Argosy, Vol. 1 (1882) — page 128: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BEYOND THE GREAT SOUTH WALL. lowered the Frenchman first therein. I followed him, and in due order came Gerry, Denvarre, and Garlicke. I found the little professor trotting around the temple, exclamations of wonder and delight hurtling from be- tween his teeth. His little arms waved, his little lean face beamed with scientific glee. His self made dictionary and _ his grammar of the Mayan symbol was in his hands. In the pauses of his ecstasy he was trying to divine the inscriptions. Now and again he stopped to exam- ine the prone figures of the shriveled priests, turning them about and picking at them with a minuteness that struck me as both hard hearted and indelicate. Finally he dragged himself out of this haphazard abandon of discovery, and ‘settling down before the base of the great pedestal, began to decipher the inscriptions with serious attention. For some minutes he sat silently be- tween Gerry and myself, who held candles by him. He conned the twisted devices, turning from them to his note book, and tracing out each symbol care- fully. suddenly signs of the greatest excite- ment manifested themselves. He jumped up with an exclamation, nearly upsetting both of us, and rushed round to the back of the image. Here he be- gan to butt at the solid stone in a man- ner that seemed little short of imbecile. In the midst of these scrabblings a panel—as it seemed—gave beneath his hand ; we stared wonderingly as a door slid open at his very feet. Two steps were revealed, dropping down into a chamber in the stone. In- to the blackness of this vault our friend flung himself, chattering furiously in French, without waiting to be offered a light. We only stayed for an addi- tional candle to be lit and then followed him smartly. It was a small dark room, and with- out exit to the air save by the way we had entered. Round the sides of rock hewn wall ran a slab. 119 Upon it were arranged various ba- sons, salvers, spits, and other sacrificial instruments to which we could give neither names nor use. But what made our eyes sparkle and our breath come short and ecstatically, was the fact that each and all of these outlandish vessels shone yellow and lustrous in the candle- light. | : They were in no degree discolored by age or by damp. At the which we knew that here indeed we had fallen upon the Mayan booty of which my uncle had spoken—‘ the ancestral treasures of that hapless race.” We stared with greedy eyes upon this hidden hoard. With awesome fin- gers we touched and handled the beak- ers, the basons, and the curious two pronged forks and skewers. All bore traces of use, but we were at a loss to account for the jagged notches in the handles of some of the sword-like spits. They leaned against the rocky led,se, arranged in exact or- der along the floor. At the upper part of each were waver- ing scars in solid metal; we might have imagined them to be decorative pat- terns, but for their scratchiness and ir- regularity. I took one in my hands and examined it carefully. It had a hilt about half a foot from the thickest end. It was just below this that the dents ate into the metal. [ caught hold of Lessaution by the arm to demand his explanations of this mat- ter. | At first he contemned my curiosity, declaring that matters of much greater interest demanded his attention. He ran his fingers over the crisscross work, and suddenly shuddered, handing the thing back to me with a repellent ges- ture. “It is explained there,” he said, pointing to the device that ran above the ledge. “ Those are the rituals of sacrifice. It is necessary to slay the victim according to the religion of Cay. So they stab the sword through the shoulder and pierce the trp, and, the eo