Page:Weird Tales Volume 13 Number 06 (1929-06).djvu/62

THROUGH the torrential tropic downpour, through darkness so dense it resisted their progress as if it were a black wall being moved slowly backward by a giant's hand, two men and a girl groped their way in single file along the narrow trail. Lost, hopelessly lost in a Yucatan forest—separated from the rest of the expedition when the sudden rain and blackness descended on them, descended with the vengeful fury of an ancient god's wrath, a god angered by the expedition's probing and prying into the secret citadels of a civilization that was his—the three stumbled forward. To stop was suicide. Salvation lay somewhere ahead. Dank verdure slapped their faces, clawed and clutched at their bodies with slimy, poisonous tentacles that rent their clothes or lightly caressed them with leafy kisses that seared like serpents' tongues.

Fred Carkhuff was in the lead. Sporadic flashes from his electric torch seemed to hinder rather than help their progress, but they saved Carkhuff from smashing into the blank face of a towering bluff.

The trail swung sharply to the right