Into the Green Prism

by A. Hyatt Verrill

  "Whew!" I exclaimed. "No wonder you hold the reputation of being the most forceful lecturer on physics in the world. Yes, I admit all that you say is incontrovertible truth as admitted by science. In fact, I might add quite a few facts and examples in proof of it. But it doesn't prove anything, and until you can either discover this lost wizardry or can work out a theory which can be proved by repeating the magic, you are no nearer a solution of the puzzle. And," I added, as I rose to start my peons at their digging, "I suppose you suggest that the copper objects were plated with gold by the Manabis' ability to transform a portion of the copper to gold by some unknown and lost power that would have made the ancient alchemists green with envy."

  CHAPTER III

  It was only a few days later that we came upon a great find, the find that Professor Amador had hoped for and had foreseen, and which was the direct cause of all the truly amazing and incredible events that followed, and which culminated with the disappearance of my friend.

  The "find" itself seemed insignificant. Merely a number of fragments of the same transparent greenish mineral, such as Professor Amador had found in the bed of the stream weeks before. But to him the bits of green material—scarcely one of which was half an inch in diameter—were far more precious than emeralds. The instant the first piece was revealed, he leaped into the pit, shooed away the amused peons, and on hands and knees, began searching for fragments. Not until every shovelfull of earth had been carefully sifted and no more pieces of the mineral could be found, did he cease. The result of his labors was a handful of the green slivers, but he was as excited and enthusiastic as though he had discovered a living Manabi, and he hurried to his laboratory with his treasure-trove.

  In the course of the day we came upon several more deposits of similar fragments, and wishing to further my friend's work as much as possible, I had all the fragments in each separate lot carefully preserved and kept together. I did not see Ramon until the following day, but a light was burning in his field laboratory all night, and he admitted that he had not slept. But he had a body and nerves of steel and seemed never to tire, never to be exhausted, never to be in need of sleep, so I had long before given up warning him of the danger of not sleeping enough.

  This morning he was jubilant. "I was right!" he exclaimed. "These people did use lenses, and lenses of a material hitherto unknown—of that green mineral substance. Although," he qualified, "I am convinced it is an artificial material, not a natural mineral formation."

  "Good!" I applauded. "I suppose you have reconstructed a lens and have discovered that it is not so very remarkable and that it will magnify enough to solve the mystery."

  "Yes, and no," he declared. "After no little trouble and perseverance, I matched up enough of the fragmentary remains to establish the fact that they were shattered splinters of what was once a lens. The rounded surfaces and the obvious indications of grinding and polishing amply prove that fact. But it would be impossible to reconstruct a lens from the splinters I have. And even if they were cemented together, the resultant lens would be worthless in as far as testing its optical peculiarities is concerned. But I shall endeavor to make an exhaustive test to establish the refractive index of the mineral or material, and shall sacrifice a small quantity of it—always of course with your permission—in an effort to melt it. If I succeed, I may try to recast the material and manufacture a new lens."

  "You can use all of the stuff you want in any way you see fit," I assured him. "We found a lot more after you left yesterday—I should say we have eight or ten pounds of it now. So go ahead and I wish you every success. But I shall not he convinced until you have made a lens and have proved your case. You see, Ramon, in this case I am from Missouri, as the saying is. The fragments may have rounded surfaces, they may have been cut and polished, but I'll wager they are portions of some ornament, some vessel or some ceremonial object, and not parts of any lens. Why should they be broken? Why should a lens have been shattered—or rather, why should half a dozen lenses have been shattered?"

  "Humph!" he snorted. "Why should a dish, an ornament, a ceremonial object—or several of them—have been shattered? Answer that, amigo mio, and I will answer your question."

  "That's easy," I assured him. "Every archeologist— and most ethnologists— who have studied American aboriginal races, know that it was and is a widespread custom of the Indians to 'kill' their most prized possessions upon certain occasions. During funerals it is often done, at the dedication of temples the custom is followed, and it also forms a portion of the religious ceremonies of some tribes. There are abundant evidences that the Manabis practised the custom. Many of the broken stone artifacts—the metates* and chairs, the idols—as well as much of the pottery I have found, were obviously broken intentionally. I have secured several pots shattered by stones which still remain among the fragments; I have found others resting against the stone columns with smears of their color showing where they were dashed against the stone. The Indians' idea is that by 'killing' or as we would say sacrificing, an article they prevent evil spirits or devils from taking possession of it. And, as a usual thing, the objects most commonly sacrificed are those of a ceremonial character. If you had observed, you would have noticed that, in every case, the plain pottery and ordinary stone artifacts in this site are entire, whereas the objects of a ceremonial or symbolic type have been intentionally broken. Now if these people had very sacred ceremonial objects composed of your green glass or whatever it is, they would be the first to be sacrificed."

  *A curved or hollowed stone used by the Indians in grinding corn. It was a sort of basin in shape.

  "I take off my hat to you as a lecturer," he laughed. "Thanks for the scientific and highly interesting information. But, let me point out, your explanation answers your own question. Admitting all you say is so, then if these Manabis possessed lenses, they unquestionably would have looked upon them as sacred or mysterious or ceremonial, and they too, would have been sacrificed."

  I was floored. His argument was logical. Still I was not convinced and I told him so. But he pointed out that not one of the fragments was so shaped that it could have formed a portion of any dish, figure or ornament, and he insisted that the splinters represented some form of lenses.

  "If we could only discover the site whence the material was obtained," he remarked, "we might be able to construct a lens and prove my theory."

  "But I thought you said you believed the material an artificial product," I reminded him. "Surely, if that is so, you should be able to analyze it and reproduce it. You are an excellent inorganic chemist, I know, and you have a very complete chemical laboratory with you."

  "My very dear, good friend," he ejaculated, "chemistry is a most remarkable and exact science to be sure. It will be comparatively easy to analyze the material; but it is an entirely different matter to imitate it. It may prove to be possible as you suggest, but it is just as liable to be utterly impossible. Many materials may be analyzed but not duplicated. And some cannot even be analyzed. Take Bakelite, for example. It is, as you know, a material made by combining formaldehyde and carbolic acid with some filler and coloring matter added. And yet, if some man, say a few thousand years from now, should discover a slab of Bakelite and should try to determine its way of manufacture by analysis, he would find it absolutely impossible. And I could name a hundred—yes fully one thousand—well-known and common substances which, though readily analyzed and their various component parts identified, cannot be duplicated unless the secret of their manufacture is known. We can analyze diamonds, granite, mica, innumerable minerals, but we cannot make identical substances artificially, and while I do not mean to state positively that I may not be able to produce material identical with this green mineral-like substance, I am not counting much upon being able to do so. As regards my suggestion that it is artificial, I assume that if that is the case, the Manabis discovered the secret of its manufacture by accident—perhaps by building a fire where its various elements occurred, and fusin
g them together, just as the ancients discovered how to make glass by kindling a fire on a sandy shore where blocks of crude soda surrounded the fire. And if we could find the spot, we should probably find the crude material, for I should imagine that the aborigines, probably regarding the material as sacred or of divine origin, would invariably have sought the same spot when they desired the composition, never realizing that the various elements could be transported elsewhere and then combined."

  "Perhaps you are right," I admitted. "But to find the spot would be like searching the proverbial haystack for the equally proverbial needle. It may be within a few yards of where we stand, and then again it may be anywhere within a radius of several thousand miles. You must remember, Ramon, that the Indians—"

  "Yes, I know what you are about to say," he interrupted, "That the aborigines transported articles for immense distances, that they bartered and traded from ocean to ocean and from the Arctic to the Antarctic. I am quite aware of that, my friend. I have often examined those mysterious monolithic idols that are abandoned near Lake Titicaca, but are made from stone that, as far as is known, can be found only near Quito in Ecuador—nearly two thousand miles distant. That, amigo mio, is one of the puzzles in prehistoric physics, which I have tried and am still trying to solve. But in this case I doubt if the deposits of materials I seek are far from here. Your own and Saville's investigations have demonstrated that the Manabis were restricted to a comparatively small area, that savage, uncivilized tribes surrounded them, and hence they were, in a large measure, self-contained. Yes, unless they received the materials by water, the deposit is close at hand, and I intend to search diligently for it. Can I borrow one of your peons to accompany me on my search?"

  Of course, I gladly gave the permission, and for the days following, Ramon made trips into the surrounding jungle, covering an allotted and predetermined area each day, and carefully searching every foot of the ground in his hopeless and, to me, endless quest.

  But Ramon had the perseverance, the dogged determination or instinct of the Indians, whose blood ran in his veins, and he seemed never discouraged nor downcast by his constant failures. I must also add that he had tried in vain to analyze the green material. He learned that it contained certain well-known elements— such as silica, aluminum and sodium, but it also contained several elements and the oxide of at least two metals, which baffled all his attempts at identification. I must also add that we had found several more fragments of the material, and these, being larger than those discovered hitherto, were a great puzzle to my friend. Like the others, they showed signs of having been cut and polished, but Ramon's careful and painstaking measurements convinced him that the cut surfaces had not and could not have formed a curved, lens-like surface.

  Of course, I teased him when he admitted this, arguing that my theory, that the fragments were the remains of some ceremonial object, was correct, and asking him now he could longer argue that the green substance had been used as a lens, if his own calculations and tests proved it had not been made into a lens form. Ramon, however, could be as non-committal as a full-blooded aborigine. He merely grunted and refused to reply or to suggest any information, but I knew, from his preoccupied manner and his expression, that he had formulated some theory, and that his active and most brilliant brain was busy searching this theory for possible flaws.

  It must not be thought by my readers that I belittled Professor Amador's theories, his knowledge of his special branches of science. On the contrary, I admired him intensely. I had the deepest respect for his knowledge, his attainments and his mastery of what are perhaps the most abstruse and difficult of the recognized sciences. But as I have said, we were most intimate friends; we could argue and discuss matters and could jolly and tease each other unmercifully, without losing our tempers, and very often, either one of us would deliberately assume an attitude and maintain a stand, that we did not feel, merely in order to bring about a discussion and to draw the other out. Although in the beginning I actually had no faith in his theory of the Manabis having used the green material for lenses, even though I could not account for the minute work they accomplished on any hypothesis other than the use of lenses of some sort, yet, as time went on and Ramon's indisputably correct calculations and formulae were developed, I became more or less convinced that, in the main points of his theories at least, he was correct.

  I had, in fact, quietly, and I confess secretly, done a little in the line of experimenting myself. With infinite labor I had fitted bits of the green material together, and I had convinced myself that they had never formed any portion of any utensil, vessel or image. In fact, from what I could determine, they were portions of most irregular and remarkably shaped objects, and, had it not been for the obvious evidences of having been artificially formed, I should have deemed them bits of some natural mineral mass or cluster of crystals.

  Indeed, I was rapidly becoming almost as deeply interested in the solution of the mystery of the green substance as was Professor Amador, and I constantly found myself speculating on its purposes and its origin and neglecting my archeological interests. But of one thing I felt positive. Whatever the origin of the material, my friend had less than one chance in a million of finding it by wandering blindly over the adjacent territory. I well knew how extremely difficult—almost impossible—it is to find anything in a tropical jungle. I had myself searched for weeks for Maya ruins in Central America, for the remains of vast, massive temples and immense stone monuments, and had often passed and repassed within a few yards of them without suspecting their presence. And I had heard the same story from numerous mining engineers and prospectors, who had fruitlessly searched for months for the outcrops of mineral veins which—from float samples —they knew existed within a very restricted area.

  Of course there was the remote possibility of Ramon stumbling upon the deposit by sheer luck, and, had there been any inhabitants in the district—either Indians or mestizos—enquiries among them might have given him a clue. But the district was uninhabited; none of my peons were familiar with the territory, and much as I wished my friend every success, yet I felt that his quest was merely a waste of time and energy.

  According to my notebooks and field-diary, it was three weeks after Ramon had commenced his search that he returned at the end of the day, so highly elated, so evidently filled with excitement, that I knew his efforts must have been crowned with success.

  "Congratulate me, amigo!" he cried. "I have found it at last! It is marvelous, astounding! No, I shall not tell you; I shall not describe it. You must see it for yourself; you must come with me tomorrow. And it is near—not three miles from where we sit! I stumbled upon it by accident. And I was right. The material is artificial. But it is not the handiwork of any human being!"

  "How on earth can that be?" I demanded. "How can any substance be artificial yet not the result of man's handiwork? For heaven's sake, man, make yourself clear or I shall begin to doubt everything and shall think you have gone crazy on the subject."

  But he merely laughed, maintained his air of secrecy, and refused to explain anything. Naturally my curiosity was aroused, the more so when, to prove he had found the deposit, he produced a good-sized lump of the green material, a peculiar, somewhat irregular mass perhaps four inches in diameter and with one side roughly convex.

  "But this has been worked!" I exclaimed, as I examined it. "By Jove! I believe you are right and that this is a lens in the making."

  Ramon grinned. "Yes, in the rough," he admitted, "but not worked by human hands."

  "Piffle!" I cried. "You mean to stand here and try to convince me this mass of mineral hasn't been cut or chipped into form! Why try to make mysteries out of nothing? It's remarkable enough to discover that the Manabis had lenses, without trying to add to the wonder of it."