The Aztec Treasure-House 13 – Janvier · Verses Across
Literature · Historical Fiction
The Aztec Treasure-House 13In the Valley of Death
18
Literature · Historical Fiction
The Aztec Treasure-House 13
In the Valley of Death
JanvierEnglish
As the raft approached the western shore of the lake we perceived beneath us no longer houses, but large walled enclosures which plainly had been gardens of pleasure--for gaunt trees, symmetrically planted in groves and beside stone-paved path-ways, yet stood in them; and seats of carved stone were placed in what once had been shaded nooks; and in many of the gardens were carved stone fountains of elegant design. Between the city and what once had been its charming suburb extended a broad paved way, like that which we had found upon the eastern shore; and this paved way was continued on the dry ground above the present level of the lake towards the cliffs westward. On the high western shore were a few houses, large and handsome, and having walled gardens around them, which evidently had belonged to persons of great wealth and consequence.
In these we found shadowy remnants of a past magnificence. On many of the walls were hangings, once rich and heavy, that now were mere films of ghostly stuff held together by the many gold threads which had been woven into their fabric. Pottery, wrought into beautiful shapes, yet ornamented with designs that told of but half-redeemed barbarism, was scattered about everywhere, and scarcely a piece was broken. Some very handsome weapons we found also--swords and spears and knives--of the same curious metal as the sword which Pablo so opportunely had laid hands upon in the cañon, but far more finely finished and more delicate in design. And of this same metal was made a great throne, as it seemed to us to be, that was in the largest room of the finest of all the houses; a house that we believed was once the pleasure palace of the king. The audience-chamber in which this throne stood was of finely wrought stone-work, whereof the whole surface was covered with low-reliefs of men and animals--scenes of battle, of council, and of the chase--surrounded by curious tracery of such orderly design that Fray Antonio agreed with me in the belief that it was some sort of hieroglyphic writing. But this matter is treated of so fully in my Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America that I need not enter upon discussion of it here.
But in none of these houses, much to the disappointment of Rayburn and Young, did we find any scrap of the treasure for which they so earnestly longed. And, truly, if treasure remained in this wrecked city, it was less likely to be in these outlying country houses than in some strong building in the city's heart; and so beyond their reach in the depths of the lake. If this were indeed the walled city for which we were searching--as well it might be, for never was a city surrounded by grander walls than the mighty cliffs wherewith the valley was encompassed--our search was like to be a vain one so far as mere treasure was concerned; though I, for my part, felt myself well repaid for all that I had thus far suffered by the discovery of so much that was of archæological value. In this purer pleasure Fray Antonio shared; yet was he also dissatisfied--for he had come with us that he might preach Christianity to living souls: and here were only the bones of countless dead.
The paved way still led westward, and we followed it--for to the westward must be the valley's outlet. As it rose to a higher level the way widened; and on each side of it was a stone statue of the god Chac-Mool. As we came to these statues Young proceeded, in a most business-like way, and with no apparent appreciation of the queer figure that he cut, to sit down in turn on each of their heads. And he was mightily disappointed when he found that neither of them stirred. "They're not th' tippin' kind," he said, ruefully, as he got down from the head of the second one and looked at it with an expression of reproach.
But his countenance brightened, when we had gone a little farther, as he caught sight of another and much larger statue of the god that was set in a great niche cut in the cliff at the end of the paved way. To prepare here the god's abiding-place very arduous labor had been undertaken. For a space fully one hundred feet high and as many broad the whole face of the cliff had been quarried into; making a deep recess that was rounded above, and that from beneath was approached by a long flight of steps cut from the solid rock. In the centre of the recess, upon the terraced space above the stairs, was a huge squared mass of stone, on which the great stone figure of Chac-Mool rested. The opening faced directly eastward, and as we approached it the stone figure was seen but indistinctly in the duskiness of the recess, over which, and far beyond which into the valley, fell the shadow of the mighty cliff. From in front of this great altar all the valley was open to us; and hence, before the lake swallowed it, every part of the city must have been clearly visible in ancient times. As we mounted the steps and approached the idol I observed that Pablo hung back a little; as though in the depths of his nature some chord had been touched, some ancient instinct in his blood aroused, that filled his soul with awe.
Certainly there was no suggestion of awe in Young's demeanor towards the statue. With a monkey-like quickness, that I would not have given his stout legs and heavy body credit for, he climbed upon the altar and plumped himself down on the head of the figure almost in a moment. But again he was disappointed, for the idol did not stir. As we examined it closely we perceived that its fixedness was not unreasonable; for the figure, and the altar on which it rested, were one solid mass of rock that itself was a part of the cliff--left standing here when the niche around it was hollowed out. A very prodigious piece of stone-cutting all this was, and as I contemplated it I was filled with admiration of the skill of them who had achieved it. But Young came down from the idol moodily; and he said that the way these people had of playing tricks on travellers, by making Mullinses that didn't tip when they ought to tip, was quite of a piece with their putting their treasure where it couldn't be got at without a diving-bell.
Behind the altar the niche was cut into the cliff so far that the depths of it in the waning daylight were dusky with heavy shadows; indeed, so dense were these that Young came near to breaking his bones by falling into a little hole in the floor, that was the less easily seen because it was hidden behind a jutting mass of rock. But he caught the rock in time to save himself from falling, and eagerly struck a wax-match that he might see if here were a passage-way for us. Descending into the rock was a stair-way, the steps whereof were smoothed as though many feet had trodden them; and down these steps he promptly went, holding the lighted match before him--these Mexican wax-matches are as good as tapers--and having with him the full box of matches should further light be required. A minute later we heard his voice calling to us, but where it came from we could not tell--for he had descended into the rock below us, and the sound that we heard seemed to come from the air above. While we listened we saw the gleam of the light in the darkness below, and then he came up the stair laughing.
"Well, that's just th' boss trick," he said. "I guess th' old priests who used t' run this place would be everlastin'ly down on me if they knew that I'd tumbled to it. There's a hole right up into th' idol an' room inside of him for half a dozen men, an' there's a crack in his head that you can see out through while you're lettin' off prophecies an' that sort o' thing. Why, if you had a crowd t' work with who really believed in Jack Mullins, you could set 'em up for almost anything with a rig like that!"
But this curious discovery, in which Fray Antonio and I were deeply interested, did not forward our immediate purpose, which was to find a way out of the valley. We still cherished a faint hope, indeed, that we might find the King's symbol with the arrow pointing the way onward, and so be assured that the city buried in the depths of the lake was not the city of which we were in search. But in any event the need for getting out of the valley pressed upon us; and that we might accomplish our deliverance from this shut-in place, we examined closely the whole circuit of the cliffs at the western end. Not an inch of this great expanse of rock, for as far up the wall as our eyes could see clearly, escaped our attentive observation; yet nowhere was there, even by bold climbing, a place where the cliff might be scaled, still less an open path. And so, having walked slowly along the bottom of the cliffs to the edge of the lake on the north, and there turned upon our steps and come slowly back again to where we started from, and having made a like double journey of inspection to and from the edge of the lake to the south, we came at last to our first point of departure, and rested before the statue of Chac-Mool, disconsolate.
One discovery we had made in the course of our explorations which enabled us to understand how the fate that had overtaken the drowned city had fallen upon it. Close by the northern border of the valley we saw, high up above us, a vast rift more than a thousand feet wide in the face of the cliff; and below this the ground was torn into a deep wild channel, and everywhere huge fragments of rock were scattered over the ground. Here it was, then, that the water had poured in--bursting forth from a lake above--by which the city at one stroke had been overwhelmed. Some little notice, by the mighty roaring that must have accompanied so great a crash of rocks and so vast a rush of water, the dwellers in the city must have had; and the gleam of the pouring waters would have shown them the nature of the ruin that was upon them. There would have been time, before the water was waist-deep in the city streets, for them to make their way to the high mound on which their temple stood; and in the appalling horror of it all they might have clamored to their priests that a victim should be sacrificed to stay this terrible outburst of anger on the part of their gods. But it was more than likely that before the sacrifice could be completed they all--people, priests, and he who was to be sacrificed--perished together beneath the flood.
"Why," said Young, "th' Mill River disaster wasn't anything to it, an' that was pretty bad. I was runnin' th' way-freight on th' Old Colony road when that happened, an' I took a day off an' went up an' had a look at it. But this just lays that little horror out cold. It's as big as lettin' loose on Boston the whole of Massachusetts Bay."
That we should be prisoners in a place where death had wrought so swiftly such tremendous havoc was quite enough to fill our souls with a brooding melancholy. But in addition to the sombre thoughts which thus were forced upon us, bred of sorrow for the thousands who had here untimely perished, the gloomy dread of a more practical sort assailed us that we also in a little while would join the silent company of the thousands who had died here in a long past time. And the death that seemed to be in store for us was less merciful than that which had come to them. Theirs had been a short struggle, and then a gentle ending as the waters closed over them. But our ending was like to be a lingering one and miserable--by starvation.
With the loss of our mules and horses we had been compelled to leave behind us the greater portion of our stores; and for our protection against savages, and in the belief that in the mountains we should meet with an abundance of game, we had left almost all of our provisions, and made our lading mainly of ammunition and arms. But in this valley, so smiling and so beautiful, there was no live thing except ourselves. Not a beast, not a bird had we seen since we entered it; and in the lake, as we found presently, there were no fish; the only sign that animal life ever had existed here was that dried and withered remnant of a woman that we had found in the deserted house, and the bones which we had seen gleaming below us in the lake. This was, in truth, as we came thus to call it, the Valley of Death.
While we worked at building the raft we had not thought to be sparing in our eating--for building that raft was hungry work--and now that consideration of the matter was forced upon us, we found that we had with us food barely sufficient for three days. We could, of course, eat El Sabio--though such was our feeling towards that excellent animal that eating him would be almost like eating one of ourselves; and Pablo, we knew, would regard eating this dear friend of his as neither more nor less than sheer cannibalism. And even if we did eat El Sabio, the meat of his little body would but prolong our lives for a week, or possibly for two weeks more. And what then?
Had there been room in our souls for yet more sorrow, we could have had it in the thought that in all that we had set out to do we had completely failed. If this Valley of Death were indeed the place that we had been seeking, little good came to us from finding it. Of the souls which Fray Antonio had come forth to save, here there were none. Of archæological discovery, truly, I had something to make me glad; yet little compared to what was hidden beneath the waters; and even this little, since knowledge of what I had found soon must die with me, was of no avail. As for Rayburn and Young, the treasure which they sought might or might not be near at hand; but they certainly could no more come at it than, were it heaped up before them, they could carry it away. And most of all was my heart troubled by the fate that was like to overtake Pablo because of his love for me. Bitterly I blamed myself for permitting the boy to come with me; for I should have foreseen that a hundred chances might intervene to render impossible my intention to give him his free choice to go or to stay when the decisive turning-point in our adventure came. In point of fact, one of these chances had intervened; and the attack upon us that the Indians had made, and the closing of the passage in the rock behind us that rendered return impossible, had forced him to remain with us without voice of his own in the matter; and now would bring him, as it would bring the rest of us, to the most horrible death of which a man can die.
Night was falling as we ended our search along the cliffs for a way of escape, and found none, and so came again in front of the great idol--where our packs had been left heaped up, and where the Wise One, happily unmindful of the fate that might soon be in store for him, was energetically cropping the rich grass. We built a fire, for the air in that deep valley, mingling with the mists rising from the lake, was damp and chill; and beside the fire we made our evening meal. There was no good in talking about what was so apparent to all of us; but Young, who was our cook, showed his appreciation of the situation practically by serving only half rations and by making our coffee very thin and poor.
Silently we ate our short allowance of food; and thereafter we smoked our pipes with but little talk for seasoning, and that little of a melancholy sort. Of our own plight we did not speak at all, but in what we said there was constantly a reflection of the bitter sorrow with which all our hearts were charged. I remember that Young, who truly was as merry a man naturally as ever I knew, told us that night only of dreadful railroad accidents--of wrecks in which men lay crushed among the heaped-up cars, shrieking with the agony of their hurts; and then shrieking with dread, and with yet greater pain as the fire that seized upon the ruin around them came nearer and nearer until they fairly were roasted alive. And Rayburn told of a prospecting party besieged by Indians upon a mountain peak in Colorado; how, one by one, they slowly died in a raving horror of thirst until one man alone was left; and how this one man prolonged his life until rescue came by drinking the blood of his own body, and yet died in raging madness almost at the moment that he was saved.
For myself, I had nothing to add to these horrors; yet such was my frame of mind that I found a certain bitter gladness in listening to the telling of them, and in tracing between them and our own case the ghastly parallel. In our talk, which wont on in English, Fray Antonio took no part; but he could follow well enough the meaning of it in our tones. On his face was an expression of tender melancholy that seemed to me to tell of sorrow for us rather than of dread of what might be in store for himself; and that this truly was his mood was shown when the others paused, sated and appalled by the horrors which they had conjured up, and he spoke at last.
It was not a sermon that Fray Antonio gave us; but out of the abundant store of faith by which he himself was sustained he strove to comfort us with thoughts of better things than life can give. And with the promise of hope that he held out to us with the solemn authority that was vested in him by reason of the service to which he was vowed, he mingled a certain yearning for us, very moving, that came of the love and the tender gentleness that were in his own heart. And yet, though he knew that, excepting Pablo, we all were heretics according to his own creed, there was no word of doctrine in all of his discourse. Rather was what he said a simple setting forth of that primitive Christianity which has its beginning and its ending in a simple faith in an all-pervading, all-protecting love. And of this love, as it seemed to me, he himself was the human embodiment. Looking in his gentle face, which yet had such high courage, such noble resolution in it, I felt that in him the spirit of the saints and martyrs of long past ages lived again.
With our souls soothed and strengthened by what Fray Antonio had spoken to us, we lay down at last to sleep; yet was it impossible for us to drive out from our hearts that natural sadness which men must feel who know that they have failed in a strong effort to accomplish a project very dear to them, and who know also that they are standing upon the very threshold of a most tormenting death.
