CHAPTER XII--THE PATH OF THE TIGER
It was near upon the time of sunset when I slowly climbed the hill. Icould not take my eyes from the great stones before me, many of whichmust have been at least ten square yards in surface area, and cut sostraight and square that, without cement or mortar, they fitted oneagainst the other as nicely as a child's wooden bricks. I wondered howthey had come there, by what means they had been transported and liftedinto position; and I marvelled that an ancient people should have beenmasters of such science.
But it was not this alone that caused my footsteps to become slower andslower as I approached the ruin. Despite myself, I could not helpremembering much that the wild man had said to me of ghosts and evilspirits.
In the dim evening light, wreathed in the mist that rose from thesurrounding plain, those great pillars of cold, silent stone looked notto belong to this world of common things. Towering, as they did, abovethe tree-tops of the forest, they made me think of the enchanted palacesof which in childhood my mother had read to me from fairy tales. Ifthere were ghosts anywhere in all the world, they were here--and I wassure of that.
This notion got the strongest hold of me; and presently, a cold sweatbroke out upon my forehead, and I wished that I were back with the wildmen in their woodland village. However, I had more pride than toretreat, and that at the eleventh hour; and I continued to go forward,though something after the manner of a condemned man towards thegallows.
As it grew darker I became more afraid. Night in those tropic latitudescomes suddenly; darkness falls like a curtain upon a stage; and when Ihad gained the outer pillars, which formed together an encirclingcolonnade, there was scarce light enough for me to see a distance ofthirty yards.
Within the circumference of these outer pillars--which attained upon anaverage a height of about fifty feet--was a great roofless building witha floor of flagstones, where the silence quite unnerved me. It was moreoppressive than the silence of the forest, where I had always beenconscious that one was surrounded by Life in a million forms: plants,insects, and animals--all at war that they might live.
But this place seemed dead, save for vast colonies of small red antswhose bite was poisonous; for I had not been there a full minute beforeI was bitten from head to foot, and there were painful weals all overme.
It was plain I could not sleep amid the ruins as I had intended. Notonly would the ants torture me almost to distraction, but the place wasuncanny, and I could now well understand how those ignorant woodlandersbelieved it to be haunted.
I was about to go, and had actually turned towards the main entrance,which I could see quite clearly in the light of the newly-risen stars,when a sound came to my ears that was so like a groan that I felt myblood run cold.
I stood transfixed, more frightened than bewildered. Looking about meon every side, straining my eyes in the semi-darkness, I could seenothing. I was convinced that there was no one in that vast chambersave myself and the red ants. And yet the groan came again, louder thanbefore.
I tip-toed across the room, my heart throbbing like an engine. And likea frightened child, I hid myself in a corner; for I had no convictionsany longer, and I wished only to be somewhere where I could not be seen.
Then a spider descended upon me from somewhere high up the wall. Andyou may laugh at me when I say that I sprang to my feet and dropped myblow-pipe and let out a cry that was very near a shriek. But you wouldnever have laughed had you been placed as I was, seen that spider, andfelt upon your shoulders his restless, furry legs. For this was nocommon spider that eats flies and gnats, but a bird-devouring brute, thesize of a saucer; and this is no exaggeration when one takes intoaccount the full extension of his legs.
As I fled, I picked it from off me with my hand, and threw it away;whereupon I found that it had covered my fingers with a disgusting andsticky saliva. I am only thankful that it had no time to bite me, for Ibelieve the bite of these terrible insects has been known to provefatal. They build webs of such strength and solidity that birds aslarge as sparrows are caught in the toils and killed; and I have heardit said that these monsters also ascend trees, drive hens from theirnests and then devour their eggs.
However, this is no treatise upon Natural History. He who wishes toknow more of this horrid creature may read of it in recognised works ofscience. For myself, to have felt once its quick, hairy legs upon mybare neck and shoulders is enough for many a day, and the thing maybelong to any species and genus that it likes, so long as I never seteyes upon one again.
For I was thoroughly scared; I had become as jumpy as a bean on a hotplate. I trust that I am not by nature a coward; but the atmosphere ofthat ghostly, misty place, the mysterious groans that I had heard, whichhad seemed to come from nowhere, and the long-legged, furry spider, hadall so played upon my nerves that I knew neither what I was doing norwhat would happen next.
I had made, in any case, as much noise as a harlequinade. I had criedout at the top of my voice and had sent my wooden blow-pipe rattling tothe ground. And then I stood motionless, breathless, waiting--as itseemed--for some new calamity.
This time it was no groan I heard, but a human voice calling, at firstloudly, and then more softly, in a strange foreign tongue.
I listened, and I dared not move. The silence that followed endured forminutes, during which the seconds were punctuated by the violent beatingof my heart. And, presently, I began to think. As I mastered my fears,I became capable of reasoning.
It was folly to consider ghosts. Such superstitions were well enoughfor untutored savages, wild men of the forests, but they would never dofor Richard Treadgold, who had lived his years in Sussex--though, of acertainty, I had heard of more than one so-called haunted house betweenBeachy Head and Selsey Bill.
I was convinced that I had heard a human voice. I had been able even todistinguish words, howbeit in a language that I did not comprehend. Andif that were so, it must follow that I was not the only human soulwithin that gloomy ruin.
I looked about me, and saw in the starlight my blow-pipe, lying on thefloor. I picked it up, and placing a dart within the mouthpiece, beganto explore the place, starting at the wide entrance and making a tour ofthe walls.
It was not long before I came upon a square hole in the ground, edgedwith shallow coping stones to keep out the water when the place wasflooded by the rains. It reminded me of a hatchway on board a ship.
Below it was quite dark. I lay down upon the floor at full length withthe idea of listening: for I was now sure that I was on the track of thesecret of the place. But presently my eyes grew accustomed to thedarkness, and I saw before me a flight of narrow steps, leadingdownward--as it seemed--into the very bowels of the earth.
I had now mastered my fears. I was determined to be a fool no longer,but to conduct myself like the man I wished I were. I would havedescended without a second's thought had it not been for two graveconsiderations: firstly, I had no means of striking a light; andsecondly, the stairway was so narrow that I must leave behind my longIndian blow-pipe, the only means of self-defence I had.
I have set down already much by no means favourable to myself; andtherefore I have the less hesitation in recording an incident which goesfar to prove that there were moments when I was a worthy pupil andadmirer of John Bannister himself. For I went down that black andshallow staircase, half naked as I was and quite unarmed, not knowingwhat would befall me at the end of it.
Half-way down, the staircase turned, when to my surprise I saw below methe dim reflection of a light. And presently I found myself in a longshallow chamber, where I stood bewildered.
In the centre of the room was a rough stone altar upon which burned anoil lamp of a quaint design and wrought in bronze. Of other such lamps,similar in all respects, I counted five, lying upon the stone flooring,each surrounded by its own pool of oil.
The whole place indeed was in great disorder. Curtains of finely wovenhair had been wrenched from the walls and cast upon the ground. Benc
hesand short-legged tables had been overturned, and in some cases broken.Here lay a sword, and there a spear, and here again a pistol, broken atthe small of the butt. Nor was all this the worst of it, by any means;for immediately before me, lying in stiff, huddled attitudes--a patheticand a tragic thing to see--were three stone-dead men, as sure as I firstsaw the light of day in Sussex.
Dead they were, for they neither moved nor even breathed. And when Isighed aloud at the wonder of it all, a fourth man whom I had notnoticed, lying upon the floor at the other end of the room, struggledupon an elbow and cried out to me, and afterwards pointed a finger downhis throat.
I was no such fool as to mistake his meaning. He wanted water to drink,and I looked about me to find it. At the foot of the altar was a poolof clear, crystal water, a spring that bubbled from out of the crust ofthe earth, the overflow being conducted to the far end of the chamber bymeans of a shallow, wooden trough. I found a drinking vessel which, tomy amazement, was of gold; and this I filled in haste, and brought tothe wounded man.
For wounded he was, a leg being broken at the thighbone, so that hecould not move an inch without suffering the greatest pain. It was thispain I daresay, as much as loss of blood, which had thrown him in afever; for his skin was burning to the touch.
Three times I filled the cup, and each time he emptied it; and as hedrank, he thanked me with his eyes.
Then he lay back and rested, whilst I gazed upon that shambles; for ashambles it was--blood was everywhere.
I went to the dead men, to each in turn, to make sure that there was nospark of life in any. And this was the second time that I looked uponthe cold face of death; for, sure enough, each one was dead. And theywere shot; they had been killed by leaden bullets: one in the head,another in the heart, whereas the third, poor wretch! had died in agony,with a great wound in his stomach.
But dead though they were, I could not regard them without noticing howdifferent they were in features and in figure from the wild men of thewoods.
The savages with whom I had sojourned for so long, for whose simplekindness I shall be ever grateful, were of a Mongolian cast ofcountenance: they had high cheek-bones, lips thinner than a negro's, andyet thick and loose, and their eyes were almond-shaped, incliningdownwards to the nose. Also, their greatly receding foreheads and chinssuggested that they belonged to one of the lower and least intelligentspecies of mankind.
But the three dead men, as well as he who was yet alive, had aquilinenoses, thin lips, and rounded eyes. Also they were fully dressed inlong tunics of some woven material, open at the throat, and girdled atthe waist. They wore their hair long, but cut straight, level with theeyebrows; and above this fringe a broad metal band encircled the headabove the ears.
I looked from them to the altar, and saw thereon a graven disc fromwhich rays extended to the extremities of the stone. Beyond doubt thiswas meant to be the sun; and of a sudden I remembered that theinhabitants of Old Peru had been wont to worship the sun.
So these, perhaps, were those same Peruvian priests of whom AmosBaverstock had spoken, they who shared with John Bannister the secret ofthe Greater Treasure of the Incas.
And then the truth burst upon me as in a flash--I had struck the pathwaytraversed by the tiger. The death and destruction by which I wassurrounded was the work of Amos Baverstock himself.
I picked up the broken pistol, looked at it in the lamplight, and knewstraightway that I had guessed aright. For I recognised it at once. Ithad belonged to Joshua Trust. It was the same pistol I had seen oftenin his hands, the one with which he had fired at me upon theLittlehampton road. And if I had had any doubts upon the matter, theywould have been dispelled at once; for there were the man's initials,"J.T.," carved with his sailor's jack-knife on the wood.
I just let the broken pistol fall to the ground at my feet; and at thenoise, the wounded man, to whom I had given water, struggled again uponan elbow, and spoke to me--_in English_.
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