come upon a sight more startling—in a way—than even the pyramid itself.
Drawn up near the foot of the stair floated a great collection of boats. They ranged in size from a small native dug-out to a cabined traveling canoe even larger than Otway’s; in age, from a rotting, half-waterlogged condition that told of exposure through many a long, wet season, to the comparative neatness of one craft whose owners might have left it moored there a month ago at latest.
These, however, were by no means the whole of the marvel.
Over beyond the small fleet, of deserted river-craft, floating placidly on buoyant pontoons, rested a large, gray-painted, highly modern hydro-airplane!
CHAPTER TWO
TO THE RESCUE
"The boats," Otway was saying, "are a collection of many years’ standing. We have to face the fact that we are not the first to reach this lake, and that, save for Kuyambira-Petro, not one of all those who preceded us has returned down that noble stairway, after ascending it. And that airplane! It has certainly not been here long. The gas in its tanks is unevaporated. Its motors are in perfect order. There is no
reason why the man, or men, who came here in it should not have left in the same way—were they alive or free to do so!"
Otway, Alcot Waring and young Sigsbee stood together inside the doorway of one of the buildings in the pyramid’s first terrace. The other two, Tellifer and John B., were still on board the canoe, drawn up among the derelict fleet at the landing stage.
Otway had demanded a scouting party, before landing his entire force. Though the war-correspondent and Sigsbee had insisted on sharing the reconnaissance, Tellifer had consented to remain as rear-guard on the canoe, with the steward.
Ascending the stairs, the three scouts had turned at the first terrace and entered the building at the right. As they were on the eastern side of the pyramid, and the sun was sinking, the interior was very dim and shadowy. Enough light, however, was reflected through the tall doorway and the pair of windows to let them see well enough, as their eyes grew used to the duskiness.
They had entered a large room or chamber, in shape a square, truncated pyramid, twenty-five feet high, thirty-five in length and breadth. The floor was bare, grooved and hollowed through long usage by many feet. Around its inner walls ran a stone bench, broken at the back by an eight-foot recess. Therein, on a platform of stone slightly higher than the floor, a black jaguar-hide lay in a tumbled heap.
The hide was old and ragged. Its short, rich fur was worn off in many bald spots. Near the niche, or bed-place, a water jar of smooth clay, painted in red and yellow patterns, lay on its side as if knocked over by a hastily rising sleeper.
The walls were covered by hangings, woven of fiber and dyed in the same garish hues as the water-jar. In lifting the jaguar hide, a girdle composed of golden disks joined by fine chains dropped to the floor. The softly tanned hide itself, though worn and shabby, bore all around its edge a tinkling fringe of golden disks. Like those of the girdle, they were each adorned with an embossed hemisphere, from which short, straight lines radiated to the circumference. A crude representation of the sun, perhaps.
"Or free?" Waring inflected, repeating the naturalist’s last words.
Bryce Otway flung out his hands in a meaning gesture.
"Or free!" he reiterated. "Man, look about you. These woven wall-hangings are old, but by no means ancient. In this climate, the palm-fiber and grass of which they are made would have rotted in far less than half a century. The animal that wore this black fur was roaming the jungle alive, not more than ten years ago. The golden ornaments—the painted pottery—they, indeed, might be coeval with the stones themselves and still appear fresh; but fabric and fur—Why, you must understand what I mean. You must already have made the same inference. This pyramid has been inhabited by living people within recent years. And if recently—why not now?"
"I say!" Sigsbee ejaculated. "What a perfectly gorgeous thing it would be, if you are right! If you are, then the fellows that came in the airplane are probably prisoners. I suggest we move right along upward—to the rescue. There are five of us. Every darn one knows the butt of his gun from the muzzle, and then some. If there are any left-overs of a race that ought to be dead and isn’t hanging around here, strafing harmless callers, they'll find us one tough handful to exterminate. Come on! I want to know what’s on the big flat top of this gaudy old rock-pile!"
Otway’s eyes questioned the correspondent.
"Your party," Waring assured. "Agree on a leader—stick to him. But I think Sig’s right. That airplane—mighty recent. Something doggone queer in the whole business. Got to be careful. And yet—well, I’d hate to find those fellows later—maybe just an hour or so too late."
To Sigsbee’s frank joy, the explorer smiled suddenly and nodded.
"I want to go on up," he admitted. "But I hesitated to make the suggestion. Petro didn’t tell us of any people living here. There’s no knowing, though, exactly what Petro really found."
Fifteen minutes later the entire party of five, rifles at ready, pistols loose in their holsters; advanced upon the conquest of the pyramid.
The great stairway led straight to the top. For some reason, connected perhaps with the hazy glare that had seemed to hover over it at noontime, every man of the five was convinced that both the danger and the solution of the mystery waited at the stairway’s head, rather than in any of the silent buildings that stared outward with their dark little windows and doorways like so many empty. eye-sockets and gaping mouths.
Ahead, at his own insistence, marched Alcot Waring. A vast mountain of flesh the correspondent appeared, obese, freckle-faced, with small, round, very bright and clear gray eyes. He carried his huge weight up the stairs with the noiseless ease of a wild elephant moving through the jungle.
Just behind him, as the party’s next best rifle-marksman, came the steward. John B. was a quiet little man, with doglike brown eyes, gentle manners, and a fund of simply-told reminiscence that covered experiences ranging almost from pole to pole.
Otway, the widely famed naturalist-explorer, peering through round, shell-rimmed spectacles set on a face almost equally round and generally beaming with cheerfulness, walked beside young Sigsbee, whose life, before the present expedition, had been rather empty of adventure, but who was ready to welcome anything in that line.
Last, Mr. Theron Narcisse Tellifer brought up the rear, not, let it be said, from caution, but because his enjoyment of the view across the lake had delayed him. Tall, lank-limbed, he kept his somber, rather melancholy countenance twisted over one shoulder, looking backward with far more interest in the color of lake and sky than in any possible adventure that might await them. It required a good deal of experience with Tellifer to learn why his intimates used his initials as a nickname for him, and considered it appropriate.
