“Well, yes. It is hard to believe such things of a fellow scientist.”
“If he didn’t take it he wanted to,” said Tom. “And he has done, or will do, things as unsportsmanlike.”
“Oh, you are hardly fair, perhaps, Tom,” commented Ned.
“Um!” was all the answer he received.
With the Indians in camp busy on the excavation work, and having ascertained that similar work was going on in the Beecher outfit, Professor Bumper, with Mr. Damon and the young men, set off to visit the Indian village and listen to Goosal’s story. They passed the place where Tom had slain the jaguar, but nothing was left but the bones; the ants, vultures and jungle animals having picked them clean in the night.
On the arrival of Tom and his friends at the Indian’s hut, Goosal told, in language which Professor Bumper could understand, the ancient legend of the buried city as he had had it from his grandfather.
“But is that all you know about it, Goosal?” asked the savant.
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“No, Learned One. It is true most of what I have told you was told to me by my father and his father’s father. But I — I myself — with these eyes, have looked upon the lost city.”
“You have!” cried the professor, this time in English. “Where? When? Take us to it! How do you get here?”
“Through the cavern of the dead,” was the answer when the questions were modified.
“Bless my diamond ring!” exclaimed Mr. Damon, when Professor Bumper translated the reply. “What does he mean?”
And then, after some talk, this information came out. Years before, when Goosal was a young man, he had been taken by his grandfather on a journey through the jungle. They stopped one day at the foot of a high mountain, and, clearing away the brush and stones at a certain place, an entrance to a great cavern was revealed. This, it appeared, was the Indian burial ground, and had been used for generations.