The Treasure of Atlantis - J. Allan Dunn (finding audrey .TXT) 📗

Vivid flashes of forked lightning, following hot puffs of wind, illuminated the aisles of the Amazonian forest, inky black between the intervals. The long line of carriers, tired of struggling over and under the tough festoons of tree roots and ground vines and the trailing lianas that disputed every inch of the trail, came to a sudden halt. The two leaders, stumbling persistently behind the bearers, confirmed the move, and the Morse-Laidlaw expedition tried to find secure shelter from the coming storm that had driven night before it in such untimely fashion.

There was little cover from the threatened hurricane that could be considered satisfactory. The cargadores threw their burdens beneath the heaviest undergrowth they could find, and, with their employers, leaned against the tree trunks. Morse and Laidlaw ensconced themselves in a fold of a great massaranduba (cow tree) as the first heavy drops fell.

“I’m not built for this trail, Morse,” said Laidlaw, though his cheery voice evinced no complaint. “I’ve tripped up in these infernal jungle traps a dozen times. My nose is bleeding, and I’ve cracked both shins falling on my rifle.”

“And I’ve been swung off my feet with a noose about my neck about as often,” replied Morse. “We’re due here till morning, anyway. By tomorrow night I hope to reach Apara. Here it comes!”

They shrank against the mighty bole as the gale swept through the forest, the roar of the wind intensified by the crackling of trees that were literally up-rotted and tossed by the tempest as if they had been so many wisps of straw. Two trunks crashed down close to their feet, and only the giant spread of mighty bough above them saved them from destruction. In the intermittent pauses of the storm the shrieks of monkeys and the screeching of parrots and herons joined the wailing of the bearers and machete men in an appalling din. Birds flapped heavily to the branches overhead; animals shuffled in among them; and once a wild cry of dismay went up as a great snake wound its scaly length among the Indians, too disturbed for attack.

The gale lasted two hours. It was the last effort of the rainy season, and had not been unexpected by Morse, who had deliberately chosen the time of the trip to take advantage of the high water in the rivers. They had come by steamship to Para, at the mouth of the Amazon, traversed eight hundred and seventy miles of the Flowing Road to the mouth of the Madeira, and ascended that tributary nearly seven hundred miles in a launch to the San Antonio Falls, above which the river raged in continuous rapids for three hundred miles, impossible for upriver travel. At San Antonio, they engaged their porters and machete men and struck eastward across the great plateau broken up into subsidiary chapadaos, crossing the Tapajos River at Taguaraizino, and its tributary, the Manoel, at the border angle of Para and Matto Grosse States, reaching the old, half-grown trail of Murdock, and arriving with a few days’ march of Apara village, at a stream marked on the orchid hunter’s map as Caxoeira, in the beginning of May, with six months of good weather in prospect.

It had been a hard trek, and the caravan showed signs of the trying-out process. Morse had marveled at Laidlaw’s adaptation to the trying conditions. Once eggs disappeared inexorably from the menu, he made neither murmur nor suggestion as to meals, accepting chameleon or monkey with manioc for vegetable and banana for dessert with equanimity. The drawback of his short legs was eliminated by his endurance.

Once, for sport, he had drawn himself up into the lianas and swung along above ground for a hundred yards as easily as a gorilla, scaring the prehensile-tailed monkeys that chattered above him and striking awe into the hearts of the Indians. The quest well started, nothing seemed to disturb a certain humorous equanimity that characterized him and made him an ideal trail companion. Torrential rains soaked them; they steamed in their own perspiration; gnats and gaudy-flied, heavy-shelled beetles, all laden with poison sacs and natural hypodermic syringes, tormented them, but they proved immune to the fevers, and their formidable numbers and equipment secured them from hostile attacks.

Morse was in top condition. By dint of strict discipline and a general knowledge of conditions, he kept his

train in similar shape, and they made unprecedented time. Across the grassy summits of the chapadaos, the day’s march was more often over than under twenty miles, and a general spirit of confidence in their own ability permeated the party. Morse had said nothing to the bearers concerning the real object of the expedition. He had consulted with Laidlaw, and they had decided to keep silent.

“We may not be welcome at Dor,” Morse suggested, “and, according to Murdock, the Indians seem inclined to be superstitious in the matter. We don’t want to lose them before we reach Apara.”

In spare hours since they had left New York, Morse applied himself, under the tutelage of Laidlaw, to acquiring facility in ancient Greek and learning to decipher the symbols of Cretan pictorial and linear script.

“There will be variations in the language, undoubtedly,” said Laidlaw, “but the roots may be the same, and present practice will prove a fine working basis.” So Morse resurrected the memories of his school and college classics and pounded away until he was able to converse freely with Laidlaw. Except where the Greek held no equivalents for the names of modern articles, they practically adopted it in place of English.

“Dialects spring up and mother languages alter with change of location and climate, much as we will undoubtedly find the old Cretan ceremonials and customs, religious and social, dominated by local conditions,” warned Laidlaw. “If the snow-capped cone mentioned by Murdock is a volcano, it will undoubtedly have had its influence on their worship. The old Minotaur legend will likely have become a myth unless they have cattle, which I doubt. The volcanic fires will have an important part in their ritual, I imagine. Though it is, of course, all theory on my part.”

With education and speculation, the time passed quickly, and it seemed only a short time since Laidlaw had first burst into Morse’s bedroom. A genuine friendship, founded on mutual peril and respect for each other’s bearing and sturdy manhood, sprang up between the two men. Morse was amazed at the resources of Laidlaw’s learning, and Laidlaw treated the other as a son of whom he was justly proud, relegating to him the

leadership by right of experience and capability.

The morning after the storm, Morse broke camp at daybreak. The hurricane had blazed a broad trail of uprooted trees, torn undergrowth, and lianas through the forest and strewn it with boughs and branches. Dead a birds lay here and there, and one great limb had smashed to a pulp a great anaconda fully thirty feet in length and as thick around as Morse’s thigh.

According to the map, they had crossed the last watercourse and had now only to climb out of the valley to the highlands where Tagua ruled the village of Apara. During the morning they made good progress, and at sunset they arrived at the village and sent in word to its ruler with gifts of bright-colored prints.

There was no surprise at their appearance; the jungle wireless had announced them as it had elsewhere along the route. The bearers fraternized with the half-naked pisanos of the village, and two headmen escorted Morse and Laidlaw to a large bamboo hut which they speedily made comfortable with their camp equipment.

Morse asked for Tagua by name. “Tell him,” he said, “that we are friends of Murdock to whom he made the present of the cup of gold.”

The response from the chief took initial form in return presents of fat capybaras, an agouti, and an armadillo, together with wild figs and bananas. In half an hour the chief arrived, apologizing for his delay. He had been in a mud bath for his rheumatism, and had waited to cleanse himself. He limped badly, and was evidently in pain, though he beamed with evident friendliness.

“You come from Senhor Mirradoche?” he asked in the flowing Indian dialect. “Does he send greetings?”

“Greetings from beyond the trail, Tagua. The senhor is dead.”

“Eyah! It is bad news. He was a good man. I linger like an old tree, but he is taken.”

He lapsed into silence which the Americans did not interrupt. At length he asked: “What may I do for you?”

Morse repeated the story told by the orchid hunter.

“We would find the city and enter it,” he concluded.

Tagua sank back in mingled incredulity and horror. “It is impossible!” he exclaimed. “The way is closed, and they permit no strangers within the city

save as bondmen. You cannot go alone. And none of