The number of these old cities and temples was wonderful, and astonished the señor beyond measure, which is not strange, seeing that he was the first white man who had ever looked upon them. Often, as we rode, he would talk to me about them, and strive to paint in words a picture of this country, now but desert plains or tangled bush, as it must have been five hundred years or more before our day, when cities and villages, palaces and temples, crowded with tens of thousands of inhabitants, were to be seen everywhere, and the fertile face of the earth was hidden in the green of crops. What histories lay buried in those jungles, and what scenes must have been enacted on the crumbling pyramids which confronted us day by day, before the sword of the conqueror or the breath of pestilence, or both, made the land desolate. Then it would have been a sight worth seeing; and our hearts beat at the thought that if things went well with us it might be our fortune to witness that sight; that our eyes might behold the greatest of these cities, sought for many generations but as yet unfound, the very navel of this ancient and mysterious civilisation, dying indeed, but still existent.
I had other hopes to draw me onward, but, as I believe, it was this desire that sustained the señor in many a difficulty and danger of our march. It was with him while he was hacking a mule–path through the scrub with his machete, when we toiled along hour after hour beneath the burning sun, and even at night as he lay over–tired and sleepless, tormented by insects, and aching with fever. Filled with this thought he was never weary of questioning the silent Zibalbay as to the history, or rather the legend, of the land through which we journeyed, or of listening to the Lady Maya's descriptions of the City of the Heart, till even she grew tired, and begged him to speak, instead, of the country across the water where he was born, of its ceaseless busy life, and the wonders of civilisation. Strange as it may seem, I, who watched them both from day to day, know it to be true that she was in mind the more modern of the two—so much so, indeed, that, in listening to their talk, I might have fancied that Maya was the child of the New World, filled with the spirit of to–day, and he the heir of a proud and secret race dying beneath its weight of years.
"I cannot understand you," she would say to him; "why do you so love histories and ruins and stories of people that have long been dead? I hate them. Once they lived, and doubtless were well enough in their place and time, but now they are past and done with, and it is we who live, live, live!" and she stretched out her arms as though she would clasp the sunshine to her breast.
"I tell you," she went on, "that this home of mine, of which you are so fond of talking, is nothing but a great burying–place, and those who dwell in it are like ghosts who wander to and fro thinking of the things that they did, or did not do, a thousand years before. It was their ancestors who did the things, not they, for they do nothing except plot against each other, eat, sleep, drink, and mumble prayers to a god in whom they do not believe. Did my father but know it, he wastes time and trouble in making plans for the redemption of the People of the Heart, who think him mad for his pains. They cannot be redeemed. Were it otherwise, do you suppose that they would have been content to sit still all these hundreds of years, knowing nothing of the great world outside of them, and day by day watching their numbers dwindle, till life but flickers in the race as in a dying lamp? So it is also, if in a less degree, with those Indians whom Don Ignatio here seeks to lift out of the mire into which the Spanish trod them. Sirs, I believe that our blood has had its day. There is no more growth in us, we are corn ripe for the sickle of Death—that is, most of us are. Therefore, if I could have my will, while I am still young I would turn my back upon this city which you so desire to see, taking with me the wealth that is useless there, but which, it seems, would bring me many good things in other lands, and live out my time among people who have a present and a future as well as a past."
Then the señor would laugh, and argue that the past is more than the present, and that it is better to be dead than alive, and many other such follies; and I would grow angry and reprove Maya for her words, which shocked me, whereat she would yawn, and talk of something else, for I and my discourses wearied her. Only Zibalbay took no heed, for his mind was set upon other things, even if he heard us, which I doubt.
But all this while, notwithstanding her light talk and careless manner, the Lady Maya was learning—yes, even from me—when the señor was not at hand, for she would inquire into everything and forget nothing that she heard. The history of the countries of the world, their modes of government and religions, the manners, customs, and appearance of their inhabitants—he told her of them all from day to day. Nor did she weary of listening, till at length the señor met with an adventure that went near to separating him from her for ever, and showed me, although I had no great love for her or any of her sex, that, whatever might be her faults, this woman's heart was true and bold.
Chapter XII
Maya Descends the Cueva
One evening—it was after we had left the forest country, and with much toil climbed the sierra till we reached the desert beyond, a desert that seemed to be boundless—we set our camp amongst a clump of great aloes that grew at the foot of a stony hill. This hill was marked on Zibalbay's map as being the site of an underground reservoir, known as a cueva, whence in the old days, when this place was inhabited, the Indians drew their supply of water in the dry season from deep down in the bowels of the earth. That this particular cueva existed was proved by the fact that the ancient road, which here was plainly visible, ran through the ruins of a large town whereof the population must once have been supplied by it; but when Zibalbay and his daughter slept at the spot on their downward journey, they were spared the necessity of looking for it by the discovery of a rain–pool in the hollow of a rock. Now, however, no rain having fallen for weeks, after we had eaten, and drunk such water as remained in the water–skins, we determined to seek for the cueva in order to refill the skins and give drink to the thirsty mules.
Accordingly we began to examine the rocky hill, and presently found a stone archway, now nearly filled up with soil and half hidden by thorn bushes, which from its appearance and position we judged to be the entrance to the cueva. Having provided ourselves with an armful of torches made from the dead stems of a variety of aloe that grew around in plenty, we lit four of them, and I led the way through the hole to find myself in a cave where a great and mysterious wind blew and sighed in sudden gusts that almost extinguished our lights. Following this cave we came to a pit or shaft at the end of it, which evidently led to the springs of water. This shaft, of unknown depth, was almost if not quite as smooth and perpendicular as though it had been hollowed by the hand of man, but the strangest thing about it was the terrible stairway that the ancients had used to approach the water, consisting, as it did, of a double row of notches eight or ten inches deep, cut in the surface of the shaft. Up and down these notches the water–carriers must have passed for generations, for they were much worn, and a groove made by the feet of men ran to the top of this awful ladder. The señor, finding a fragment of rock, let it fall over the edge of the pit, and several seconds passed before a faint sound told us that it had touched the bottom.