“Rock crystal set in the sockets.” Sam's voice was almost too firm.
“But where did it come from? Who put it here?”
“There were old ones in these lands before my people came,” Fortnight answered Kane's demand, “and that was long and long ago. We found cities long deserted, statues of men or gods of whom living men knew nothing. These are old seas, far older than we can reckon I think that this was found here by those who built the crater city. In it they recognized a more powerful representation of what they, too, worshiped, so they gave it due honor. But it is old — just as that for which it stands is very old — ”
“I don't like it! It's not decent A stick of dynamite under it would make the world cleaner. It has too much power — “ Sam's voice rose.
“Why not — it is Power.” Kane stepped back “You can blow it up, if you want to. Me, I’d rather not touch the thing. And I don't want to look at it any longer either. There's something about those eyes — ”
Sam's words became singsong. “Yes, they look into you, and all the little meannesses and small evils which are there are counted and made important and — right.” He turned away from the dais abruptly.” Come away! It's not for us!”
Without answering they followed him to the left, away from the giant. And here on the floor the pattern of the ape's tracks was thicker, as if the animals had beaten a regular path in that direction for some reason. Mechanically at first, then with real interest they followed that web of tracks. And so they came into a corridor which must have once been a fault in the rock, enlarged by the work of man.
It led for a few feet straight ahead, then turned at a sharp angle to come out on a broad ledge hanging above the other half of the island. No b better vantage point could have been found. Sam took out the glasses as Fortnight pinched out the torch.
Here the jungle did not seem so binding. To the left, at some distance, there was a wide sweep of grassland, almost like an open meadow. Then, at the edge of a stream, the heavier vegetation began again.
“Caves!” The Samoan pointed eagerly to a series of dark openings, most of which were to the right and on a much lower level than the ledge where they now perched.
And there were marks against the mountain wall below those dark doorways, marks which could be seen even without the aid of the glasses. Some of the caves, if not all, were in use.
Not that they sighted any of the inhabitants. Perhaps they had taken to cover, which argued that the arrival of the Sumba was known and that the explorations ashore had not gone unmarked. The three kept close to the entrance of the tunnel at their backs, but it was rather like posing as targets in a shooting gallery.
“If we come around here” — Sam motioned toward the open land — “it will be easy going. Somehow I don't fancy storming up this mountain again — especially if there should be a hostile reception committee waiting somewhere along the way. They wouldn't even have to waste ammunition on us — there were several places back there where a couple of well-aimed rocks would do the business nicely. Well, do you think you will know this place again?”
Kane was searching the floor of the ledge for something which most certainly should have been there but was not — at least as far as he could see.
“Where did the apes go? There are no traces of them here, and yet we found plenty of tracks at the beginning of that tunnel — it looked as if it were one of their regular roads.”
“We can look along the passage; there may be another opening that we missed.” Fortnight touched a match to his improvised torch.
This time they scrutinized the walls carefully as they passed. And it was Kane who first sighted a pocket of shadow which betrayed the entrance to a sort of burrow. From it came a whiff of rank odor — like the scent which had clung to Hornhoven's animal pens. There were tufts of hair caught in the rough stone proclaiming it a passage in much use. But neither Kane nor Fortnight could attempt that door. Sam might possibly wriggle through, but since none of them knew conditions beyond, they decided against the risk.
“Torch is going.” Fortnight held his concoction in both hands. “We'd better leave while it still burns — ”
So their shuffle became a trot, past the dais of the Unknown, and it was there, almost as if a puff from between those stone lips had extinguished it, that the light went out. Running, they broke out on the steps.
All the fruit was gone from the altar now, save for a couple of badly squashed globes, the fleshy pulp of which made a feast for insects. But the old problem of who had placed it there held the three. Surely there must be some easier path up the mountain than the one they had found.
“Shall we swing around the other way?” asked Kane.
But there their luck was no better. Unless the worshiper had used the ape-hole, he must have appeared at the temple by magic. The ancient earthquake which had cut away the western wall of the cone had carried with it perhaps a quarter of the ruins, and there was only a straight drop down. After half an hour they found themselves back at their original point of arrival, having found no other path of descent
“But there must be one,” protested Kane. He smeared the back of his hand across his dripping face.
“Okay — so there must be one!” Sam still had energy enough to snap. “Unless these people sprout wings at will Only we haven't found it. And if you think I’ll go head first down that ape-hole just to satisfy your curiosity you're crazy! I might meet someone coming up. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day, and the Sumba isn't going to sail tonight. We can come up and try again. But now I vote we go back to civilization.”
“Wonder how the shore party is getting along?”
Sam handed over the binoculars. “Take a peek. You ought to be able to sight them from that eagles’ roost up there.”
Kane clambered up on a pinnacle of rock and turned the glasses on the shore line far below. It was several seconds before he focused on the captain's following. They were gathered in a tight cluster out on a finger of the shore reef. And they seemed to be busy, very busy. While he watched, one of the figures dove into the green lagoon.
“They must have found something. They've taken to diving!”
Sam was up beside him in one wild lunge, pulling at the glasses. “Let me see!”
“Someone just dived. Maybe they've discovered the pearl fishery — ”
“I'm pretty good in water, too. Suppose we go down and volunteer a bit of help. After all, we got what we came up here for, a look at the other side of the island. And we know about the cave dwellers. So let's hit the down trail.”
The descent was not as difficult as the climb had been. Fortnight turned the rope into a ladder across the worst parts, and they followed the curve of the old road as long as they could without running into territory which might be under the direct control of the cave people. Panting and soaked with their own sweat, they came out at last on the same strip of sand from which they had departed hours before. Kane staggered down to dabble his hands in the wash of the waves. Salt stung his chafed palms and the cuts the lava rocks had made.
“Come on!” Sam tugged at him. “I want to see what they've found — ”
The sand shifting under their boots was almost as hard to cross as the lava had been, and the coral was as rough as the stone. Those who were on the reef did not even look as the mountaineering party came up.
“Did you find pearls — ?” Sam was the first to reach the end of the reef.
A man stripped to his shorts, heavy diving goggles over his eyes, looked up at the Nisei By his pale skin and blond hair Kane identified Lorens.
“There is an oyster bed, yes. But there is something else down there — wreckage!”
Kane edged over to peer into the murky water. The distortion of the undersea world was complete as far as he was concerned. Then a dark form spiraled up from the depths, and a native, wearing the same sort of goggles as those which made Lorens look like an insect, broke water.
“What kind of wreckage?” the Ame
rican demanded. An illogical picture had formed in his mind. Why did that one word bring a vision of a Spanish galleon lying on its side with jewels dripping from every sprung seam of its weed-grown hull? He must have been conditioned by too many pirate stories in his youth.
“Metal of some kind.” Lorens stepped gingerly to the edge of the reef and prepared to dive. “I’m going down to see — ”
He slipped over and went smoothly into the dusk of the lagoon before Kane could answer.
“It is there, Captain.” The native was making his report. “Tight in the coral trees it is. Big, very big.”
“A ship?” questioned Kane.
“Tuan,” the Malay answered him, “if it is a ship it is unlike any I have seen before, ever.”
12
SUNKEN TREASURE
Lorens’ head broke the surface, his water-darkened hair plastered to his skull With even strokes he made for the reef and chose a landing place carefully before he climbed into the air. As he pulled off his diving goggles van Bleeker reached him.
“Well? What is it that that dunderhead Futa stumbled upon — a prau?”
The Netherlander was toweling his head with his shirt. “No. I think it is wreckage of a plane. The nose is wedged into a crevice of the reef, just as if she dove straight for that point. But a large part of the frame has been salvaged — ”
“Salvaged!” Van Bleeker's voice ascended the scale. He glanced at the shore as if he expected to see a salvage party. But only the white-winged seabird wheeled and dipped and cried above the green twilight there. “By whom?”
Lorens applied the improvised towel to shoulders and upper arms. “By someone who knew his business. It is not a job done by natives. All that remains is that part of the fuselage which has plowed too deep into the coral to get at without blowing up the reef. I think that it is the remains of a bomber.”
Sam was peeling off his clothes. “Suppose I go down for a look. Our job may have caught up with us at last — we were sent here to investigate lost bombers.”
Lorens handed over the goggles, and Sam, stripped to his violently colored shorts, slid gingerly into the water. “Any sharks or other wild life?” he asked before he disappeared.
The Netherlander shook his head. “We have sighted none yet. But I see you wear a knife, that is good. It is well to be prepared.”
To Kane the following minute seemed overlong. But then Sam bobbed up again, his grin wide and exultant as he made for the reef.
“ She's a bomber all right, and one of ours, Dutch — or I'm a temple-haunting ape,” he sputtered, almost before his mouth was clear of the water. “And she's been salvaged almost down to her ribs too. Which means — ”
“Survivors!” Now it was Kane's turn to look shoreward. “But where have they gone? If I’d been holed up here for years, I'd have been down dancing on the beach when I saw a ship come in. And we haven't even had a hello. Are you sure that the natives haven't been scrounging the stuff? The metal ought to be worth something even in this backwoods.”
“No.” Sam was definite. “That job was done carefully by someone who not only was familiar with metal but who knew his way around a plane. He knew just what he was after, and he took it. And it's been down there for months by the look of it. Our castaways may have sailed from here some time ago — ”
“Or met with accidents — fatal ones.” Again Kane's eyes went shoreward “There is something about this island that is anything but welcoming — ”
Lorens pulled his belt through its buckle. His eyes narrowed, not against the glare of the sun. “ So you feel that too? Yes, there is something in the air of this place which is not good — not good at all.”
Van Bleeker spat out an exclamation which was half impatience, half derision. “Superstition is it now? Should I provide anting-antings for the crowd of you? We can keep watch. We are men who are trained to use weapons, and we have them to use. I do not think we have anything to fear — we of the Sumba!”
“Doubtless you are right,” conceded Lorens. “And” — he turned to Kane — “what did you find on the mountain top?”
Kane's tale of the ruins in the cone and the temple in the sky was so hurried that they stopped him often to demand details. It was the apes’ passageway and the discovery of the ledge which was a vantage point over the other side of the island that interested the captain most.
“And you found no other road down?” he persisted.
“None — except the ape-hole. And that may not lead down at all. But there were no tracks of human feet in that temple. Whoever brought the offering hadn't come through there — ”
“And even if we did find the path that worshiper used,” Lorens pointed out, “it might not be well for us to follow it The cave dwellers must know that we are here; they may have been spying on us constantly since the Sumba came into the lagoon. And we must be unwelcome — no one has come to see us openly. Remember what happened to that pearl diver?
“ So an ambush on a trail would be only a routine move on their part. If we do invade the over-mountain territory, it would be best, I think, to cut around to the south through that section of open land which you noted. I have a liking for a fight in the clear myself. A skirmish in a mountain tunnel where my opponent knows the ground better than I do is not exactly to my taste.”
Van Bleeker grunted, not more than half convinced. “Very well. First we shall try it your way — a frontal attack. Then, if we fail, we can once more attempt to find the mountain route. Back doors are sometimes easier to force than are the front — ”
“Look here,” Sam cut in, “everyone seems to be awfully sure we've got a fight shaping up — ”
“All indications point to that.” An air of tried patience showed through Lorens’ usual courtesy. “We have not been welcomed — and there is the matter of the diver — ”
“What if these people are only afraid of us?” argued the Nisei. “Lord, they may be the descendants of the old boys who built the temple. Maybe they've never seen white men or a ship such as the Sumba before. Hadn't we better find out how they stand before we go in with machine guns?”
“Maybe Sam's thinking is straighter than ours,” Kane agreed, almost diffidently. “We've been fighting so long that perhaps we — ”
“Have come to believe that force is the proper answer to every problem?” Lorens caught him up. “Yes, there is that But, on the other hand, there have been stories of holdout Japanese troops and native agitators taking to cover on these islands. What better place for them to go to earth than a place like this, which is off the map? So I say, go armed, but let the other side declare their intentions first.”
When they returned to the Sumba, Lorens went to work with a sheet of stiff paper and a set of drawing pencils to sketch a rough map of the island. With the sure hand of one who has seen it himself he drew in the reef and the shore line, then, more slowly, with Kane's awkward help and that of Sam's more supple fingers, the mountain and its crater of ruins.
“So here is your spy ledge — hmmmm — “ Van Bleeker poked at the cross mark. “And here are the caves. How many of those do you think are in use?”
“We can't be sure — sure of anything,” Kane countered. “But I would say that these” — he pointed at the map — “and these are used.”
“Four here — three there. Big ones?”
It was Fortnight who answered that. “How can anyone tell from the size of the entrance. Many small holes open out into large caves. The cave of the temple is much larger than its entrance would suggest.”
Van Bleeker chewed his thumb. “Then there may be a hundred or more living there — ”
“Would this island support that many?” Kane wanted to know. “We haven't seen any fishing boats, and we didn't sight any large clearings under cultivation.”
“Even ten men in caves such as those could make trouble for us. That back door now — if we could find that.” The captain continued to pore over the sketch. “There — perhaps — ”
r /> “That's sliced off clean — The old earthquake path took a big hunk of the crater along with it,” Sam explained. “That's what wiped off the end of that road which we found — ”
“Yes, the road, I was forgetting the road.” Van Bleeker's thumb went back to his lips. “But the lower end of that — it still runs into this bit of jungle here?”
“It must. Although we did not follow it past here. Only it would take a bulldozer to clean out that path; the jungle has grown clear across it. If we try to force a way through there we might just as well blow a bugle to announce us — we'd be as easily spotted in about five minutes!”
Lorens had his own answer to the problem. “We take the ship's boats to here.” He made a neat dot of his own on the map. “How thick is this spur of jungle?” He looked up at Kane.
The American closed his eyes and tried to visualize the country as he had seen it from the ledge. There had been some greenery over to the south, but he could not recall how dense it had been — the caves and the land about them had held most of his attention then. “I can't remember.”
“Not much jungle there,” the Samoan supplied, “and not thick — not like on the lower mountain slopes.”
“Good enough. So here we leave the boats and cut overland, which should bring us to this V-shaped point of the open country. After that we can keep to the slope, under cover of the brush most of the way long. The jungle does not begin again, you say, until you approach this stream?”
This time Kane could answer. “Yes, it begins at the stream. But even there it is not so dense — it isn't anywhere over there.”
“Then that is my suggestion.” Lorens waited for their opinions.
Van Bleeker still studied the map, reluctant to give up his own cherished project of discovering a back door. But with a final grunt he surrendered.
“All right, all right, then. Overland it is. But, mind you, this is no frolic for tin-medaled heroes. I think that we are going to walk into something nasty on the other side of the mountain. I do not like this — not one little bit. And when we go, keep to cover. We will have no death-and-glory charges in this — ”