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Through this Wilson gained a ray of hope; even if he found it impossible to locate him before, he knew that Sorez would press on to the lake of Guadiva. No power, no force less than death would serve to prevent him. Sooner or later Wilson would meet his man there.
He saw many thousands of the faithful Chibcas, most powerful of all the tribes upon the Alta plain, which lies a green level between the heights of the white summits of the Andes, toiling up the barren lava sides of Mount Veneza to where, locked in its gray cone, lies the lake of Guadiva.
It was possible that in the history of his day some mention might be made of this expedition. The other name was "Guadiva," which appeared on the map as the name of a lake. Many of the old Spanish names still remained. A good atlas might mention it. He investigated the latter hint first. He was rewarded at once. "Guadiva" was a small lake located in the extinct volcanic cone of Mt.
After this the thick tongue stumbled over some word like "Guadiva," and a little later he seemed in his troubled dreams to be struggling up a rugged height, for he complained of the stones which fretted his feet. Wilson managed to pour a spoonful of brandy down his throat and to rebandage the wound which had begun to bleed again.
Suddenly he stooped and, bending close to the ear of the girl, said very distinctly: "We are on the lake of Guadiva. It is said that here below the waters lies the shrine of the Golden One. You can see below the waters. Is the shrine here?" Her lips moved uncertainly; an indistinct muttering followed. He held his breath in his excitement. "The shrine it is it is below."
He attacked the trail anew and at the end of twenty minutes reached the top, bruised, cut, and exhausted. He looked down within the cone not upon death and desolation, not upon ashes and tumbled rock, but upon the blue waters of the lake of Guadiva. It lay nestled within the bosom of this cone at a depth of just where, on the outside, the green began.
It was at about sunset that they stopped and Gaspar, the guide, pointed to a spindle lava top against the sky. "Up there," he informed them, "is the lake of Guadiva. Some say it is there that the great treasure lies." "So? What treasure?" asked Stubbs, innocently. "The treasure of the Gilded God which these people worship."
Neither man spoke again until a half hour later after a journey that was like a passage through Hell, they lay exhausted in the sunlight above the chasm. The thunder of tumbling rock still pounded at their ears. Those in the Hut In an angle formed by two cliff sides, within a stone's throw of the lake of Guadiva, a native, Flores by name, had built himself a hut.
He saw this lake smiling back at the blue sky, its waters clear as the mountain air which ripples across its surface. The lake of Guadiva! How many bronzed men had whispered this name and then dropped upon their knees in prayer. To Quesada it was just a mirror of blue with unsearchable depths, but he lived to learn how much more it meant to the lithe bronze men.
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