Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 4 (1925-10).djvu/44

"It's too black; but I bet it's deep. Funny thing, just for a second I wanted to throw myself in. Wasn't that dumb? Wonder how deep it really is. Let's throw something in."

He began to hunt around the room. The light had faded and the gray was changing to black, the same heavy black as the black of the hole. In one corner he found something.

"Here," he showed it to me, "I'll throw this."

I had barely time to see it; it was a stone cut into the form of a cross-asada topping the Mayan symbol, which resembles the crossed I. I tried to stop him; but he had thrown it. We strained our ears to hear. There was no sound over the whole valley, the stillness was waiting for something which never came. We waited two minutes; but there was no indication that the carved stone had reached the bottom. We turned, left the temple, and descended the steps hurriedly. A bottomless well on top of a pyramid did not seem quite right.

The Indians had brought in wood from the forest and Monty had supper almost all cooked in the courtyard of the west temple. Dan and I talked volubly; but we avoided all mention of that black hole.

After supper the Indians went to sleep. Dan and I sat smoking by the fire. The flames lit one comer of the wall, bringing out the carvings in sharp distinctness. I strolled over to look at them. They were rather like those at Chi-Chien; but different in that they seemed oddly familiar, as if I had seen them in some other place. One central figure, constantly repeated, drew my attention. It was a pyramid, but covered with a veil; a tiny figure of a man mounted one side and on the top stood a cross-asada. That was why the inscriptions looked familiar; they looked Egyptian, not decisively so, you understand, but vaguely, in features, head-dress, postures. I returned to Dan. That veiled pyramid and the man mounting the side troubled me.

Dan was still cheerful. "How do you feel now, sir? We've reached here at last. What do you make of it?"

"Well, it is obviously the Mayan city and antedates those of Yucatan by many centuries. That they had an extraordinarily high civilization is very evident. I don't believe we'll find anything in the buildings; they have been deserted, and probably plundered, for so many thousands of years. We will explore in the morning. But, Dan, I want you to promise me you won't go up the pyramid, or allow anyone else to, unless I am along."

"All right, sir." He did not seem surprized. "But I do wish we had some rope: I'd like to see what's at the bottom of that hole. There must be something pretty good to make me want to go in after it. Good-night, sir."

That night one of the Indian bearers disappeared. No one knew anything about it. Monty seemed particularly surprized, but not alarmed. I could not stop to be bothered by such things.

We devoted the next day to exploration. Those houses were marvelous; why, those people had even known enough to—but I haven't time to go into all that; I must get on with what happened.

I had ordered all away from the pyramid. We tried to find the missing bearer, at least Dan did; but there was no trace. I could think of no reason why he should leave.

The next morning it was found another bearer had disappeared. The men seemed a trifle uneasy; but not