In Search of El Dorado

by Harry Collingwood

  CHAPTER FIVE.

  THE GOD OF THE CATU INDIANS SPEAKS.

  That night, as the two friends sat together discussing supper, Dicklearned a few fresh facts concerning his companion. He expressed hissurprise and admiration at the skill and dexterity which Earle haddisplayed when performing the operation upon the panther's foot; towhich the American replied:

  "Pooh! my dear chap, that was a mere nothing; one of the simplestsurgical operations it is possible to think of. You should have seensome of the operations I have assisted at, and some in which I have beenthe sole operator. Why, man--but I won't enter into details. Say! Iguess I've never told you that I am a full-fledged physician andsurgeon, have I? No. Well, I am. Been through my studentship, walkedthe hospitals, was chief assistant-surgeon at a big hospital in New Yorkfor nearly a year, took all my degrees--and then chucked it up and tookto travelling and exploration, which was the idea that led me toqualify. Because, you see, when a man ventures beyond the pale ofcivilisation and has to rely absolutely upon himself, a knowledge ofmedicine and surgery is a big asset; indeed, had I not possessed suchknowledge I should have pegged out in Central Africa, for it was solelyby its means that I escaped death upon at least half-a-dozen differentoccasions. And the same knowledge has enabled me to save the lives ofquite a number of natives. There are a few African tribes with whom Iam regarded as `some' medicine-man, and who would cheerfully have killedtheir chief and elected me in his place if I would but have said theword."

  Later on in the evening they went out together to visit their patient,and found the poor beast manifestly much easier and more comfortable.He had consumed all the water and a small portion of the food supplied,but was evidently still partially stupefied by the after effect of theanaesthetic, and showed no resentment at their approach; he evensubmitted to be touched and gently stroked, seeming to be in that numband semi-conscious condition in which one cares nothing for whatever mayhappen. But the fever of almost unendurable suffering had vanished fromhis eyes, and Earle insisted that the poor brute recognised them, andwas in some vague fashion aware that he owed his relief to them. Theybrought him more water, which he lapped greedily out of the enamelleddish, even while Earle held it; and when at length they left him, thepoor brute was tentatively trifling with the remains of the food withwhich they had supplied him.

  With the coming of dawn on the following morning, the two friends issuedfrom their tent, eager to enjoy the now rare luxury of a bath; and ontheir way they paid another visit to their patient. The brute proved tobe markedly better, although still terribly weak from the long period ofstarvation which he had evidently undergone. He revealed his knowledgeof their approach by partially baring his fangs in a sort of semi-snarl,and even made some semblance of an effort to scramble to his feet, butthe attempt was clearly too much for his strength, and he subsidedagain. But he was now lying in a more natural and comfortable position,with his handsome head resting upon his outstretched forepaws, like agreat cat, and when Earle unhesitatingly approached, and, placing hishand upon the creature's head, proceeded gently to caress it, the animalnot only endured the touch, but after a minute or two actually began topurr.

  From that moment the process of taming the beast synchronised with theprogress of its recovery. On the second day of the halt at the restcamp the interesting invalid was able to use his feet and limp the fewpaces of distance from the camp to the rivulet as often as thirstdemanded, but after drinking, the creature always returned to his lairnear the tent, where Earle took care to feed him; and when, after asojourn of five days on the spot, the camp was "broken" and the marchwas resumed, "King Cole," as the American had named his new pet, fell inand plodded along between the two white men as naturally as though hehad been brought up with them from cubhood.

  Thus far, the party, greatly to their own surprise, had encountered noIndians, though they had occasionally met with "signs," indicating thatthe country was not absolutely a desert. But on the fifth day of theirresumed march they unexpectedly came upon a small party in a clearing,who incontinently fled upon their approach. A halt was at once called,and the party went temporarily into camp, while Earle, unpacking one ofhis bales, produced therefrom certain small hand-mirrors, a string ortwo of vari-coloured beads, two gaudy-looking bandanna handkerchiefs,and three cheap pocket-knives. These treasures he entrusted to the careof Inaguy, the headman, and furnishing him with an escort of two men,dispatched him in search of the elusive natives, bidding him find themand by means of the gifts which he carried, open up peacefulcommunication with them. For up to this time the party had beenwandering more or less at random, and their leader was most anxious toget into touch with the inhabitants, so that he might question them andperchance extract some information from them which might aid him in hisquest. Then, the ambassador dispatched, the party sat down to await hisreturn with such patience as they possessed.

  It was not, however, until past noon on the following day that Inaguyreturned to camp alone, with a somewhat disquieting tale. From this itappeared that, having got upon the retreating Indians' trail, he and hiscompanions had followed it up until close upon sunset, when, whilepassing through a narrow opening between two high rocks, they had beensuddenly set upon from both front and rear, overpowered, and conveyed ascaptives to a certain spot, where they found the tribe of which theywere in search established as dwellers in numerous rock caves in theside of a cliff.

  Arrived here, they were at once taken into the presence of the chief andclosely questioned as to the why and the wherefore of their presence inthat region, how many in number their party were, and so on, thequestioning and answering being conducted with considerable difficultyowing to Inaguy's very imperfect knowledge of the language in which hewas addressed. It appeared that the chief listened to Inaguy'sexplanation, such as it was, with a good deal of impatience andsuspicion, and finally terminated the interview by appropriating thegifts which the man bore, and condemning him and his comrades to besacrificed, on the following morning, to a certain stone god, by way ofpropitiation, in the hope that the act might effect the cure of certainpersons belonging to the community who were then lying apparently at thepoint of death, suffering from some mysterious sickness. And soterrified had Inaguy been at the prospect of a sacrificial death, withits accompanying tortures, that it had taken him the whole night tothink out an argument which might possibly save the lives of himself andhis companions.

  This argument he had advanced when, at sunrise, he and his twocompanions had been led forth to die upon the altar before the greatstone god; and it had consisted, first, in the narrative of how theGreat White Chief in command of his party had miraculously cured a blackpanther which had been discovered in the last stage of dissolution, andsubsequently tamed it, and secondly, in the confident assertion that theman who could do this thing could likewise cure the sick of the village,if he were approached in a becomingly humble spirit. The humble spirit,Inaguy regretfully reported, had proved conspicuous by its absence; butafter much discussion a bargain had been eventually struck whereby thetwo followers of Inaguy were to be retained as hostages while theheadman was to be released upon condition that he returned at once tothe Great White Chief, conveying a message that unless the latter andhis party turned up at the village before sunset, the hostages would beput to death.

  It took Earle not a moment to decide what his action should be, whenInaguy brought his narrative to a conclusion. The men's lives must besaved at any cost; and since the village was situated at a considerabledistance from the camp, and it would mean quick marching for the partyto reach it within the stipulated time, the tent was immediately struck,and the march was at once commenced.

  They arrived at the village with only a few minutes to spare, so fewindeed, that they found the villagers already assembling in preparationfor the sacrifice, while the sun's disc was within less than half of itsown apparent diameter from the summits of a range of hills that boundedthe horizon.

  The first object to attract the visitor
s' attention was an enormousfigure, some forty feet high, bearing a rude resemblance to that of aseated man, which had evidently at some remote period, been sculpturedout of a solid block of black marble seemingly springing vertically outof the ground. There was nothing artistic in the conception orexecution of the image, which was a mere travesty of the human figure,every member being absurdly out of proportion, while the only featuresupon the modelling of which any pains had been taken were those of theface, the expression of which hideously suggested the extremes ofmingled cunning and ferocity. An altar of the same black marble, aboutthree feet high and ten feet long, stood at the feet of the figure, andthis was already piled with wood in preparation for the anticipatedsacrifice.

  At the precise moment when the party came within sight of thisextraordinary figure they also became conscious of a peculiar taint inthe air suggestive of mud and rotting vegetation; and as Earle sniffedit he remarked:

  "Umph! Big swamp not far off, I guess, which, apart from anything else,is enough to account for sickness in the village. Swamp fever, mostlikely. Say, Dick, that's an ugly-looking guy, that idol, eh. Won'tthese ginks get a startler when they hear him speak presently!"

  "Speak?" repeated Dick. "How do you mean?"

  "You just wait and see, sonny," returned Earle. "Oh, yes, he'll speak,you bet. And what he is going to say is--But here comes the chief andhis principal headmen to meet us. Now, Inaguy, you be very careful inyour interpretation of everything that passes, for a good deal maydepend upon it. And let's hurry; I want to get up as close as possibleto that idol before the palaver begins."

  The chief of the tribe was easily distinguishable from all the rest,from the fact that he walked some half a dozen paces in front of theothers, and also because of his garb, which consisted of a gaudyhead-dress of variously coloured feathers and an enormous jaguar's skinthrown over his left shoulder, half of it covering the front of hisbody--and the other half the rear, the two halves united at his righthip by knotting the skin of the left foreleg to the left hinder one. Hewas, like all the rest of his tribe, coal-black in colour, and, like hisfollowers, was armed with a sheaf of formidable-looking barbed spears,the heads of which appeared to be made of bone or horn. They seemed tobe a fine race of men, standing nearly six feet high, and their carriagewas suggestive of great strength and agility, but they were undeniablyugly and repulsive of feature, the expression being that of mingledcunning and cruelty. As they drew nearer, King Cole, the black panther,began to snarl and show his fangs in an exceedingly hostile fashion,whereupon Dick hurriedly seized one of the tent ropes and deftly loopedit about the animal's neck in a standing bowline knot, at the same timesoothing him by word and touch.

  The two parties met and came to a halt at a point some thirty feet fromthe altar; and as they did so Earle waved his hand in greeting towardthe figure, airily remarking as he did so:

  "How do, old chap! Glad to have the pleasure of seeing you at last."

  To which, to the stupefaction of everybody, Dick included, the figurereplied in a high, thin voice:

  "The pleasure is mine, oh wonderful medicine-man, who has come to healmy people. Tell them that ye are my particular friends, and that theymust treat you and yours well during your stay among them, upon pain ofincurring my lasting anger."

  "Got that, Inaguy?" asked Earle, turning to his headman, who seemed soparalysed with amazement that he could scarcely reply in theaffirmative. "Good! Then just translate to the chief and his followerswhat I said, and what their god answered."

  With chattering teeth and lips that quivered with terror to such anextent that he could scarcely articulate, the thoroughly frightenedInaguy obeyed his master's order, and his astonishment and terror wereso obviously genuine that they only added to the already profound effectproduced upon the Indians by the seeming miracle of speech from theirhitherto dumb god. Had the chief been a little less astonished than hewas, it might have occurred to him to wonder why the idol had chosen toexpress his will in a language that needed interpretation; but obviouslyhe was altogether too profoundly impressed by the marvellous happeningfor the smallest shred of suspicion to enter his mind, and uponreceiving the message he immediately wheeled round, and prostratinghimself with his face to the ground--an example instantly followed bythose about him--mumbled a long statement which, upon being translatedby Inaguy, proved to be an emphatic assurance that nothing whatevershould be done that could provoke the god's displeasure. This done, herose to his feet and shouted an order for the immediate release of thehostages; after which he turned to Earle and Dick and reverentially badethem welcome to the village, at the same time requesting them to pitchtheir camp wherever they pleased.

  Earle, having chosen a spot well out in the open, where anything in thenature of a sudden surprise would be difficult--though he explained toDick that, after what had happened, he had little or no fear of anythingof the kind--intimated to the chief his desire to see the sick people atonce, and went off with that individual, leaving Dick to supervise thearrangement of the camp.

  Meanwhile Dick, who was by no means a fool, had been thinking mattersover, and had come to the conclusion that he understood the apparentmystery of the idol's speech, and chuckled to himself over Earle'scleverness, which had been so wonderful as to mystify even the youngEnglishman for the moment.

  By the time that Earle reached the camp, after paying his professionalvisit to the sick, the camp was all in order, and supper was nearlyready. Earle was in fine feather, for not only had he discovered thatthe invalids were all down with swamp fever, which, severe as it was, hewas confident of his ability to cure, but upon questioning the chiefwith regard to the great object of his quest, he had been informed thata tribe of Indians known as the Mangeromas, occupying territory manydays' march toward the south-west, were believed to possess someknowledge of a wonderful people answering to the description which Earlehad given, but that the Catus--the tribe whose guests the party nowwere--had as little as possible to do with the Mangeromas, since thelatter were an exceedingly fierce, warlike and barbarous race, more thansuspected of cannibalism. This unsavoury reputation, however, affectedEarle not in the least, he was out for adventure, and was determined tohave it, moreover he wanted definite information concerning El Doradoand the city of Manoa, and was prepared to take his chance, even amongcannibals in order to get it.

  "Well," remarked Dick, "that's all right; where you go, I go with you,even if it should be into a country where cannibals are as common asblackberries in August. And I have no doubt that, if need be, you canscare them as effectually as you did those niggers this evening. Andlet me tell you, while I think of it, that you did it remarkably well.Why, you puzzled even me for the moment."

  "Did I, really?" demanded Earle, with every symptom of extremegratification. "I am glad of that, for, to tell you the truth, I am abit out of practice, and the idea did not occur to me until Inaguymentioned the idol this afternoon. Then I thought that if, by means ofventriloquism, I could make the idol speak, it would cause our friendshere to sit up and take notice, as it did. Ventriloquism, Dick, is avery useful accomplishment for a man who goes much among savages, as Ihave done, and it has got me out of an extremely tight corner more thanonce. It always appealed to me powerfully, from the time when, as a boyof seven years old, I attended a ventriloquial entertainment and heardthe guy conversing with unseen people in mid-air, and heard remarksaddressed to him by obviously inanimate objects. There seemed to me tobe useful possibilities in it, and I started trying to do it at once,finally taking lessons from a wonderfully clever guy, who told me thatmy throat was specially well adapted for it. Ah! here comes Peter withsupper, for which I'm glad, for I happen to be possessed of a ten dollarappetite to-night."

  The meal over, Earle unpacked, his medicine chest and mixed a sufficientquantity of medicine to serve his patients through the night, and tookit up to the village, where he remained nearly three hours ministeringto the sick, and talking, through Inaguy, to Yahiti, the chief of theCat
us. When at length he returned to the camp he was in the highestspirits, for the somewhat incomprehensible reason that Yahiti hadinformed him that the country lying between the Catu and the Mangeromaterritories was extraordinarily difficult, and full of the most weirdand terrible perils.

  On the following morning the two friends were astir with the dawn, Earlehaving expressed a desire to inspect the great swamp in theneighbourhood, to which he attributed the epidemic of fever from whichthe inhabitants of the village were suffering. This swamp was situatedat the distance of about a mile south-east from the village, and was ofsuch an extent that whenever the wind blew from either the east or thesouth--these being the prevailing winds there--the pestiferous odoursarising from it were wafted directly toward the village; and Earle'sidea was to investigate, with the view of ascertaining whether anythingcould be done to reclaim the swamp, failing which he proposed torecommend the Catus to abandon the place and take up their abodeelsewhere.

  Upon reaching the swamp, it was found to lie in a shallow depression,roughly circular in shape and some three miles in diameter, its deepestpart--about eight feet--being nearest the village, while at its upperextremity it was fed by a small stream of a capacity just aboutsufficient to neutralise the constant process of evaporation withoutbeing enough to produce an overflow. Further than that, it occupiedsuch a position that a trench little more than a quarter of a mile inlength and averaging a depth of about nine feet was all that was neededto drain the swamp by carrying off the water and discharging it into avalley some three-hundred feet deep.

  An alternative scheme which Earle also investigated was the diversion ofthe stream which supplied the swamp with water; and this was also foundpossible by cutting a trench about two hundred yards long; but it wasopen to the objection that, in order to do it, the workers would beobliged to walk a distance of nearly twelve miles daily to and fromtheir work, and he doubted whether the Catus were energetic enough to doit.

  The task of convincing the Catus that they must do away with the swampor abandon the village, unless they were prepared continually to sufferfrom fever, was a long and troublesome one, the Indians having a strongconstitutional objection to anything in the nature of hard work; butEarle succeeded at length, and actually got them started on the work ofcutting the drainage ditch, that scheme having been chosen as the onepromising the quickest results and involving the least labour. By thetime that this was done the invalids were all recovered from theirsickness; and ten days after their arrival at the Catu village theexploring party resumed their march, to the loudly expressed regret ofthe inhabitants, who urgently pressed them to remain, and would quitepossibly have detained them by force, but for fear of exciting the angerof the stone god.

  The journey was resumed immediately after breakfast on a certainmorning, and before the hour for the first halt arrived the party beganto realise the truth of Yahiti's story that the route was full ofdifficulties, if not of dangers; for it lay over rugged country sothickly bestrewn with enormous boulders that Earle likened the journeyto the exploration of San Francisco immediately after the earthquake.Of course, they went round the boulders when such a course was possible,but it very frequently happened that long reefs of rock projected out ofthe ground for miles on either hand, when, difficult though the taskmight be, it became easier to climb up one side and down the other, thanto pass round. Two miles was the extent of their journey over that kindof country which they were able to accomplish before sunset; and when atlength they camped they were little more than eight miles from the Catuvillage.

  To travel over such country was wearisome in the extreme, but there wasnothing for it but to push on, or else make a detour of unknown extent;and this idea Earle would not entertain for a moment. On the followingday, therefore, they resumed their journey, although with every yard ofadvance the difficulties appeared to grow more formidable.

  It was about mid-morning when they reached the base of a cliff someforty feet high that, being practically vertical, seemed to bar theirfurther progress, and after contemplating it for several minutes, Earledecided to make the spot a halting place while he and Dick explored thecliff in opposite directions in search of a practicable crossing.Accordingly, while the natives were forming camp, the two white men,taking their rifles and a few cartridges, set off along the foot of thecliffs, Earle proceeding in a north-westerly direction, while Dickproceeded toward the south-east.

  The rock of which the cliff was formed was, for some considerabledistance in the direction followed by Dick, quartzite; but at a pointabout a mile from the spot where he had parted from Earle it changed toa black, bituminous limestone, studded here and there with ammonites.Dick, who knew little or nothing about geology, merely noticed thechange in the character of the rock, and sauntered on, eagerly scanningits face, in the hope of finding a spot where it might be scalable bymen carrying moderately heavy burdens. And at length he reached, as hebelieved, such a spot, where the black rock seemed to have been riven bysome mighty natural convulsion, the rift forming a steep and exceedinglynarrow gully leading to the summit. Naturally, he at once started toclimb this gully, with the object of testing its practicability; and hehad traversed nearly two-thirds of its length when, as he scrambled up,his attention was suddenly attracted to a sort of pocket in the rock,which had been laid open by a fall. What particularly attracted hisattention toward this pocket was the fact that it contained aconsiderable number of bright green crystals, which struck him as beingpeculiar not only from their rich colour, but also from the fact thatthey were all of practically the same shape, namely hexagonal. Sogreatly did he admire them that he put a couple of the largest in one ofhis pockets, intending to show them to Earle and ask him whetherperchance they were of any value. Then he pushed on again and soonreached the upper end of the gully, when he found himself, somewhat tohis amazement, on a vast tableland, stretching as far as could be seen,with what looked like a big forest at a distance of some ten miles.

  Having completed his survey, Dick descended the gully and returned tothe camp, to find that Earle was still absent; he therefore set out toseek him and report his success. Some two miles beyond the camp he metthe American returning, considerably disgusted, he having failed in hissearch, and at once Dick reported his triumph, incidentally producingthe crystals and asking if Earle happened to know what they were.

  "Know what they are?" echoed Earle, after most carefully andinterestedly examining the stones. "Why, of course I do. Don't you?"

  "Haven't the least idea," answered Dick. "But they struck me as beingrather pretty, and I thought I would take them back to my sister assouvenirs of my travels. There are dozens more where these came from."

  "Are there?" caustically remarked Earle. "Then, my dear Cavendish,permit me to congratulate you; for these two crystals are remarkablyfine emeralds; and the probability is that you have accidentallystumbled upon an emerald mine rich enough to make the fortunes of adozen men. Let's get back to camp and move on to this gully of yours.We'll overhaul it at once, and if it should prove--as I stronglysuspect--to be a true emerald mine, we'll work it for a few days andascertain something like its probable worth."

  "But," protested Dick, "I didn't know that emeralds were found in SouthAmerica."

  "What!" ejaculated Earle, in amazement. "You ignorant sailorman! Why,some of the most famous emeralds in the world have been unearthed inthis country. The Spaniards, under Pizarro, took enormous quantities ofthem from the Peruvians, but were never able to learn exactly where theywere obtained; and the only mine now known in South America is, Ibelieve, situated near Bogota. But I have long been convinced that thisis the country, _par excellence_, for emeralds--ay, and possibly rubiesand sapphires as well. Come along, man; let's go and have a look at themine that's going to make a millionaire of you."