continued indefinitely th rough the walls of the chamber. The statue, which was part of it, had alone been moulded by hammer and chisel.
My hand had chanced to rest upon an aggregation of the crystals which had assumed the semblance of a pair of outstretched wings, and this mass, perhaps a foot in length, was so slightly attached to the main body that by no great exertion of strength I was able to wrench it away. At this moment a noise—a yelping or barking sound—behind me made me whirl about like a boxer in the ring.
The lower part of the chamber between me and the stream (and the bolsa on which my life depended), was occupied by a dozen or more creatures, the like of which I had never beheld or imagined. At first I took them for a ghastly species of ape; at all events, I realized that Dichter's report of the treasure-guarding demons was true.
None of them was as much as five feet in height—stout, broad-chested bodies on thin and crooked legs, with arms almost as long and muscular as a gorilla's. Stark naked were they all, hairless from crown to sole and with skins having the dead whiteness of unbaked dough; never had sunshine rested on these malformed shapes. And I felt that their blood, too, must be colorless.
Their bald heads were relatively small, contracted in front, protuberant behind, with ears grotesquely exaggerated. Their loose lips disclosed irregular teeth, the canine of the upper jaw enlarged into veritable tusks. Their noses were broad, flat cushions, with open holes for nostrils; their long faces had white, pendulous cheeks and chins shelving back into the throat. Some of the creatures were awful degradations of the female form.
But their eyes! I hesitate to add to the nightmares of the world by describing them. That a dozen generations of total darkness, following perhaps a thousand years of seclusion from the sky, should have made these troglodytes blind—this I might have expected. But the phenomenon which had ensued turned my soul sick.
A nameless instinct, persisting and increasing through ages from parent to offspring, correllated with the sense of sight, had remained within the sightless eyeballs, causing them to project more and more and endowing them with abnormal powers of motion, until now where eyes had been were soft white tentacles, like those of a snail, with similar retractile and protrusive faculty. Creeping and hobbling toward me, whimpering and yelping one to another, the hobgoblins directed upon me the sensitive ends of these molluscous horns, which evidently conveyed some special perception of my quality and movements. May I never again know such horror as was wrought in me by the aspect and onset of these white Men of the Dark!
Meanwhile their number continually increased, one after another issuing from the eastern archway. Their purpose was not to be mistaken. Though feeding mainly on fish snared in the stream, their craving was for stronger meat, and already in imagination I could feel their slavering tusks tearing at my throat. But I had no intention of making a meal for them. A reluctant fighter, never offering offence and seldom called on to defend myself, when need comes I am not insensible to the lust of battle. But I thought that I might make a rush through this blind crowd to the bolsa, once in which the stream could bear me out of their reach. A knife I had, but I shrank from killing the wretched victims of a monstrous wrong, who but acted out a nature which others had perverted. On the other hand, I had not given due weight to the disability I suffered in having to guard with one hand the precious moccolo. But I had no leisure to devise plans of battle, for of a sudden and with surprising activity one of my adversaries leaped upon me, clasped round my body his muscular arms and sank his teeth, with a snarl, in my shoulder.
It was the shoulder of the arm that bore the moccolo. With my other hand I instantly seized him round the neck—the cold, slimy feel of which sent through me shudder of disgust—and as his jaws and arms relaxed at my grip I whirled his body aloft and dashed it on the rocky floor. It quivered for a moment and lay still.
Forward plunged the others, but to my dismay they flung themselves not upon me, but upon the helpless body of their comrade, and a scene of wolflike bestiality not to be portrayed ensued. I tried to kick them away from their prey, but a diversion occurred that forced me to look to myself.
One of the creatures threw back his head and uttered piercing ululation—a signal to which the response was prompt. Like fowls gathering for their meal at the clucking of the farmer, out from the space behind the statue, where they had been harbored, flew up, flapping and screeching, a horde of the devil-birds. The gigantic vultures, in addition to the office of purveyors, to which they had probably been trained, may have been regarded as sacred by the posterity of the idolaters who carved the golden Uiracocha. They were, at all events, more formidable at that juncture to me than all the heathen gods of the pantheon.
The spread of their wings filled the chamber, and in the fetid breeze which they created the little flame of my taper wavered, and in that wavering light I saw for the last time the turmoil of the whole obscene spectacle—the struggling bodies of the hobgoblins, with their clawing arms, dripping jaws and exploring tentacles; the confused evolutions of the condors, turning and swooping in the confined space; the gleam of the golden sun-rays on the walls; the yawning mouths of the tunnels, from which the blackness of darkness was ready to leap forth and obliterate all things, and on his throne the grim god whose creatures these were, saturninely contemplative. Buried a thousand yards deep in the mountain's bowels, with the ransom of the earth within reach, I confronted this hideous offspring of the ancient lust for wealth and sent one thought to the pure stars, and the laughing sunshine and the fragrant forests and the shining rivers, and to her in whose soul that immortal beauty and sweetness found their reason—and then the black wing of a vulture dashed out the flame, and midnight swallowed all.
As the light went out I had noticed the position of the bolsa, twenty paces distant, half out of the water, with the paddle swinging at the stern, and now I was concentrated in the single purpose to hold that direction and fight through to that point. With both hands at liberty I could put my whole strength into the effort. But even my strength, unaided, must have failed. The great wings buffeted my head; my face was torn by the beaks and talons; from below, my legs were seized with an outrageous grip in the struggle to throw me down. The very number of my antagonists was to my advantage: they attacked one another, and snatched one the other away from me, but the battle was still very desperate. Once I stumbled and was brought to my knees, and instantly my shoulders were covered with loathsome, clinging bodies; they hung on my neck, and an intolerable force was bearing me to the ground. But then, verily, I fought a good fight, and power came upon me as upon Samson of old. Some of the blows I dealt wept astray, but those that met their unseen quarry needed no repetition. A condor must have swooped upon one of the creatures mounted on my back, who, to defend himself, took his fingers from my throat; I caught one of his feet in both my hands and swung his body from side to side, clearing a path. But in the fierceness of this work I had lost my direction and knew not where the bolsa lay, and for a moment I faltered, thinking my end was near.
Then in the midst of that blind fury and whirlwind of conflict in which I was plunged outwardly I was made aware of an inward spiritual tranquillity and elevation, from the height of which I looked down, as it were, upon myself at grips there with death, and, without eyes, I clearly saw deliverance. Twice or thrice before in my life has a like event befallen me, when mortal ability had touched its limit; if you call it delusion I make no dispute, because I hold it to be something holy, which it would be futile and profane to discuss. Solve the mystery how you will, I ceased upon the instant to fight and flung down the flail of flesh and blood which I had been wielding. Avoiding, as if I saw them, those that tried to intercept me, I turned and walked to the bolsa, stepped into it and grasped the paddle. And no sooner was this done, and I had pushed off from the shore into the current, than the spiritual vision was withdrawn and I once more groped in thick darkness, with the bewildered din clamoring in my ears.
But immediately the noises became muffled as the boat shot down into the eastern tunnel, though doubtless, unaware of my escape, the fight continued. I made no attempt to paddle, but held the oar at the stern, by the sense of touch merely keeping the boat parallel with the set of the stream. Onward I swept, the breeze of my progress fanning my face, and once more the black silence settled round me, but bringing now a sense of blessed rest after sore labor. At times the course swerved to the right or to the left and my speed increased or diminished; the viewless space about me expanded or contracted, but in the main the journey was even and uneventful, and an hour may have passed by, during which the blood dried on my wounds, which were but superficial, and, though with vigor abated from lack of food, I became collected and calm. What might await me I knew not, but I knew that the Power which had preserved me was guiding my flight still, and my soul, dwelling at ease, reviewed the scenes through which I had passed as if they were the story of another, to whom it had been given to behold, as in a symbol, the monstrous issues of the thirst for gold and the fate of its victims.
The bolsa took a sudden leap. A blow as if dealt by the mailed hand of a giant struck my forehead, and I fell back senseless.
IX.
As I lay on my back I saw near my face the blossoms of a red trumpet-flower, in and out of the bells of which buzzed a couple of humming-birds. A hundred feet in air outspread the level boughs of a gigantic fig-tree, from which descended toward the earth slender lianas, hanging vertically. My bed was of ferns and plantain leaves; round about me was the riotous luxuriance of the tropical forest, whose fragrant breath I inhaled.
I raised my hand to my aching head; it was swathed in a cloth saturated with some aromatic liquid. The humming-birds darted away and in their stead appeared a flat, broad, brown countenance, with a solicitous expression, as of a nurse for an ailing child, which made me smile. It was the face of Yotalu. It did not seem strange that I should be there and he with me. He gave me something cool to drink and I closed my eyes and slept.
I awoke feeling better and sat up; Yotalu was squatting near me. It was late afternoon by the sun and I was hungry. Yotalu gave me food and fruit; I was refreshed and my strength came back to me. I recalled my adventures to the blow that knocked me unconscious, and then I opened my mouth and asked Yotalu many questions. After answering them he in turn interrogated me. As we talked the humming-birds came back to the trumpet-flowers for their evening repast, and methought how much more agreeable are they than devil-birds; how much more pleasant are trees and flowers than veta madres, and the living vault of heaven than domes of rigid rock, however bespangled with precious crystals—nay, how much sweeter and lovelier was Yotalu than the grisly Men of the Dark! And yet Yotalu was no beauty. Meanwhile the mule, stabled between two of the great flanges of the fig-tree, munched his provender, stamped his neat hoofs and wagged his slender ears in peace.
Yotalu's tale was simple. After I left him he had continued down the trail till dusk. After supper, fearing devil-birds and giving me up for lost, he went on till he reached the forest and camped at a point where a stream, descending the mountain from the west, flowed beside the path. He had intended, with chastened sorrow at my fate, to seek the nearby habitations of his tribe and enjoy with them the booty of the mule and its load.
At early dawn, however, going to the river bank for water, he had noticed a bolsa with no visible occupant drifting down the current, turning this way and that as it came, and indolently delayed by here a snag and there a shallow. He captured it, and lo! my lifeless body in the bottom of it, defaced by many wounds, with but the shreds of my hickory shirt remaining and with a great black bruise across my forehead. Upon further examination it turned out that the demons had not altogether made an end of me, and he made me the subject of his savage therapeutics. All was now well, but where, he wondered, did I procure the bolsa?
To this problem I could suggest no solution more plausible than that the demons had used it as a bait for possible victims. As a matter of fact, it remains a riddle to this day. I told him so much of my adventures as I deemed it expedient he should hear, and we agreed that the bump on my head must have been given by the low brow of the archway through which the stream made its exit from the cavern, miles above. The sequel explained itself.
Four days later on the banks of the beautiful Madeira I parted from Yotalu with assurances of mutual esteem, presenting him with the mule and its trappings and with several gold coins from my money belt, but the golden wings which I had wrenched off from the throne of Uiracocha I took with me. For how it happened I know not, but probably at the moment when I had faced about to confront the Men of the Dark I had unconsciously thrust them through the leathern strap round my wrist, where they stuck all through the battle and my subsequent voyage.
When, after further adventures, I returned to New York I had the wings mounted on a stand of ebony, and they now sit before me on my writing table. Goldsmiths tell me that they contain gold enough to make between twenty-five and thirty thousand gold dollars, but I do not need the money and should regret to lose the wings, recalling as they do an episode exceptionally stirring in the life of a man uniformly peaceable.
The other day I accompanied Glendower to the gallery of the Stock Exchange. "What do you think of it?" he asked me after a my first visit.
"Let us get out," said I, turning away from the maniac uproar. "I saw something almost as bad up in the Andes; and I barely escaped with my life. Is Uiracocha any relation of yours?"
He stared, but I have never told him what I meant.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1934, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 90 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse