They were all eager to escape from the
place. Three of them longed for the return of Rynders, but the other one
steadily hoped that they might get away before his men came back.
How to do this, or how to take with him the treasure of the Incas, was a
puzzling question with which the captain racked his brains by day and by
night. At last he bethought himself of the Rackbirds' vessel. He
remembered that Maka had told him that provisions were brought to them by
a vessel, and there was every reason to suppose that when these
miscreants went on some of their marauding expeditions they travelled by
sea. Day by day he had thought that he would go and visit the Rackbirds'
storehouse and the neighborhood thereabout, but day by day he had been
afraid that in his absence Rynders might arrive, and when he came he
wanted to be there to meet him.
But now the idea of the boat made him brave this possible contingency,
and early one morning, with Cheditafa and two other of the black fellows,
he set off along the beach for the mouth of the little stream which,
rising somewhere in the mountains, ran down to the cavern where it had
once widened and deepened into a lake, and then through the ravine of the
Rackbirds on to the sea. When he reached his destination, Captain Horn
saw a great deal to interest him.
Just beyond the second ridge of rock which Maka had discovered, the
stream ran into a little bay, and the shores near its mouth showed
evident signs that they had recently been washed by a flood.
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