powder had not got damp on the march.
No want of muskets among them now!
The noise and the light and the confusion,
after the silence, darkness, and discipline that
we had been used to for the last five days, so
bewildered us all, that it was quite a relief
to sit down on the ground and let the
guard about us shut out our view on every
side.

"Davis! Are we at the end of the march?"
says Miss Maryon, touching my arm.

The other women looked anxiously at me,
as she put the question. I got on my feet,
and saw the Pirate Captain communicating
with the Indians of the village. His hands
were making signs in the fussy foreign way,
all the time he was speaking. Sometimes,
they pointed away to where the forest began
again beyond us; and sometimes they went
up both together to his mouth, as if he was
wishful of getting a fresh supply of the
necessaries of life.

My eyes next turned towards the mules.
Nobody was employed in unpacking the
baggage; nobody went near that bundle of axes
which had weighed on my mind so much
already, and the mystery of which still
tormented me in secret. I came to the conclusion
that we were not yet at the end of
our journey; I communicated my opinion to
Miss Maryon. She got up herself, with my
help, and looked about her, and made the
remark, very justly, that all the huts in the
village would not suffice to hold us. At the
same time, I pointed out to her that the mule
which the Pirate Captain had ridden had
been relieved of his saddle, and was being led
away, at that moment, to a patch of grass
behind one of the huts.

"That looks as if we were not going much
farther on," says I.

"Thank Heaven if it be so, for the sake of
the poor children!" says Miss Maryon.
"Davis, suppose something happened which
gave us a chance of escaping? Do you think
we could ever find our way back to the sea?"

"Not a hope of getting back, miss. If the
Pirates were to let us go this very instant,
those pathless forests would keep us in prison
for ever."

"Too true! Too true!" she said, and said
no more.

In another half-hour we were roused up,
and marched away from the village (as I had
thought we should be) into the forest again.
This time, though there was by no means so
much cutting through the underwood needed as
in our previous experience, we were accompanied
by at least a dozen Indians, who seemed
to me to be following us out of sheer idleness
and curiosity. We had walked, as well as I
could calculate, more than an hour, and I was
trudging along with the little deaf-and-dumb
boy on my back, as usual, thinking, not very
hopefully, of our future prospects, when I
was startled by a moan in my ear from the
child. One of his arms was trembling round
my neck, and the other pointed away towards
my right hand. I looked in that direction—
and there, as if it had started up out of the
ground to dispute our passage through the
forest, was a hideous monster carved in stone,
twice my height at least. The thing loomed out
of a ghostly white, against the dark curtain of
trees all round it. Spots of rank moss stuck
about over its great glaring stone-face; its
stumpy hands were tucked up into its breast;
its legs and feet were four times the size of
any human limbs; its body and the flat space
of spare stone which rose above its head,
were all covered with mysterious devices—
little grinning men's faces, heads of crocodiles
and apes, twisting knots and twirling knobs,
strangely shaped leaves, winding lattice-work;
legs, arms, fingers, toes, skulls, bones, and
such like. The monstrous statue leaned over
on one side, and was only kept from falling
to the ground by the roots of a great tree
which had wound themselves all round the
lower half of it. Altogether, it was as
horrible and ghastly an object to come upon
suddenly, in the unknown depths of a great
forest, as the mind (or, at all events, my
mind) can conceive. When I say that the
first meeting with the statue struck me
speechless, nobody can wonder that the
children actually screamed with terror at the
sight of it.

"It's only a great big doll, my darling,"
says Short, at his wit's end how to quiet the
little girl on his back. "We'll get a nice
soft bit of wood soon, and show these nasty
savages how to make a better one."

While he was speaking, Miss Maryon was
close behind me, soothing the deaf-and-dumb
boy by signs which I could not understand.

"I have heard of these things, Davis," she
says. "They are idols, made by a lost race
of people, who lived, no one can say how many
hundred or how many thousand years ago.
That hideous thing was carved and
worshipped while the great tree that now
supports it was yet a seed in the ground. We
must get the children used to these stone
monsters. I believe we are coming to many
more of them. I believe we are close to the
remains of one of those mysterious ruined
cities which have long been supposed to exist
in this part of the world."

Before I could answer, the word of
command from the rear drove us on again. In
passing the idol, some of the Pirates fired
their muskets at it. The echoes from the
reports rang back on us with a sharp rattling
sound. We pushed on a few paces, when the
Indians a-head suddenly stopped, nourished
their chopping-knives, and all screamed out
together "El Palacio!" The Englishmen
among the Pirates took up the cry, and,
running forward through the trees on either
side of us, roared out, "The Palace!" Other
voices joined theirs in other tongues; and,
for a minute or two, there was a general
confusion of everybody,—the first that had