Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “You might as well stop with me,” urged the old man. “Hurrying won’t help you. I know a little tiny Corridor of Night that will lead us to the Sun, right to the top stone of one of those temples.... It’s a temple dedicated to Venus.... They call her Chasca, or the young man with the long and curly locks, and he’s supposed to be the page of the Sun. Come with me.” Orellana had taken Dick by the hand, and led him to a cellar, in which they found the foot of a narrow staircase. Once at the top of it, they were, as the old man had promised, on the summit of a ruined temple, dominating the crowded square below and the streets radiating to it like the spokes of a wheel to the huh. Around them were other ruins; temples sacred to the moon, to the “armies of the heavens,” which are the stars, to the rainbow, lightning and thunder... walls which still defied the elements, though the temples were now shops, work-rooms or stables.

  The head of the procession had appeared, the hundred servitors of the god pressing back the crowd, and slowly wound its way round the square. Then the golden litter came into sight and Huayna Capac, for the first time in centuries, came to the center of the world, the Umbilicus of which he had been lord and master. All heads were bowed before this sovereign shadow and the memory of ancient glories once again brought to life. The crowd even forgot for the moment its hatred of the stranger woman, the motionless Coya with the stranger child in her arms.

  The double throne was brought to the center of the square, and the crowd rose with clamoring voices. Around the litter, the caciques and the chiefs, the nobles and the amautas, who are the sages, joined hands and began to circle, dancing as they danced of yore, when each man held a link of the golden chain and danced the Dance of the Chain. Hands made the links to-day, for when the Strangers slew Atahualpa, the nobles of the Cuzco threw that chain, which otherwise would have gone to the King’s ransom, into the deepest water of Lake Titicaca.

  “Recuerda!”

  Suddenly, as if from the heavens, this cry checked the rhythm of the Dance of the Chain. Maria-Teresa started on her throne, remembering the signal in the House of the Serpent. The child in her arms also lifted its head, and their eyes questioned the blue vault above from which this word of hope had fallen.

  “That was Dick’s voice, Maria-Teresa! I told you he would come to save us!”

  The girl’s eyes explored the towering walls about her, black with Indians. How could she recognize him in that crowd? Where was he? Again the voice rang out over their heads, so loud that it could be heard by the most distant unit of the crowd.

  “Recuerda!”

  Every head was turned upwards, and a threatening murmur rose from that human mass, torn from its dream of renascence and liberty by a single Spanish word. Recuerda! What must they remember? That they were slaves? That these fêtes, striving to recall an abolished past, could only last the space of a day? That the sun of to-morrow, forgetting that of to-day, would only shine anew on their servitude?

  Maria-Teresa started up from the golden throne with the child in her arms, brought to life and action again by the beloved voice.

  Looking higher, they at last saw, on the highest stone in the azure, a pigmy figure holding out its arms to the Coya, and crying, “Maria-Teresa! Maria-Teresa!”

  “Dick!”

  Then all understood that on high there was a stranger, one of the hated race, come to rob them of the soul of their Coya.

  V

  PANDEMONIUM REIGNED IN the square. This was sacrilege unspeakable! Did not the Coya already belong to the gods! Muera la Coya! Death to the stranger! There was a huge rush, a scramble of raging Indians along parapets, over rocks and the ruins of temples, while the golden litter was hurried away by the Guards of the Sacrifice and the amautas. Maria-Teresa closed her eyes, carrying to the tomb that supreme farewell which was perhaps to cost Dick his life.

  “You must be mad,” said the madman Orellana, when he saw Dick lean over and call to Maria-Teresa, and when she answered, asked almost angrily: “How did you come to know my daughter?”

  The roar of the angry crowd surged up to them, surrounded them, and drew nearer. It was with the greatest difficulty that Orellana shook Dick out of his strange torpor, dragged him through the gap from which they had emerged, and finally to the labyrinth below the Temple. Apparently familiar with every twist and turning of the place, he led him through a mile of passages, their darkness relieved here and there by round, square or triangular patches of light sifting down between thousand-year-old stones from the world above. Occasionally he stopped to tell Dick what temple, what palace, they were passing under.

  “Yaca-Huasi, which they also call the House of the Serpent, is over our heads now.”

  “Perhaps they have taken her there!”

  “No, no! That’s against all the rules. The Temple of Death is the next place.”

  “Where are we going to? Where are you taking me?”

  “To the Temple of Death, of course!”

  Dick followed him without another word, but expressed his surprise when they emerged into the open country.

  “Where is the Temple, then?” he asked.

  “On the Island of Titicaca. You needn’t be afraid. We shall get there before them.”

  They hired horses at a wayside inn and rode to Sicuani. Here they took a train which, turning onto a branch line at Juliaca, then ran to Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. On the way, Orellana babbled ceaselessly about the country through which they were passing and the ceremony they were to witness.

  No stranger has ever seen it. But he, Orellana, asked nobody’s permission, and since his daughter was to be wedded to the Sun, it was the least of things that he should be present at the marriage, and particularly as he had planned it all so carefully! It had taken him years to find the Temple of Death, but with patience all things could be done. There was not one dried-up river-bed underground, not a deserted goldmine which he did not know so well that he could find his way about it with his eyes shut.

  And what fortunes he had discovered under the earth; a fortune equal to all the fortunes on earth! It was obvious that the Incas must have got their gold somewhere. Well, he had discovered where! There was plenty of it left, plenty of it left!... One day, some clever young engineer would find out, and he would only have to stoop to be as rich as Croesus. (A bitter smile from the young engineer, whose thoughts were far from such things.)... But he, Orellana, did not give a fig for all the gold in creation.

  He loved only his daughter, whom the Indians had taken to the Temple of Death, and it was only the Temple of Death which he had sought.

  It had taken him years, but now everything was; ready and he was going to save her. He had waited long enough to kiss her again! Ten whole years!

  So the old man wandered on, while Dick listened eagerly, striving to guess how much was truth, and how much madness.

  “But how do they get from Cuzco to the Temple of Death?”

  “Don’t you worry about that.... By the Corridors of Night, by the Corridors of the Mountains of Night, by the Corridors of the Lake of Night.... By the way, do you know anything about fishing?”

  Dick did not have time to answer this extraordinary question, for the guard had come through to their carriage, and was inviting them to the luggage-van to see the samacuena danced. Everybody else seemed to be going there, and they accepted so as not to draw attention to themselves. They found the van peopled with Indians, dancing, playing the guitar, and drinking hard. At each step, the guard, to celebrate Garcia’s victories, fired a volley of cohetes, the mountains throwing back the echo of the explosions.

  Then some of the Quichua soldiers in the train gave themselves up to the pleasures of the chase. Spying flocks of vicuñas in the hills, they went to the observation-car and tried their luck. One of them, something of a marksman, brought down a vicuña, the train stopped with a grinding of brakes, and the guard himself went off to retrieve the bag.

  Dick, wild with impatience, would have liked to club the engine driver and take char
ge of the locomotive himself, but Orellana calmed him down.

  “We’re sure to get there before them. You’ll see! Why, we shall even have time to do some fishing!”

  Leaving their fellow-travelers to cut up the vicuña, they returned to their carriage, where the stove had been lighted. It had become intensely cold, for they were now in the snow regions, more than fourteen thousand feet above sea-level. Soroche, or mountain fever, threw the young engineer, and after bleeding violently at the nose, he fell into a semi-comatose condition. He did not recover until Punho, when he again remembered the horrible nightmare through which he was living, and savagely demanded to be shown the way to the Temple of Death.

  “We’re going there,” replied his strange guide, but first took him to the main square, where about a hundred Indian girls, wearing skirts of a dark material and the low-cut bodices of their race, squatted in orderly rows, selling fruits and vegetables dried in the cold.

  “There are usually two hundred of them,” explained Orellana, “but the Red Ponchos have been this way and chosen the best-looking half for the ceremony. It’s the same thing every ten years.”

  He made a few purchases with Dick’s money, and after adding a flask of pisco to his stores, led the way out of the city. At nightfall they reached a huge marsh, alive with water-fowl. Next they crossed a heath, llamas and alpacas fleeing at their approach, and finally came to a dismal little bay on the shores of the lake.

  Titicaca, in its mountain cradle, is the highest lake in the world. That night, its waters looked somber and heavy, almost dead. A storm, growling in the distance, soon swept down on them with a howl of rain, the waves dashing up the beach mountain-high, and the lightning touching the surrounding peaks with fire.

  “Splendid, splendid,” muttered Orellana as the storm broke. “That means fine weather for to-morrow. In the meantime, we may as well have supper.”

  He had led the young man under a giant monolith, hewn to the shape of a door. In a niche of it, Orellana managed to light a dung-cake fire, and here they ate a little and warmed themselves with generous pulls at the pisco flask. Dick at last fell asleep, while the old man covered him with a horse blanket and paternally watched over his slumbers.

  Just before dawn, Dick awoke to find Orellana reminiscent.

  “This place has always brought me luck since I started to look for my daughter, but I cannot make out who to thank for it. Do you know who this god is?”

  He pointed to the bas-reliefs which covered the stone. They represented a human being, the head adorned with allegorical rays, and each hand holding a different scepter. Around this being were symmetrically ranged other figures, some with human faces, others with the heads of condors, all holding scepters, and all facing toward the center.

  “There’s no doubt about it,” mused Orellana aloud. “This is nothing like the Incas’ work. It is much more sculptural, and much older. There must have been worlds on these shores before the advent of the Incas. They’re only savages who steal children.... Well, come on. We may as well go out in my boat and meet the sun.”

  In a little creek, half hidden by rushes, they found a cane pirogue, in which Orellana had soon hoisted a mast and a mat sail.

  “Come on,” he said, “we’ll do some fishing. It’s all on the way to the Temple of Death.”

  Dick followed him into the fragile craft, and they started for the islands. These came into sight late in the afternoon, a blue blur on the horizon. To Dick’s fevered imagination, they seemed like threatening shadows on the face of the waters, ghostly guardians of the Temple of Death.

  Orellana refused to go any nearer that night, hauled down the sail, and threw overboard a heavy stone to anchor his boat. Then he handed Dick a fishing-rod. At his astonished look, the madman replied:

  “People come to the islands to fish, because these waters are blessed by the gods and the catches are better than anywhere else. Can’t you do what everybody else does?”

  He pointed across the waters to little lights flaring up at the bows of other pirogues, in which sat motionless fishermen.

  “All those Indians are fishing,” he said. “You may as well join them. If you can’t, go to sleep, and don’t worry us. You’ll see something worth while when you wake up.”

  Orellana woke Dick just before dawn. The last stars were paling in the heavens at the approach of their King. The deep waters of the lake showed uniformly gray, not a light and not a shadow upon them. Not a sound to break stillness, not a breath of wind in the air. Suddenly, in the Orient, the mountain peaks were touched with fire, a giant furnace sprang into being behind the torn curtain of the Cordilleras, and the sun painted scarlet splashes into the shadows of the sacred islands.

  When they pass before the largest of them, which is Titicaca, the Indian fishermen in their fragile pirogues never fail to chant the Aïmara Hymn of the Ancestors, for it was from this island, untold years ago, that sprang the founders of the Inca race in the persons of Manco Capac and Mama Cello, husband and wife, brother and sister, both children of the Sun. Coming in sight of the island, the traveler perceives giant ruins and great masses of rock piled up in an inexplicable manner, so strange that science has not yet been able to give them a date. These are the baths, the palaces and temples of the first Incas.

  Dick, staring landwards from the pirogue, hardly knew whether he was awake or dreaming. Was this a hallucination born of the terrors of the week, or did his eyes really reveal what other eyes had first adored centuries before, at the dawn of the Inca world? As the shadows of night drew away and the island stood out above the waters in all its terrestrial grandeur, he did not merely see dead stones, lifeless temples, and deserted palaces; the Cyclopean whole was peopled by a vast throng, motionless and silent, its myriad faces turned to the flaming Orient. This immobility and silence were those of a dream; there were thousands there who seemed to live and breathe only in the expectation of some mysterious and sacred event.

  The disc of the sun was still hidden behind the Andes, but all Nature heralded its approach; the flanks of the mountains were jeweled with a thousand dazzling stones, brooks and torrents were afire, and the broad bosom of the lake was a roseate mirror bearing the still reflections of palaces and temples. Virgins, bearing, as of old, the most beautiful flowers of the season and the emblems of their religion, peopled the porticoes. At the summits of towers, luminous with the dawn, priests waited for their god to show his face.

  Suddenly, he appears... he rises... he blazes down on his empire, and is hailed by a great roar. “Hail, O Sun, King of the Heavens, father of men!” Earth trembles, waters shiver, the heavens even quiver at the call. “Hail, O Sun, father of the Inca!” Arms are stretched toward him, hands heavy with offerings implore his intercession, and every voice chants his glory. “Hear thy children! Hail, O Sun!”

  Cries and songs of triumph are swelled by the clamor of barbaric instruments, and the tumult grows as the radiant disc climbs higher in the heavens, bathing the multitude in light.

  Sun, behold thy Empire! After so many centuries, the faithful, the men who labor in valley and mountain, are still here, and still do thee obeisance. The golden-armed virgins have poured libations from the sacred vases, and the hymns of the priests, after having risen to the heavens, now seem to plunge into the earth.

  What is this miracle? The dream has vanished; vanished as do the light mists of morning before the first rays of the sun.

  BOOK VI — THE TEMPLE OF DEATH

  I

  DICK RUBBED HIS eyes. What had become of that crowd? Who had hailed the god of Day? Now that the sun was high on the horizon, and that things had taken on their true shapes again, he could see only ruined palaces and solitude.

  Orellana had driven his pirogue to the shore, and jumped onto the beach, signing to the young man to follow. As they neared the cliffs, he stopped him; the pious throng had vanished, but not in a dream, for the sound of chanting could still be heard from within the rock.

  “Come with me,�
�� said the old man. “They have gone to the Temple of Death, but we shall be there before them.”

  They entered a grotto. Dick had no will but Orellana’s, and no hope. He was convinced that Maria-Teresa must die, and regarded that last greeting of theirs as the supreme one. Once certain that she had passed to the realms of night, he would follow her there. He had been told she was to end her life in the Temple of Death, and this old man, who ten years before had lost his daughter in the same way, said he knew where it was. Well, he would follow him.

  The grotto was a deep one. After walking for a few seconds over sand and shells, the old man lit a resinous torch, and the spluttering flame showed the dark entrance of a passage. Before entering it, however, he bent down in a corner and picked something up. Dick saw that it was a pick.

  “What are you going to do with that?”

  “Save my daughter, of course! Just come with me, and I’ll show you. I shan’t let those devils choke her as they did ten years ago. They wall them up alive, you see. All we need do is to wait until they have gone, and then take her out again. Clear enough, isn’t it?... When I discovered the Temple of Death and saw all the slabs on the wall, I said to myself: ‘It would have been easy enough to save her if I had been there.’ It was too late then. And of course, I didn’t know which stone she was behind. This time, though, I shall watch them.... We’ll get the best of them yet. See if we don’t!”

  There was hope, then! Dick took a long breath, and steadied himself. Madmen with their set ideas are sometimes nearer the truth than sane men with their set reason. Dick took the pick, and followed Orellana down the winding passage, the torch in the old man’s trembling hand throwing weird lights and shadows on their path. There was not a foreign sound to be heard. The earth had choked all noise as it might yet choke them.

  Hacked through the stone, their corridor opened at intervals onto little square rooms, probably the burial-places of long-forgotten priests and dignitaries, slumbering there as their brethren of ancient Egypt slumber in the Pyramids. In the last of these rooms, Orellana put out the torch, and fell on his knees, for the narrow gut which they now entered was far too low for a man to stand upright in. A few yards further on, they came to a spacious niche, and stood up again.