“The knots should tell all about it and what our next move should be.”
“Where there are eyes there should be a nose,” Leoncia contributed.
“And there is!” exclaimed Francis. “Heavens! That was the nose I just climbed up. We’re too close up against it to have perspective. At a hundred yards’ distance it would look like a colossal face.”
Leoncia advanced gravely and kicked at a decaying deposit of leaves and twigs evidently blown there by tropic gales.
“Then the mouth ought to be where a mouth belongs, here under the nose,” she said.
In a trice Henry and Francis had kicked the rubbish aside and exposed an opening too small to admit a man’s body. It was patent that the rock-slide had partly blocked the way. A few rocks heaved aside gave space for Francis to insert his head and shoulders and gaze about with a lighted match.
Francis grunted acknowledgment and reported:
“This is no natural cavern. It’s all hewn rock, and well done, if I’m any judge.” A muttered expletive announced the burning of his fingers by the expiring match-stub. And next they heard his voice, in accents of surprise: “Don’t need any matches. It’s got a lighting system of its own——from somewhere above——regular concealed lighting, though it’s daylight all right. Those old Mayas were certainly some goers. Wouldn’t be surprised if we found an elevator, hot and cold water, a furnace, and a Swede janitor.—Well, so long.”
His trunk, and legs, and feet disappeared, and then his voice issued forth:
“And now aren’t you glad you let me come along?” Leoncia twitted, as she joined the two men on the level floor of the rock-hewn chamber, where, their eyes quickly accustoming to the mysterious gray-percolation of daylight, they could see about them with surprising distinctness. “First, I found the eyes for you, and, next, the mouth. If I hadn’t been along, most likely, by this time, you’d have been half a mile away, going around the cliff and going farther and farther every step you took.
“But the place is bare as old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard,” she added, the next moment.
“Naturally,” said Henry. “This is only the antechamber. Not so sillily would the Mayas hide the treasure the conquistadores were so mad after. I’m willing to wager right now that we’re almost as far from finding the actual treasure as we would be if we were not here but in San Antonio.”