Strangely enough, at that moment there came into his mind a picture of his grandfather’s face. He thought of the water-proof package and the precious negative, and gripped them tight.
The tidal wave receded. It did not return. He found himself once more on solid ground and close by, not twenty yards away, was the black and his young master. This last onslaught had been too much for the giant native. His knees had given way beneath him and he had slumped to earth, murmuring incoherent things about the earth god of the Mayas.
As for Pant and Kirk, they knew no fear of Maya gods. They waited, and as they stood there they felt the rude shocks no more. The surface of the lake was again as placid as a pond beneath a silvery moon.
They made their way forward in silence until, with a little thrill of joy, the younger boy gripped his companion’s arm as he cried:
“See! The light! The light of the moon!” It was true. They had reached the entrance. A moment more and they were sitting in the shadows beneath the palms.
“See!” said Kirk at last, drawing from his pocket an object that gleamed in the sunlight. “A message from out the past.”
It was indeed an interesting collection he had gathered quite at random. A bracelet of gold set with jade, a small bronze god, grinning and terrible, a miniature silver goblet, and some other bits of jewelry of such odd design that one was not able to so much as guess their purpose.
“Sometime,” said Kirk, “we will go back for more.”
“I doubt if you will ever enter that chamber again,” said Pant. “I believe the earthquake closed the entrance to that particular chamber. But we will go back.
“Oh yes, we will go back,” he repeated a moment later. He was thinking of the strange chest that was all but within his grasp when the earth shudder came.
“But now,” said Kirk, “we must go down. Morning will soon be here. And think what the earthquake must have done to the old Don’s castle! Come!” he cried, shuddering with a terrible apprehension. “Our good friends may be buried beneath the ruins of their home—they may be dead!”
Closely followed by Pant and the great Carib, he sprang away down the ancient trail.
Just as the first faint glow of dawn lighted the shattered walls and yawning windows of the ancient Guatemalan jail from which Johnny Thompson had been so strangely released, the Spanish child in his arms stirred, then sat up to stare about her. At that moment a tall, dark Honduran came walking rapidly across the plaza.