XIV.
THE HANGING CHAIN.
By the winding way which we followed along the mountain-top (and thatthis was the way we wished to follow the King's symbol and the pointingarrow plainly showed), we came presently close beside the rift in thecliffs through which the waters of the upper lake had been dischargedupon the city in the valley below and so had buried it. And here we madea very surprising discovery--which was no less than that the great riftin the rocks through which the water had been let loose was not, as wehad supposed, the result of some fierce convulsion of nature, but veryplainly was the fiercer work of man. Along the face of the openingwhence the water had poured forth the rock was grooved, showing thatdrill-holes had been made, close together, from the edge of the cliffbackward to the lake that once had filled all the valley now lying bareand empty before us; and with the field-glass we could see that therewas a like channelling of the rock upon the farther side of the break.And all doubt in our minds in regard to this matter was removed by ourfinding a vastly long drill--made of the bright, hard metal that we nowwere familiar with, yet could not at all understand itscomposition--lying close beside the chasm upon the bare rock.
"There has been the devil's own work here!" said Rayburn, as he fullytook in this extraordinary situation. "Whoever did this must have spentmonths over it, perhaps years, working with such tools as these. Theyevidently went at it systematically, with the deliberate intention ofdrowning the whole crowd down below. From an engineering stand-point Imust say that it's a good piece of work. See how cleverly they've pickedout this particular spot, where the wall of rock went down almostperpendicularly into the lake, and so got the full value of the thrustof the water when their cuts were finished. If I'm not mistaken, therewas a third line of drill-holes sunk in the middle of the mass that theymeant to cut loose. That's the way I should have done it: then therewould have been a little giving in the centre that would have helped toloosen the sides. But what a lot of incarnate devils they must have beento go at such a job!"
Truly, there was something chilling to the blood in the thought of theslow labor of them who had toiled here, day after day and month aftermonth, until their ghastly purpose was accomplished, and they had slaina whole city without striking a single honest blow. Such vengeance uponan enemy as here was taken never had its equal for cold, malignantcruelty since the world began. Down in the valley below we had seengleaming beneath the calm surface of the lake the bones of the thousandswho had perished when this diabolical work was completed, and the watersbounded forth, shining and sparkling in the sunlight, on their missionof death. And whoever let them loose must have stood just where we nowwere standing; and at sight of what came of their long labor there musthave been such joy as no hell could adequately punish in their blackhearts.
Our bodies shuddered as we turned and left the scene of this tremendoustragedy; that was the more appalling to us because of the profoundmystery in which was buried everything related to it save the fact thatit had been.
For a long distance our way went onward beside the bare, deep valleythat had been the basin of the lake, and so the thought of the horrorwhich had been wrought so devilishly with its innocent waters lingeredgloomily in our minds. Involuntarily we associated the unknown people ofa long past time who had perpetrated this hideous wholesale murder withthe people for whom we now were searching, and an uncertain dread filledour souls as to what might be our own fate should we end by finding whatwe sought. From the tender mercies of a race in which stealthy craft andcold, malignant cruelty evidently were such conspicuous characteristics,little was to be expected. Therefore, it was in a sombre mood, and withbut little talk among us, that we went forward upon our way.
The path that we followed showed the same care in the making of it thatwe had found in the path leading down from the canon into the valleywhere the drowned city was. Throughout the length of it, by carrying itskilfully along the windings of the mountain-sides, an equable, easygrade was maintained; where it led across open spaces the loose stoneshad been cleared away and stood heaped along each side of it; where itskirted precipices the solid rock had been cut out in order to give awider and a surer foothold; and here and there in its course creviceswhich traversed it were bridged with great slabs of stone. Rayburn waslost in admiration of the engineering skill that was shown in itsconstruction, and declared that a very little extra work put on it wouldfit it for the laying of a line of rails.
The valley on our right, in which the lake had been, narrowed as weadvanced; and as the path that we followed had a steadily rising grade(according to Rayburn's estimate, of a trifle more than three percent.), the bottom of it fell away rapidly. As we reached what had been,as we found, the foot of the lake, we discovered fresh evidence of theenormous amount of labor that had been expended in order to make itswaters an effective engine of destruction. Far in the depths beneath us,extending across the whole width of the valley--but here the valley hadso narrowed that it was less a valley than a canon--we saw a high andvastly broad stone wall. It was then that we perceived fully the wholeof the devilish design, and realized the years that must have been givento its execution. By the building of the wall the level of the lake hadbeen raised fully three hundred feet, and so a head of water had beenobtained strong enough to thrust out the mass of rock that had beenloosened by drilling through its centre and at its sides. It would havebeen possible, also, for the rock that was to be broken away to begreatly thinned by quarrying its open face while the water was risingslowly after the great dam was built. Clearly, the whole work had beenplanned with a calm, diabolical ingenuity that assured with absolutecertainty the accomplishment of the horrible purpose that those wholabored at it had in view. It seemed impossible, but for the proof thatwe here had of it, that human hearts could have in them enough of purelydevilish cruelty to spend years in thus working out to perfection sohideous a vengeance; and to me it seemed all the more dreadful becauseof the time that had passed since this most evil deed was done.Centuries had vanished, and the slayers--living out the few years oftheir lifetime--had perished from off the earth as utterly as had theslain; yet here the whole proof of the great crime that had been wroughtlived on in enduring stone that was like to last until the very end ofthe world should come. Thus had these sinners left behind them, raisedby their own hands, a monument telling of their sin; which sin had noteven the redeeming quality of passionateness, but was slow and subtleand cruelly cold.
We were glad to turn from sight of this place and press onward into thecanon, for such the valley now had become; and we found in the darkshadows which enveloped us in this deep cleft between the mountains asombreness in keeping with the feelings in our hearts. So high above ustowered the cliffs that at their top they seemed almost to meet, showingbetween them only a narrow ribbon of bright blue sky, and below us thechasm went down sheer for a thousand feet; a gloomy depth that our eyescould not have penetrated had there not gleamed at the bottom of it thefoam and sparkle of a little stream. Here the path was hewn almostcontinuously out of the solid rock; and we could see that a like pathwas cut in the rock on the other side. That so prodigious a piece ofwork should be thus duplicated seemed to us a very astonishing waste ofenergy; for even Young did not have much faith in his own suggestionthat two prehistoric railway companies had secured rights of way alongthe opposite sides of the canon, and had begun the building there ofrival lines.
But the matter was explained, presently, by our finding that this otherpath was but a doubling of the path that we were on. As we rounded aturn in the canon we came suddenly to a broad natural ledge in the rock,over which hung a great projection of the cliff so that the sky abovewas hid from us. Here our path went off into the air, and began again onthe other side of the vastly deep chasm, a good sixty feet away. "Ratherlong for a jump," was Rayburn's curt comment as we pulled up on the edgeof the precipice and looked at each other blankly. Yet it was evidentthat those who had made with such great expense of toil and time thesepath-ways on the opposite sides of the
canon had crossed in some wayfrom the one to the other at this point, and the only surmise thatseemed to fit the facts of the case was that there had been stretchedacross the chasm a swinging bridge of _lianas_--such as still are to befound spanning streams in the hot lands of Mexico--and that in thecourse of ages this had rotted entirely away. But as this bridge, ifever there had been one here, was absolutely gone, we found ourselves inas shrewdly strait a place as men well could be in. To go ahead was asclearly impossible as was the hopelessness of turning back upon ourpath. At the most, we could only return to the valley out of which wehad climbed with such thankfulness; and rather than go back to die ofstarvation in that place, so beautiful and so desolate, there was notone of us but would have chosen to end all quickly by springing intothe gulf above which we stood.
But while we thus stood in dreary contemplation of the miserableprospect before us, Young, as his habit was, was spying about himsharply, and so spied out a way of deliverance for us. The announcementof his discovery was made in a very characteristic way.
"You set up to be some punkins of an engineer, now don't you?" he said,addressing Rayburn. "But did you ever happen to hear of a bridge thatwas hung up at one end an' that was operated by swingin' it backward an'forward like a pendulum?"
"No," Rayburn answered, promptly and decisively, "I never did."
"So I thought," Young went on. "Well, you've admitted that in sev'ralthings th' man who was in charge of construction on this line could havegiven you points, an' this swingin' bridge notion is one of 'em. I can'tsay that I think much of it. It wouldn't do in railroads, for sure; butthere is a good deal to be said in favor of it when it helps folks outof such a hole as we're in now--an' if it still is in workin' order,that is just what it's going to do. There it is. Do you catch on?"
We all looked in the direction in which Young pointed, for his gesturewas so earnest that even Fray Antonio and Pablo caught the meaning ofit, and so saw--pendent from a point far up on the overhang of rock, andbut indistinctly showing in the shadow--a great chain that at its lowerend was caught in a metal hook set in the face of the cliff at theextreme back of the ledge on which we stood. For my part, I did not atonce catch the meaning of Young's words even when I saw the chain, butRayburn understood it all in a moment.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "that _is_ a notion! You grab the end of it andjust swing across to the other side!"
Young already had loosened the chain from the hook and was testing itsstrength by putting his weight on it. At the end of it was a crossbarbig enough to get a good grip upon; and this, and the chain itself, werewrought of the bright, hard metal of which we had encountered so manyspecimens. The upper end was made fast high above us in the out-jut ofrock, very nearly over the centre of the canon; so that no great forcewas required to carry whoever grasped the crossbar, and so swung outboldly, clear across the chasm to the ledge on the other side. But Iconfess that the thought of such a passage made me feel a little dizzyand sick; and never did I long to be safely back in my class-room at AnnArbor as I did just then!
"It seems t' be all right," said Young, "but I guess you may as welltake a pull on it with me, Rayburn. There'd be no fun in havin' it fetchaway when a man was about half across, an' we may as well make th' thingsure." And then, as the chain still held firm under the double strain,he added, "Well, here goes;" and, so speaking, took a running start andwent swinging out over the abyss.
My heart was in my mouth as he leaped forth and shot out from and farbelow us; but in a moment he rose along the curve that he was traversingand was safely landed on the other side. "It's a boss invention.Workin' it is just as easy as rollin' off a log," he called across tous; and to show how easily the passage was made, he instantly swunghimself back again.
Pablo had manifested signs of strong uneasiness while this talk andaction were in progress, and in a very anxious tone he now inquired:"But how will it be with the Wise One, senor?"
"Why, gettin' _him_ across will be as easy as open an' shut," Younganswered, speaking in English to Rayburn and to me. "We'll just rig himin th' rope slings again, an' make him fast to th' chain, an' give him agood boost to start him, and over he'll go before he fairly knows he'sstarted."
But when we came to apply this brisk statement of the case practically,we found it by no means easy of execution. El Sabio grew restive as wearranged the slings of rope about his body, evidently remembering,fearfully, the strange journey that he had made in the air when we hadrigged him in a like manner in order to trice him up to where the stairbegan; and he grew yet more restive as we fastened the rope slings tothe end of the chain. Rayburn had crossed to the other side--passing thechain back by weighting it with a rock--and stood ready to receive ElSabio when he was swung across. But partly owing to a want of skill inour management of him, yet more to his own unruliness--for just as westarted him, with a strong push, he clapped down his fore-feet upon theedge of the cliff and so checked his swing outward--he did not swingwithin reach of Rayburn's hands. And so he came back towards us again,and then out once more towards Rayburn; and so swung slowly and yet moreslowly until at last he hung motionless over the very middle of thegulf, with nothing between him and the rocks below but a thousand feetof air. And then El Sabio began to kick with a vigor that set torattling every link in the chain!
Pablo was cast by this mischance into a veritable frenzy of fright; andwe were most seriously frightened also--not only because the destructionof the poor ass was imminent, but because of the danger which menacedourselves. Our party was divided, and should the chain give way, understress of El Sabio's kicks and plunges, all possibility of our comingtogether again was at an end. Rayburn might leave us and go on; and so,perhaps, save his own life. But for the rest of us there would be nohope. Behind us was death by starvation. In front of us was thisimpassable gulf.
From Pablo, who was quite wild with dreadful anticipations of theparting of the chain and the loss to him forever of his friend, leastwas to be expected in the strait wherein we were; yet it was from Pablothat our rescue came. With a quick apprehension of the needs of thecase, he rove a running-knot in the end of one of the pack-ropes, andwith a dexterous cast of this improvised lasso set the loop of it aboutEl Sabio's neck as that unfortunate animal for a moment ceased hisstrugglings and hung still. And then we all strained on the ropetogether, and in a minute had El Sabio safely with us again; but in sucha state of terror that pity for him wrung our hearts.
But the limpness which the reaction from such deadly fear threw him intomade handling him easy; and this time, when we launched him forth(taking the precaution, however, to fasten one end of a rope to thechain), he went sailing across the full width of the chasm, and Rayburnin a moment had him landed in safety. The instant that the chain wasloosened Pablo hauled it back, and an instant later swung lightly acrossthe canon, and straightway fell to fondling the terrified creature andcomforting him with all manner of tender words. And he so piteouslybesought us to give El Sabio one good drink that we passed the water-kegand the bucket across, and permitted the poor ass to drink half of ourstock of water without debate of the sacrifice. Indeed, this refreshmentwas so necessary to him that without it I doubt if he could have goneon.
While El Sabio thus gathered courage and strength again, Young swungover to the other side, and we passed our stores across from ledge toledge--having ropes made fast to the chain, and so steadying each loadfrom the one side while we hauled from the other. This was easy work,and we quickly finished it. When it was ended I braced myself for theflying journey through the air across that gulf so deep that the bottomof it was lost in black shadows, through which the sparkling waterfaintly gleamed; and my heart so throbbed within me as I took the bar inmy hands, with the knowledge that should I lose hold of it death waitedfor me below in those dark shadows, that my breath came irregularly andI heard a dismal ringing in my ears. Yet I had less to fear than eitherof the others who had crossed before me, for the ropes still were fastto the chain; and should I not swing far enough I would
be helped tosafety by my companions. But for shame, I should have made my body fastto the chain by a rope sling, and so have gone across as our stores hadgone rather than as a man. But my pride forbade my surrender in thisfashion to my fears; and it was a lucky thing for me that it did.
Holding the bar in my hands, I ran briskly across the ledge, and, with astrong kick on the edge of the cliff to give me additional impetus, Iwent spinning out into space. For an age, as it seemed to me, I sankrapidly; while that horrible feeling possessed me--the like of whichpeople subject to sea-sickness feel as the ship drops away beneath theminto the trough of the sea--of falling away from my own stomach. Andthen, just as my strength seemed to be failing, and my hold on the barloosing, I perceived that I was rising again; and this put a littlefresh heart in me, and I tightened my grip on the bar. Ten seconds, nodoubt, was the full extent of the time that my passage consumed; but itseemed to me then, and it seems to me still as I think of it, a long tenyears. And a thrill of terror goes through me as I think also of hownear I then came to a horrible death; for at the very moment that Ireached the farther side of the canon there was a little tinkling soundin the air above me, and the bar that I held was twitched out of myhands, and then came a loud jingling of metal on rock, and as I turnedquickly I saw a gleam of sunlight catch the great chain as it wenttwisting downward into the black gulf below.
The Aztec Treasure-House Page 16