The Face in the Abyss

The Face in the Abyss
A. E. Merritt
CHAPTER I.
Suarra
NICHOLAS GRAYDON ran into Starrett in Quito. Rather, Starrett sought him out there.
Graydon had often heard of the big West Coast adventurer, but their trails had never
crossed. It was with lively curiosity that he opened his door to his visitor.
Starrett came to the point at once. Graydon had heard the legend of the treasure train
bringing to Pizarro the ransom of the Inca Atahualpa? And that its leaders, learning of the
murder of their monarch by the butcher-boy Conquistador, had turned aside and hidden
the treasure somewhere in the Andean wilderness?
Graydon had heard it, hundreds of times; had even considered hunting for it He said so.
Starrett nodded.
"I know where it is," he said.
Graydon laughed.
In the end Starrett convinced him; convinced him, at least, that he had something worth
looking into.
Graydon rather liked the big man. There was a bluff directness that made him overlook
the hint of cruelty in eyes and jaw. There were two others with him, Starrett said, both old
companions. Graydon asked why they had picked him out. Starrett bluntly told
him--because they knew he could afford to pay the expenses of the expedition. They
would all share equally in the treasure. If they didn't find it, Graydon was a first-class
mining engineer, and the region they were going into was rich in minerals. He was
practically sure of making some valuable discovery on which they could cash in.
Graydon considered. There were no calls upon him. He had just passed his thirty-fourth
birthday, and since he had been graduated from the Harvard School of Mines eleven
years ago he had never had a real holiday. He could well afford the cost. There would be
some excitement, if nothing else.
After he had looked over Starrett's two comrades--Soames, a lanky, saturnine, hard-bitten
Yankee, and Dancret, a cynical, amusing little Frenchman--they had drawn up an
agreement and he had signed it.
They went down by rail to Cerro de Pasco for their outfit, that being the town of any size

closest to where their trek into the wilderness would begin. A week later with eight
burros and six arrieros, or packmen, they were within the welter of peaks through which,
Starrett's map indicated, lay their road.
It had been the map which had persuaded Graydon. It was no parchment, but a sheet of
thin gold quite as flexible. Starrett drew it out of a small golden tube of ancient
workmanship, and unrolled it. Graydon examined it and. was unable to see any map upon
it--or anything else. Starrett held it at a peculiar angle--and the markings upon it became
plain.
It was a beautiful piece of cartography. It was, in fact, less a map than a picture. Here and
there were curious symbols which Starrett said were signs cut upon the rocks along the
way; guiding marks for those of the old race who would set forth to recover the treasure
when the Spaniards had been swept from the land.
Whether it was clew to Atahualpa's ransom hoard or to something else--Graydon did not
know. Starrett said it was. But Graydon did not believe his story of how the golden sheet
had come into his possession. Nevertheless, there had been purpose in the making of the
map, and stranger purpose in the cunning with which the markings had been concealed.
Something interesting lay-at the end of that trail.
They found the signs cut in the rocks exactly as the sheet of gold had indicated. Gay,
spirits high with anticipation, three of them spending in advance their share of the booty,
they followed the symbols. Steadily they were led into the uncharted wilderness.
At last the arrieros began to murmur. They were approaching, they said, a region that was
accursed, the Cordillera de Carabaya, where only demons dwelt Promises of more money,
threats, pleadings, took them along a little further. One morning the four awakened to
find the arrieros gone, and with them half the burros and the major portion of their
supplies.
They pressed on. Then the signs failed them. Either they had lost the trail, or the map
which had led them truthfully so far had lied at the last.
The country into which they had penetrated was a curiously lonely one. There had been
no sign of Indians since more than a fortnight before, when they had stopped at a Quicha
village and Starrett had gotten mad drunk on the fiery spirit the Quichas distill. Food was
hard to find. There were few animals and fewer birds.
Worst of all was the change which had come over Graydon's companions. As high as
they had been lifted by their certitude of success, just so deep were they in