"Well, you"ll find out my balloon is the only explanation," bantered Ray. "He carries one in his vest pocket, all neatly folded; he takes it out, blows it full of voodoo rum stuff, and--whiff--up he goes."
"Maybe there"s some one of those lianas hanging from the trees that he swings out of the water on," offered Robert.
"That"s so!" cried Norris. "A fellow might swing a big long jump that way without touching his foot to the ground. I"m going to have another good look there first thing in the morning."
Captain Marat had been taking stock of our supply of food.
"Someone have to go for more provision, if we stay much longer," he said. "We have hardly enough for one day."
So that after some hours of sleep Robert and Marat set off to return to the _Pearl_ for fresh supplies. They planned to row across the end of Crow Bay before day should come, for there was no certainty that Duran"s black on the isle might not have an eye out. It would not do to risk another daylight crossing.
Day had no sooner shot its earliest rays into the recesses of our forest, than Norris was over to the creek investigating the big vines that hung like so many ropes from the branches above. He finally came back to his breakfast, his face giving no signs of success.
"Never mind, Norris," said Ray. "If you"re going to make that Duran out a monkey, you can hardly expect to find tracks--monkeys don"t leave any."
"Well, anyway," insisted Norris, "that"s the way he went, and we"ll find that gold mine up on my creek--see if we don"t."
For some unaccountable reason, I was not any more impressed by Norris"
conclusions than by Ray"s playful explications, and I was taken with a desire to be alone with the problem. So I urged the others to go and explore Norris" creek, and I would remain on watch at this place of Duran"s strange disappearance.
When the three had gone, moving eastward along the foot of that towering stone wall, I began where the water came tumbling out of that hole in the cliff, and carefully examined the banks of the creek again, up and down, for half a mile or so. I reasoned that if he waded into the stream he must certainly have waded out of it again. Unless, as Norris had conjectured, he had swung himself over the bank by the means of some liana. I therefore imitated Norris and searched both sides for evidence of any such means; and with a negative result. Nowhere, so far as the forest followed the stream, was there a loose liana near the bank on either side.
And then it came to me that perhaps Duran had gone into the water at the end of the path, only to retrace his steps and leave the path some way on the back trail, thus to deceive any who should chance to come so far on his track. And so I scrutinized every foot of the path back to the edge of the forest, and some way across the glade. I even went off the trail, and fought my way through the growth as I went back, paralleling the path, and looking for signs.
But I got back to the creek bank and the music of the little cascade, no nearer the solution than when I had started. Hours had been consumed in my search. It must have been past ten when I squatted on the stream"s bank, looking into the clear water, puzzling over this thing.
A beam of sun shone down through the water and illumined the creek"s bottom. A round bit of rock or coral lay there, almost white in that liquid light. For a long time I stared on that spot, as if the solution were to be found there. I never before had felt so baffled.
And then I was startled! I could no longer see that stone--nor any part of the creek"s bed. The water had in that moment become turbid.
Something had muddied it. I leaped to my feet and hurried up to the fountain in the cliff. The water was coming out of the rock in that muddied condition. Now what could it all mean? I asked myself. And I set my wits to the thing as I continued to stare at the phenomenon.
Presently the water cleared a bit. And then in a little it came as muddy as ever again.
CHAPTER XXIII
WHAT THE WATER HID
My thoughts flew. In a moment more I thrilled with an idea. Then I dashed into the water and got myself up to the little waterfall, made, as I have said, by a portion of the water coming round a rock and flowing over the edge of a flat shelf of rock.
I tried to look through that thin veil of liquid, failing which, I braved a shower and put my head through. In another moment I had my whole body behind that little cascade. I crouched, sputtering, under the rocky shelf. Then for eight or ten feet I crawled forward in the darkness. Directly, the pa.s.sage made a little turn to the right, and the ground under my hands sloped upward. It may have been fifty feet, it may have been a hundred and fifty feet, that I had penetrated that cliff--my excitement had taken no measure of the distance--when I found that I could no longer feel the wall on either side. I was in a cavern of unknown dimensions.
I could hear the rushing of water, below and to my left. A feeling of exultation filled me almost to bursting; I had at last discovered Duran"s secret. I came to a stop, fearing to lose my exit. How I wished for my flashlight! I had come away leaving it aboard the _Pearl_.
I do not know how long I had tarried in that spot, when a beam of light struck down from above on my right. And then came sounds of some being up there, and the light approached.
I retreated into the narrow pa.s.sage by which I had come, ready to scramble out if there should be need. But soon the slant of the light beams showed me that the lamp had pa.s.sed to the left, and I ventured forward again, and peeked around a projection of rock.
There was Duran"s blackened face in the light of a lantern, which he was in the act of hanging on some form of hook in the cavern wall. The vault, I saw, was high, and at least fifty feet wide. It was down near the water that Duran was; and I saw him stoop and put his hand into the stream; and he fished out some sort of packet which he laid on the cavern floor. Time after time he reached down into the rushing water, and took out a packet each dive, till he had a pile on the floor that would measure a peck.
At last Duran sat himself on the cavern"s floor, and he busied himself with untying knots and separating the objects he dealt with in two piles. And next he rose to his feet and set to transporting one of his piles to some niche that was out of the field of my eye.
Duran"s next procedure was to gather the other pile into a sack. And this he took in hand and forthwith began to move back toward my part of the cavern.
I wormed my way down in my pa.s.sage again, and when I had got a little way from the cascade, I waited and listened. But he must have gone back the way he had come. I ventured in again.
When I poked my head out of the pa.s.sage into the cavern, there was no sign of Duran. But the lantern still hung where he had fixed it, throwing its light about that s.p.a.ce.
I now ventured down to the scene of Duran"s labors. There, completely spanning the stream, and reaching down to its bed, was a network of some sort of tough fibre, reinforced with slender bamboo. Near at hand, in a niche, lay, in a pile near a foot high, short sections of bamboo as thick as my arm. I took up one in my hand. Even prepared as I was for the discovery, its weight nevertheless startled me; it might have been solid bra.s.s.
"At last this smells of the gold mine!" I thought to myself. He would hardly miss one of these. And after hefting in my hand a half-dozen more, to satisfy myself that all were loaded, I retained that first bamboo cylinder and hurried to my exit.
As I pa.s.sed out on all fours through that little waterfall, I got a fresh drenching. I waded on down the stream, and presently I heard a voice. It was Ray"s; and he was over in our little camp.
It came into my mind to even up for some of the tricks Ray had played me. So I trilled out a low whistle, and when I heard them coming, I ducked myself in the creek. I held my breath for as long a s.p.a.ce as I could manage, and then rose out of the water and made for the path, pretending not to see those petrified forms pedestaled on the creek bank. I went up the path and moved toward the camp, and when they hurried forward--"h.e.l.lo!" I said. "Are you folks back already?"
"Say, now!" began Ray. "What in Sam Hill! Are you playing alligator, or mermaid, or--"
"Playing!" I said. "I"ve had no time for play." With one hand I was nursing the heavy cylinder that I now carried under my shirt.
"And what have you been doing?" demanded Norris, eyes big with perplexity.
And Carlos appeared no less mystified.
"I"ve been visiting the gold mine," I said simply.
Even Ray could not resist a look over to that spot in the stream where I had appeared to them out of the water.
"I thought I heard you whistle," he said.
"Dreaming some more," I suggested.
Norris got a long stick and began poking in the bottom of of the creek.
"Oh, not that way," I told him. "You have to say "Open Sesame.""
"Now look here, open up!" pressed Norris, dropping his pole.
"All right," I returned. And I produced the cylinder of bamboo.
"Well I"ll--!" began Norris, hefting the thing. "Say, there"s sure something heavy in that thing. Where"d you--?" And again his eyes turned quizzically toward the water.
"You know what I told you this morning," broke in Ray, taking the section of bamboo in his turn of scrutiny.
"Yes," a.s.sented Norris, "you said Wayne would have it all figured out--what became of Duran--by the time we came back. And that"s one reason why I was ready to come back as soon as I found those two little colors."