CHAPTER IV

Through the Tunnel of the Serpents

MY question was soon answered. The cañon narrowed and swung sharply to one side. Rounding the bend, we halted in dismay. Before us the walls met in a sheer cliff. At its base was a yawning black opening into which the river poured like a gigantic mill-race. The way was barred; we were in a cul-de-sac.

We were trapped, only one slender chance of escape remained: to retrace our steps, follow up the stream and trust to finding some lower spot, some slope or side gulley, near the head of the cañon. The chief realized our predicament and our one chance as quickly as I did.

Without a word, he wheeled and led the way up stream. Wearily, slowly--for walking over the water-worn ledges and rough, loose cobbles was torture--we stumbled up the cañon, our backs aching with our burdens. Mile after mile we traveled, not halting even for a midday meal, for our one thought, our one desire was to escape from that Valley of Death before darkness overtook us and we were forced to spend another night in the fearful place. The cañon seemed endless, though it was probably not over twenty miles in length, and it was mid-afternoon before we passed the cave that had been our shelter the night before.

Hurrying, stumbling, slipping, cursing as the way became rougher and the grade steeper, we forced our blistered, bruised feet onward. The walls of the great cleft drew nearer and nearer together, until they seemed to overhang our heads, and we were in semi-darkness in the depths. Presently, from ahead, came a new sound, a low reverberating roar, and a mile or so farther on we came in sight of the head of the cañon, and our hearts sank in dismay. Once more we were faced with a mighty wall of rock down which the stream poured in a series of cataracts. There seemed no escape, no hope. We were doomed. But as I stared at the flashing, roaring falls, a faint hope rose in me. On either side of the descending water, the cliff had been worn and cut into rough, irregular masses. It might be possible to ascend the precipice in that spot. I tried to explain it to the chief, to indicate my intention, and presently he grasped my meaning and nodded. But to climb that perpendicular wall even with the rough crags and footholds would be utterly impossible with the heavy packs upon our shoulders. We must abandon our loads or resign ourselves to remaining in the cañon to die like trapped rats.

Ripping open the packages, I filled my pockets with the most essential things, made up two small packs, and strapping these to the shoulders of my comrade and myself we commenced the difficult and perilous ascent. It was terrible work. The rock was rotten, and at any instant might give way and precipitate us to the rocks below. Inch by inch we struggled upward, often so close to the falls that we were drenched, at other times straddling and crawling far to one side, clinging with toes and fingers, our hands torn and bleeding. Twenty, forty, fifty feet we ascended, when we came to a narrow ledge or shelf running diagonally across the face of the cliff. To the right the ledge dwindled to nothing; above us there was not a crevice, not a finger hold in sight; to the left, the shelf vanished beneath the column of water falling from far above. Our only chance was to pass _beneath_ the fall and trust to finding a passable way upward on the farther side.

There was no time to lose, the bottom of the cañon was already hidden in blackness, the sun had set, and to be caught by darkness upon the face of the cliff would mean certain death. Flattening ourselves against the wall, edging along with the utmost caution, we crept along the narrow ledge and beneath the cataract. Spray and dripping water drenched me to the skin and poured from the naked body of the Indian; the rock underfoot was slippery with slime and moss, but the ledge widened as we proceeded. We were half way through, the worst of the passage was over when with my outstretched left hand, I felt the solid rock come to an end, and an instant later, I found myself at the entrance to a dark cavern in the cliff. I peered within. All was blackness. But here at least was a refuge where we might pass the night. It was far better than attempting to scale the rest of the cliff in the darkness, and utterly done, famished, and spent, I stepped within the cave, threw down my pack and dropped to the floor. Like my own shadow, the chief did the same. Presently, having regained our breaths and rested, I struck a light and peered about. By the faint glimmer of the match I could see nothing. The cave was evidently large; it seemed fairly dry, but close to the entrance, water dripped and spattered in from the cataract. On hands and knees, feeling our way, fearing we might come upon a chasm or an abrupt drop, we crawled farther into the cave. Then, having reached a spot beyond the reach of spray and water, we rummaged in our packs and ravenously devoured most of the few scraps of dried meat, the sour tortillas and the parched corn they contained. To build a fire was impossible. We had no fuel, nothing that could be burned, and in the dense blackness we threw ourselves upon the bare rocky floor and dropped instantly to sleep.

I awoke cramped, aching in every joint and muscle. But it was broad daylight outside the cave, a soft light streamed into the entrance, and by its faint illumination I could distinguish our surroundings. Less than a yard above our heads was the arched roof, on either side were smooth water-worn walls, but in the rear the tunnel-like cave vanished in impenetrable blackness.

Everything about it--the smoothly-cut rock walls, roof and floor--the absence of débris and litter, the shape of the cavern, indicated that it had once formed a subterranean channel for the river, or for a portion of it. Perhaps even now it formed an overflow for the waters when in flood. And as this dawned upon me, a new hope rose in my breast. Perhaps, possibly, the cavern might connect with the open air. By following it, we might come out above the falls. There were one hundred chances to one against it; we might find it ended in narrow cracks or fissures; it might lead to a perpendicular shaft; it might bring us to the verge of an underground pool or stream. But the one chance was worth trying, and, having breakfasted upon the last of our provisions, we started on our exploration of the tunnel.

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FOR an hour or more we crept forward. The tunnel remained the same size; it led gradually upward, and my hopes that it would lead us to freedom increased less crawling, we saw a faint light ahead, I felt sure we would soon be safely in the outer air. Brighter and brighter the light became, and we hurried forward. The light came from above and illuminated a mass of fallen rock that half-filled the tunnel before us.

As we reached the débris and I started to scramble over the stones, the air suddenly vibrated with a strange whirring sound that seemed to issue from every side. For an instant I hesitated, listening, yet vaguely conscious that I had heard that same sound before. The next instant I leaped back with a startled cry. From a crevice among the rocks, a great flat, arrow-shaped head had darted out, had struck viciously at me, and had missed me by the fraction of an inch. Now I knew. The place was a den of immense rattlesnakes!

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[Illustration: The next instant I looked back with a startled cry]

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The chief fairly shook with terror, his eyes rolled and he glanced furtively to right and left, seeking some spot where his naked skin would be out of reach of the angry serpents that now were wriggling, coiling, swarming among the rocks about us. Again the prophecy of Kukulcan had been borne out; here indeed was the tunnel of the serpents!

To go back was useless, the passage led only to that dismal cañon, and even had we wished to do so we could not return. Already, dozens of the great diamond-marked snakes were coiled with threatening, swaying heads and vibrating rattles behind us. To go forward seemed equally impossible. We could not even remain where we were, for at any instant a serpent might appear from the crevices beneath our feet. Yet to reach the opening, to gain the exit to the tunnel that now was clearly before us, we must cross a dozen yards of the serpents’ den. Whichever way we turned, we seemed doomed to a terrible death. Then a seeming miracle happened. There was a sharp squeal, dirt and pebbles rattled down from above, and the next second a peccary tumbled into the tunnel. Snorting, squealing, leaping about, the angry, terrified creature dashed hither and thither, utterly unmindful of our presence, every bristle on his thick neck on end, his tusks clashing, his wicked eyes gleaming, froth drooling from his upcurled lips. The deadly enemy of all snakes, fearless in attacking the most venomous serpents, the wild pigs or peccaries of the American jungles will go out of their way to kill snakes and seem to go absolutely mad when they are near them. And this peccary had accidentally, or possibly intentionally, slipped into a den of snakes. In a perfect frenzy he dashed at every snake in sight, moving with incredible speed, slashing at them with his razor-edged tusks, leaping upon them with his sharp-pointed hoofs. In less time than it takes to tell it, the place was filled with dead and dying, mangled and headless serpents, and those remaining alive had their attentions fully occupied with the maddened pig and his insatiable lust to kill. Springing forward, we reached the opening, and grasping roots, digging our toes and hands into the rotten rock, we scrambled up and drew ourselves panting upon the ground under the forest trees.

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[Illustration: Unmindful, the peccary dashed back and forth among the group of poisonous snakes]

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For a time the grunts and squeals of the peccary came from the depths of the pit, but gradually they ceased and, crawling to the verge of the hole, I peered down. But the creature to whom we owed our lives had vanished.

Perhaps he knew another way out, perhaps he had dashed down the tunnel to the waterfall and had scrambled up by some narrow trail that only a peccary could follow. But to the chief there was but one explanation of the pig’s opportune arrival and its disappearance as soon as we had been saved. To his primitive mind, the peccary was the direct instrument of Kukulcan, a god or spirit in porcine form. Plucking a sharp thorn from a nearby vine, he pierced his tongue, smeared the blood from the wound upon a pebble and cast it into the rattlesnakes’ den. He had paid his debt, had made a blood sacrifice to his gods.

Still, we were not out of our imminent peril. We were in an unknown forest, completely at a loss as to which way to turn, without supplies or food.

I was ravenously hungry and I presume my Indian companion was as famished as I was. The first thing to be done was to secure something to eat, and to do this in the tropical forest is not such a simple matter. Had the chief possessed weapons, he no doubt could have secured game of some sort in a short time; but he had lost his bow and arrows somewhere in the cañon; he could not use my revolver, and our only chance appeared to lie in stalking some bird or quadruped that I could kill with my pistol. And I well knew, from past experiences, that game is always scarcest when it is wanted the most. Luck, however, was with us still. We flushed a big wild turkey from her nest. As she ruffled her feathers and gobbled defiance at us, I brought her down with an easy shot, and to my delight--though it mattered little to my companion--the eggs proved fresh. I still had matches in a watertight case, and presently a fire was blazing and the appetizing odor of broiling turkey filled our nostrils.

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IT was while we were dining on the half-scorched, but delicious-tasting meat, that I made an important discovery. Hitherto I had been able to make no headway in my efforts to converse with my companion. I had tried again and again to learn something of his dialect, but without success, although I had acquired a few simple words and could now and then catch the meaning of what he said. I had tried every Indian dialect I could remember--in vain. But now, as I gnawed a drumstick of the turkey, it brought to memory a meal that I had eaten under somewhat similar circumstances in Honduras years before. And with that memory came sudden recollection of the Tecun dialect I had once known. Some of the words and phrases came back to me, and with no least expectation that he would understand them, I repeated them to the chief. He dropped the bone he was gnawing, a gleam of understanding illuminated his face, and to my unbounded joy and amazement, he answered me in Tecun.

No one who has never been alone with a fellow man and unable to converse with him can appreciate what it meant to be able to talk with the savage beside me. To be sure, his knowledge of the Tecun was as limited as my own, but we could understand each other, could express thoughts, could ask questions and give replies and could even converse to a limited extent. The chief was as pleased as myself. He informed me his name was Maliche, that he and his tribe dwelt in a large village near the “Great Water,” which I took to be Lake Itzaltango, and that they were returning from a war with the Mitzes and were celebrating their victory by making an offering of one of their prisoners, when I had come upon them in the ancient temple. I tried my best to learn if he and his people were of the Maya race, if he believed in the Mayan gods, but my command of the Tecun was too limited. But from the manner in which he had behaved at his first sight of my codex, and his action when the flood had threatened us in the cañon, I felt sure that the gods of the Mayas were his and that his ancestors had been under Mayan rule, if not of the Maya race. It was far more important for us to find food and to proceed on our way than to discuss racial affinities and religions, however. The first problem was soon solved by Maliche. In less than an hour, he had fashioned a crude but serviceable bow and several long arrows of cane tipped with palm wood, and if I had had any doubts as to the ability of my companion to provide food for us with his hastily manufactured weapons, they were soon dispelled, for within twenty minutes after we had started on our way, he had killed a small deer.

But even the savage instinct and attainments of Maliche could not solve the question of our route. To be sure, our direction had been towards the northwest when we had come to the cañon, and it was a simple matter to continue in a northwesterly direction. But we had no means of knowing whether we were five, fifteen or fifty miles north, east, south or west of the spot where we had descended into the Valley of Death, as I now mentally called it.

Strangely enough, it never occurred to me to turn back, to try to retrace our way toward civilization. I seemed to be urged onward, drawn by some power or force, and to this day that, to my mind, was perhaps the most remarkable feature of the whole astounding and incomprehensible adventure. To proceed through an unknown country with no outfit, no comforts, practically no necessities of life; with no provisions except what food could be met on the way; to wander aimlessly for an unknown goal would have been nothing short of madness, viewed from a point of common sense. Yet I, an old hand at tropical exploration, with years of experience, was doing what, in any other, I should have condemned as suicidal. Yet at the time, I was filled with a sublime confidence and faith. Except when face to face with some imminent peril, I felt no fear of the outcome and, looking back upon those days of wanderings, I feel positive that some power far greater than my own will led me onward. It may sound ridiculous, fanciful, superstitious, even incredible. But in view of the many incredible happenings that followed, nothing to me will ever appear incredible or impossible again.

But I am getting ahead of my story and must go back to the point where Maliche and I were wandering through the vast forest of the mountains.

Had we been able to get a view of the country about, we might have recognized landmarks, might even have caught a glimpse of the distant volcanoes which, I was convinced, were the two “blazing mountains” indicated on the codex.

But we were hemmed in by higher ridges than the one we were on, and we were, moreover, steadily descending, getting deeper and deeper between the surrounding mountains. By mid-afternoon we were in a valley covered with dense jungle and giant bamboos. The ground was wet and soggy; here and there were pools of stagnant water, and often we were forced to make long detours around impassable swamps. To camp in such a place was out of the question, and we pushed on, hoping to reach drier and higher land before nightfall. Suddenly Maliche, who was leading, sprang back with a half smothered cry of mingled fear and surprise. Reaching his side, I peered ahead.

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STRETCHING from the edge of the bamboos, through which we had been forcing our way, was a small lake, its waters inky-black and as smooth as oil, a dismal, ominous-looking pool made far more dismal and more ominous by the presence of a gigantic stone image rising from the very centre of the lake. Instantly I recognized it. The half-recumbent figure with flexed knees, upraised head and with hands upon stomach was unmistakable. It was a colossal image of Chac-Mool the Maya rain-god. But it was different from any statue of Chac-Mool I had ever seen, for it rested upon the back of an enormous crocodile with open, hideous jaws and upraised tail startlingly life-like in its details. Fascinated by the marvel of the stupendous piece of sculpture, for it appeared to have been cut from a solid mass of living rock that jutted from the lake, I stared at it, only half conscious that Maliche had prostrated himself before it. The next instant I leaped back with a shout of terror. Within a dozen feet of where I stood, the black water had broken, an enormous head with unwinking green eyes and long jaws set with gleaming teeth had appeared, and with a rush, the huge saurian had dashed towards me. I was only just in time to seize the praying Maliche by his hair and drag him to one side. Carried half his twenty-foot length out of the water by the force of his rush, the crocodile’s jaws met in a crash within six inches of the chief’s legs.

And the horrible monster was not alone. Everywhere the placid black surface of the lake was being churned into waves by dozens, hundreds of immense, ravenous crocodiles all rushing towards us. Neither were we safe from their attacks on land. Snapping their jaws, lashing to right and left with their ponderous tails, racing over the muddy ground far faster than I would have imagined their short legs could carry them, the horde of monsters came after us. I ran as I had never run before. Bursting through bamboo thickets, torn by thorns, cut by razor grass, stumbling, plunging into the mire, tripping over snake-like vines and roots, we raced for dry land, and only ceased when we had gained the hillside and dropped exhausted, out of possible reach of the demoniacal beasts that were still thrashing and snapping in the dense jungle beneath us.

Truly old Katchilcan had been right when he had said that “great bars were placed in the way to Mictolan.” And an involuntary shudder ran through me, a strange sensation of superstitious fears caused my scalp to tingle, as I realized how literally all he had said had come to pass! The Valley of Death, the Tunnel of the Serpents, the Pit of Zotional (the sacred alligator-god) all had been met exactly as foretold, exactly as was written in the codex!

Was it possible, could it be possible that all the rest would prove true also? I shook off the foolish, superstitious idea with an effort, and strove to use my common sense. Everything so far might have been mere coincidences. The cañon was only a valley of death because the Indians had lost their lives in it. Practically every underground tunnel and cavern might harbor snakes, and alligators swarmed in every forest lake. Yet, there was that image of Chac-Mool upon the giant alligator’s back, and there were the two volcanoes I had seen, and I knew--without looking at my codex--that it bore the symbol of Chac-Mool above the figure of a conventionalized crocodile. But the rest--the eight deserts, the whirlwind, the demon, the fiend and all the other supernatural impossible things, they of course were utter nonsense. For that matter--I laughed at my fears as it occurred to me--the Pool of the Alligators was no bar to us; we could go around it easily enough. Casting all surmises and half-formed fears aside, I rose, told Maliche we would camp on the mountain side, and led the way to a spot far up the hillside where a spring gushed from between the rocks and the wide-spreading roots of a giant tree afforded excellent shelter from a possible shower.

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