In Search of El Dorado

by Harry Collingwood

  CHAPTER ELEVEN.

  A DEFINITE CLUE AT LAST.

  This final communication from the god Anamac was received by the vastmultitude with great shouts of rejoicing, for it was accepted as puttingan end finally and for ever to the practice of offering annually humansacrifices to him. And upon those occasions the choice of victims wasusually made jointly by the king and the chief priest; and the choicewas always of so capricious a character that, when invited to attend thefestival, no man could ever know whether he would survive to return fromit. Therefore the substitution of a single animal for several humanvictims--seldom less in number than half a dozen--was regarded as anational boon; and never, perhaps, was Anamac worshipped with moresincerity, or with more gratitude, than he was upon the day when DickCavendish and Wilfrid Earle so narrowly escaped dying upon his altar.

  The festivities not only lasted through the entire day, but werecontinued far into the night, some fifty oxen being slaughtered androasted to provide a feast for the numerous visitors whom King Jiravaihad invited to Yacoahite to participate in the great annual festival;and when at length it was all over, and the guests had departed to theirrespective homes, everybody agreed in the opinion that it had been themost joyous and successful festival within living experience. As forDick and Earle, they were lodged in the king's own house, with Inaguy toact as their interpreter--that astute individual having soon made up hismind that service with the white men was safer, and likely to be moreprofitable in the end, than even the position of chief of the Mangeromapriests. And on the night of the festival, when the great square ofYacoahite was given up to the populace, and all the great chiefs werebeing entertained at a banquet given by the king, Earle, "the white manwith the black hair," availed himself of the opportunity to demonstratehis capabilities as a great medicine-man by performing a few very cleverconjuring tricks before the king and his guests, which the simpleMangeromas regarded as absolute miracles. It was a stroke of soundpolicy on Earle's part; for after seeing him cause a pack of cards tovanish into thin air, extract coins--a few of which he still had in hispocket--from the hair, ears and noses of great warriors, and performsundry other marvels, there was not a Mangeroma in all that greatassemblage who did not regard the American as something superhuman, orwho would have ventured, even in the most secret recesses of his soul,to meditate treachery to him or anybody connected with him.

  Taken altogether, the day had been a rather trying one for both Dick andEarle, for, to start with, neither of them had slept at all during theprevious night, their minds having been in a state of extreme tensionwith regard to the events of the coming hours; and when at length thesuspense was over and they knew that they had escaped a terrible fate bythe bare skin of their teeth, the reaction, combined with the necessityto preserve during several hours a perfectly calm and unruffleddemeanour in the presence of those about them, had told upon both ratherseverely, and especially upon Earle, upon whose cleverness and readinessof resource the safety of the entire party depended. Therefore it waswith a sense of profound relief that the two friends at length foundthemselves alone together and free to throw off the strain to which theyhad been obliged to subject themselves all day.

  It was well past midnight when the king's banquet having come to an end,the two white men were conducted with much deference and ceremony to anapartment in the king's house, in which, to their great delight, theyfound the whole of their belongings, including their two camp beds,which some thoughtful individual--who afterwards proved to have beenPeter--had fixed up and prepared for their occupation. They lost notime in discarding their clothing and flinging themselves upon theirpallets, for both were feeling utterly exhausted; but beforesurrendering themselves to sleep they exchanged a few remarks relativeto the events of the past day.

  "Yes," agreed Earle, in response to an observation of Dick's, "we havehad an exceedingly narrow escape, Dick, and don't you forget it, a morenarrow escape, indeed, than you probably realise. For example, do youknow the name of this tribe of Indians?"

  "Certainly," answered Dick. "I heard the king call the idol, thismorning, `Anamac, god of the Mangeromas,' so I suppose these johnniesare the Mangeromas."

  "Correct, my son; they are," returned Earle. "Remember ever hearinganything about the Mangeromas?"

  "Of course," returned Dick. "They are the tribe with the bad name thatthose Catu Indians told us about, and whom we have been looking for eversince, because they are supposed to know something of the whereabouts ofthe city of Manoa. Isn't that it?"

  "That is it, Dick," assented Earle. "And you knew it? Well, you wereso cool, so apparently unconcerned, during the whole time that our fatewas hanging in the balance, that I thought you had missed the point ofthe king's remark."

  "Not much," retorted Dick. "But why shouldn't I keep cool? What wouldhave been the use of getting excited and anxious? That would only havegiven our show away and spoiled everything. But, although I may nothave shown it, I don't mind admitting now, old chap, that I _was_ mostconfoundedly anxious. For I knew that if your ventriloquial trick hadbeen discovered, it would have been all up with us."

  "You bet it would," agreed Earle. "And that was just where our narrowescape came in; for I was so nervous that, when the critical momentcame, it was only by an almost superhuman effort that I was able tocontrol my voice. However, here we are, still alive and well, thankGod! And--Dick--after all, I'm glad that you are with me. A chap witha nerve like yours is worth a whole regiment of soldiers. Good-night!"

  The two white men slept the sleep of exhaustion that night, to awakerefreshed and re-invigorated on the following morning, with scarcely atrace remaining of the stress and strain through which they had passedon the preceding day. Inaguy and Peter presented themselves at daylightwith the accustomed morning cup of chocolate; and the former, who was bythis time well acquainted with his master's habits, mentioned that hehad learned by inquiry, that there was a stream just outside the town inwhich the white lords might safely venture to bathe. Whereupon the pairsallied forth and enjoyed the now rare luxury of a swim, receiving, asthey went and returned, the respectful salutations of the populace.Upon their return they found an excellent breakfast awaiting them,prepared by the indefatigable Peter from viands supplied by the king'sespecial order.

  Earle announced his intention of accepting the king's profferedhospitality and remaining several days in Yacoahite, not only to affordhis men time to recover from the hardships and sufferings which they hadexperienced while filling the _role_ of prisoners doomed to thesacrifice, but also to enable him to prosecute the inquiries which hewished to make regarding the whereabouts of the city of Manoa. And hewas not less anxious to stay than the king was to entertain him and getthe benefit of his advice and guidance upon several burning questionswhich had of late been causing him uneasiness. For now that the greatgod Anamac had made it clear that the white strangers enjoyed hisespecial favour and protection, and were therefore not to be molested,but, on the contrary, were to be treated with the utmost honour anddistinction, the astute Jiravai immediately arrived at the conclusionthat they must certainly be something more than mere ordinary men--aswitness the marvels which Earle had performed during the progress of thefeast--and that consequently their advice and assistance must be of morethan ordinary value, and well worth securing. Therefore the king tookEarle and Dick unreservedly into his confidence and, with the help ofInaguy as interpreter, fully laid before the pair a number ofexceedingly delicate and difficult problems which were just thenconfronting him. And Earle, being a born diplomatist, entered into thething with keen zest, taking the problems one by one and asking questionafter question until, as he put it, he had fairly "got the hang of thething," when, by a judicious admixture of his own diplomatic instinctwith Dick's shrewd common sense, it became not very difficult to findsolutions of the several problems, which not only effected a generalclearing of the air, but also ultimately added considerable lustre toJiravai's name as that of a wise and powerful monarch.

&nb
sp; The settlement of these matters of high and intricate policy took time;so that it was not until some ten days after the festival of Anamac thatEarle was able to introduce to the king's notice the subject of Manoa,to ask what his majesty knew about it and its precise situation, and torequest his assistance to enable the expedition to find the place.

  But no sooner was Earle's project mentioned than Jiravai began to throwcold water upon it. First of all, he denied all knowledge whatsoever ofany city named Manoa; and when Earle met this denial with the admissionthat there might possibly be some mistake in the matter of the name,explaining that it was not this that was of importance, but the factthat there was a city distinguished by certain curious and remarkablecharacteristics that he was anxious to find and visit, the king, whilereluctantly admitting that he had certainly heard of such a city, mostearnestly besought Earle at once and for ever to abandon his intentionof visiting the place, since rumour had it that the inhabitants sostrongly objected to the intrusion of strangers among them that, of thefew who had been known to force a way in, not one had ever been known tocome out again. Jiravai asserted that he knew nothing whatever aboutthe city, beyond the above-named peculiarity, and the fact that itsactual name was Ulua--bluntly adding that he desired to know no more--and he greatly doubted whether there was any Mangeroma now living whopossessed more information on the subject than himself; yet, if thewhite lords very particularly desired it, he would cause immediateinquiries to be made. To which statement Earle replied that the whitelords desired the information in question more than anything else,except to find themselves within the walls of Ulua itself; and that theking could not more conclusively demonstrate his friendship than bycausing the most exhaustive inquiries to be made forthwith. And therethe matter rested for nearly a fortnight, during which Earle and Dickwandered about the district together, shooting, but finding very littlegame; for they soon discovered that the Mangeroma country was prettythickly inhabited, and that, between hunting and the clearing of theland for cultivation, the game had been nearly all driven away orexterminated.

  At length, however, in response to the inquiries which the king causedto be made, an old man was found who asserted that, many years ago, whenhe was but a lad, he had been lost while engaged in a huntingexpedition, and in his wanderings had actually seen, from the summit ofa high hill, a great city of palaces, which he believed could be noneother than the legendary city of Ulua, but that he had made no attemptto approach it, being afraid that, if he did so, he would fall into thehands of the inhabitants, and never more see his kith and kin. Askedwhether he believed it possible, after all those years, to find his wayback to the spot from which he had beheld the city, he replied in theaffirmative, provided that he could be carried thither and back again,but not otherwise, the way being altogether too long and rough for hisold limbs to traverse unaided. Arrangements were accordingly made forthe construction of a litter for the accommodation of the old man, andon a certain morning the expedition set out from Yacoahite, the partynow consisting of thirty men all told, including the old man, Busa, whowas to serve as guide, his eight bearers, and ten additional bearers toassist in the transport of the white men's baggage.

  As Busa had warned them, the way proved both long and difficult, leadingas it did up and down wild ravines, along the dry and stony beds ofmountain torrents, through rough and narrow passes, and by the edge ofdizzy precipices where a single false step would have meant a fall ofhundreds of feet through space; but after ten days of arduous travel thejourney was accomplished without accident, and without any verystartling adventure, the party arriving, late in a certain afternoon ata "divide," from which they looked down upon a vast basin containing alake some thirty miles long by twenty broad, on the northern shore ofwhich stood a city which Busa had not misrepresented when he spoke of itas a city of palaces. For a city it certainly was, covering an area ofground about four miles long by three broad, and many of its buildingsseemed palatial, if one might judge by their lofty white walls andglittering roofs, shining like gold in the rays of the declining sun.Of course, it was not possible to judge very accurately the character ofthe buildings, or to see much detail, for the city was some twenty milesdistant from the spot to which Busa had conducted the party, while therarefaction of the atmosphere rendered even the field-glasses of littleuse. But that the city was actually there before their eyes wasindisputable, and it was a city consisting not of a mere agglomerationof mud huts with thatched roofs, but of stately buildings of solidmasonry, possessing such architectural adornments as towers, pinnacles,and domes, evidencing on the part of the inhabitants a condition of highcivilisation and refinement.

  From his knapsack Earle produced a folded map of the northern portion ofSouth America which he opened and spread out on a rock. It was the mostmodern and up-to-date map that he had been able to procure, and it wasdrawn to a scale large enough to show not only every town of anyimportance but also innumerable villages, some of them so small that, asthe party had themselves proved, they contained less than a hundredinhabitants. Yet on the part of the map upon which Earle now placed hisfinger, and for hundreds of miles in every direction therefrom, therewas no indication of town or village, and only a mere suggestion of themountain range through which they had lately been travelling, while eventhe courses of rivers were merely indicated by dotted lines; in short,the party were now, and had been for several weeks, in a region whichhad not been explored. But by means of astronomical observations madeand worked out by Dick, the track of the party had each day been plottedupon the map, and such details as the forests they had passed through,the rivers they had crossed, the Indian villages they had met with, thegreat swamp, and the mountain ranges, had all been carefully plotted.

  "Now," remarked Earle, pointing to a pencil mark on the map, "that iswhere we were at noon to-day, and we are somewhere about here now.There is no indication of a town or village of any sort anywhere near,yet just about there"--laying his finger on another point of themap--"stands yonder city on the shore of a lake, in a great basinsurrounded on all sides by mountains, of the existence of which this mapaffords no indication. What do I deduce from that? you will ask. Iwill tell you, Dick. I deduce from it that yonder city is the onewhich, though our friend Jiravai says it is named Ulua, has been spokenof ever since the Spanish conquest, and diligently sought, as the cityof Manoa; and to us has fallen the honour and glory of having actuallyfound it! Just think of the wonder of it, Dick. For over three and ahalf centuries the legend of the existence of that city has persisted,yet there is no absolutely authentic account of it having ever beenreached, although hundreds, possibly thousands--if one could but knowthe whole truth--have most diligently and painfully sought it. And atlast its discovery falls to the lot of two very undistinguished people,an Englishman and an American, as is quite in accordance with thefitness of things. Now let us make use of our remaining daylight to getdown to a lower level, for, with the setting of the sun, it will bebitterly cold up here, and I have no fancy for spending the night in atemperature that will probably fall below freezing point."

  So saying, Earle folded up his map and, replacing it in his knapsack,gave the word for the party to proceed, Dick and himself taking thelead. Picking their way among towering rocks and along narrow ledges,they travelled a distance of some three miles and effected a descent ofabout two thousand feet before night overtook them, finally pitchingtheir camp on a little rocky plateau under the lee of an enormousvertical cliff, which effectually sheltered them from the icy wind whichsprang up and roared overhead with the force of a gale almostimmediately after sunset.

  Notwithstanding the shelter afforded by the cliff, however, the cold wasintense, and the party, acclimatised by this time to the hot, humidatmosphere of the plains, suffered severely, the more so that they werecamped among bare rocks without a vestige of vegetation of any kind, andwere therefore without the materials for a fire; the return of daylighttherefore found them more than ready to resume the march, in the hopethat before long t
hey would reach a region where fuel of some sort wouldallow them to kindle a fire and prepare a much-needed hot breakfast.

  They reached such a spot after about an hour's march, camping in theshelter of a small clump of stunted pines; and here, after breakfast,Busa approached the two white men with the request that, havingperformed his task of guiding the party to a spot from which the "cityof palaces," could be seen, he and his bearers might now be permitted toset out upon the return journey, he and they being anxious to recrossthe divide during the hours of daylight, and so escape the bitter coldfrom which they had suffered so severely during the preceding night.The request seemed a reasonable one, for the old man's services were nolonger needed; Earle therefore liberally rewarded the old fellow and hiseight bearers, and dismissed them with a message of greeting and thanksto the king.

  The two parties broke camp simultaneously, Busa and his bearers takingthe back trail up the path which they had all descended an hour earlier,while the others, under Earle's leadership, proceeded down the mountainside at their best speed, being impatient to reach the fertile,cultivated country bordering the lake below.

  But the task was not by any means so easy as it had first appeared, forthey had scarcely gone a mile when they unexpectedly found themselves atthe verge of a long line of precipitous cliffs overlooking the greatbasin in which lay the lake and the city. It was by no means a pleasantsituation in which they found themselves, for they were standing upon asteep slope, clad with short, dry grass, almost as slippery as ice towalk upon, and this steep slope ended abruptly in a precipice whichEarle, going down upon his stomach and peering cautiously over the edge,declared could be not less than six or seven thousand feet high. Soterrible was the shock it gave him to find himself overhanging andgazing down into that dizzy void, that it induced a violent attack ofvertigo, causing him to scream out that he was falling, and to beg thosewho were holding him to pull him back. They, of course, did so at once;but several minutes elapsed before the adventurous gazer sufficientlyrecovered his nerve to stand, and when he did so he was bathed in a coldperspiration, while his teeth chattered to such an extent that it wassome time before he could distinctly articulate.

  "Never had such a fearful shock in my life," he afterwards explained toDick. "Of course, I knew that the valley was an enormous depth belowus, but when I undertook to peer over the edge of the cliff I did notfor a moment anticipate that I was going to find myself hanging over asheer void, thousands of feet deep. I expected to find below me aprecipitous cliff seamed and scarred with innumerable irregularities andprojections, by means of which an ordinarily active man might easilymake his way down; but, man alive, this precipice is sheer, from top tobottom like the wall of a house, without a single projection, so far asI could see, big enough for a fly to settle upon. It was awful to findmyself lying there, with my heels higher than my head, gazing down intothat dizzy hollow, at the bottom of which tall trees looked no higherthan pins, and to feel that if I dared to move a muscle I shouldinevitably go sliding over, head first!"

  "Ay," assented Dick. "I think I know the kind of feeling. Iexperienced something very like it myself the first time I climbed tothe height of the royal yard. The hull of the ship below me looked sosmall, and so utterly inadequate to sustain the substantial spars aboutme, that, quite unconsciously, I found myself moving with the utmostprecaution, lest my additional weight should capsize the ship."

  "Yes," assented Earle. "I guess that was something like what I felt,except that, in my case, I was convinced I should never be able to getback to safety. Nevertheless, here I am, safe and sound. And now thequestion arises: How are we going to get down into that valley? So faras I can see the cliffs are everywhere vertical, like this one; yetthere must be a way down somewhere; else how did the inhabitants of thecity get there?"

  "Oh yes, of course there is a way down, somewhere," agreed Dick. "We'dbetter camp, hadn't we, and pursue our usual tactics, you going one way,and I the other, exploring?"

  "Yes," assented Earle. "But we won't camp just here, thank you. Ishould be afraid that some of us would go sliding over that cliff edgebefore we knew it. We will go along yonder, to the eastward, a bit.The ground looks less steep in that direction, and probably we shallfind a suitable camping place before long."

  They did, about a mile and a half to the eastward; and the camp havingbeen pitched, Earle accompanied by Inaguy, set off in one direction,while Dick, accompanied by another Indian, named Moquit, went in theother, in search of a practicable route down to the plain and the shoreof the lake, the two white men taking their rifles, as usual, and eachcarrying a pair of powerful binoculars slung over his shoulder.

  The way taken by Dick led him back along the edge of the cliff by theroute which they had traversed shortly before; and having reached thespot where Earle had taken his thrilling peep down into the abyss, theyoung man continued on, eventually entering a fir wood, through which hepassed, bagging two brace of a species of pheasant as he went. Emergingfrom the wood, which was about a mile long, he found himself approachinga spot where the cliff seemed to dip somewhat, and halting for a momentto reconnoitre the prospect through his field-glasses, he became awareof the fact that work in the valley had begun for the day; for heobserved smoke issuing from the chimneys of a number of detachedbuildings which he took to be farmhouses; while, studying the scene moreintently, he was presently able to pick out the forms of numerous peopleapparently engaged in tilling the wide fields and at work in theorchards--as he took them to be--dotted here and there in the valley farbelow. Farther away, he perceived a number of small dots on the bosomof the lake, carefully watching which he at length became convinced thatthey were canoes, or some similar kind of craft, crossing the lake, someheading towards the city and others from it.

  Some two hours later, Dick called a halt in a small pine wood, andordered Moquit to kindle a fire and prepare a brace of the shot birdsfor their mid-day meal; and while this was being done the youngEnglishman sauntered off a little way in search of another spot fromwhich he might advantageously effect a further reconnaissance of thevalley. He found such a spot at no great distance and, unslinging hisglasses, proceeded to search the valley and the face of the neighbouringcliffs from his new view point. But, look where he would, it everywhereseemed the same: vertical unscalable precipices of appalling height, andnowhere anything suggesting the existence of a road by means of whichthe valley might be reached.

  Yet stay! As he was in the very act of removing the binoculars from hiseyes his keen sight detected what appeared to be an infinitesimallysmall moving dot against the bare drab face of the cliff, some two milesaway. Focussing his glasses afresh upon the spot, Dick watched itsteadily for two or three minutes until he became certain that it wasmoving. Yes, moving downward along the cliff face toward the valley.Precisely what it was, he could not determine with any certainty, but hejudged it to be a vehicle of some sort, a slow moving vehicle; and ifso, it was of necessity travelling over a road, and that road, althoughit was indistinguishable from where Dick stood, was one of very easygradient, judging from the movements of the object upon it. Satisfiednow that he had made an important discovery, the lad carefully noted hissurroundings, noted with equal care a number of objects which wouldenable him to fix the position of the road, and closing his glasses,walked briskly back to his temporary camp, where he found Moquitanxiously awaiting his return, with the birds cooked to a turn and justready for eating.

  Hurriedly dispatching his meal, Dick, with Moquit at his heels, resumedhis task of exploration, proceeding first to the spot from which he hadjust observed the moving object, and there treating the face of thecliff to a further close scrutiny. But the object, whatever it may havebeen, was no longer to be seen; and, satisfied of this, Dick pressed on.Two miles farther on, still following the edge of the cliff as closelyas was prudent, he halted, arrested by the sight of what, at thedistance of about half a mile, had the appearance of a structure of somesort, clinging to the very verge of the cliff; an
d inspecting it throughhis binoculars, he saw that he was right in his surmise. It was abuilding, something in the nature of a wall, with what looked like aclosed gateway in its centre. And on the parapet immediately above thegateway, there was a figure, apparently that of a sentinel, stalkingslowly to and fro!

  It was enough; the structure before him was undoubtedly the gateway atthe head of the road giving access to the valley, and his mission wasaccomplished. His first impulse was to go on and view the gateway, orwhatever it might be, at close quarters; but the inhabitants of thevalley were evidently jealous of the intrusion of strangers, as wasclear from the presence of the sentinel on the parapet; and giving thematter a few moments' consideration, Dick came to the conclusion that,before revealing his presence, it would be well to return to Earle andreport. He therefore faced about forthwith and, keeping under cover aswell as he could, retired in good order, pretty confident that, up tothat moment, he and his follower had not been seen.

  The sun was just sinking behind the mountain ridges to the westward ofthe mysterious city when Dick reached the camp. Earle, he found, hadnot yet returned, but he arrived some ten minutes later, greatlydisgusted at his own want of success. He had searched the northerncliffs for a distance of some twelve miles, it appeared, and nowhere hadfound a spot where even a goat or a monkey might have passed up or downthem. But he had penetrated to within some eight or nine miles of thecity, and having viewed it at that distance and from a great heightthrough the lenses of his powerful glasses, was fully persuaded that,let the name of the city be what it might, it was none other than thatwhich, crowned with the halo of legend and romance, had been spoken andwritten of and sought for as "Manoa."

  "It is a magnificent city, Dick," he exclaimed, enthusiastically; "acity of palaces embowered in gardens; and the roofs of many of itsbuildings are covered with gold. They _must_ be," he insisted, in replyto Dick's incredulous shrug of the shoulders, "otherwise they would notgleam so brilliantly in the sun as they do. And to-morrow night, pleaseGod, we will rest our weary limbs in that same city, and perhaps, ifluck is with us, make the acquaintance of El Dorado himself, or at allevents, his successor."