Читать книгу The City of the Sacred Well онлайн

62 страница из 66

“An echoing splash and all is still. Only the widening ripples are left. The child bride has found favor in the eyes of her lord, the great god Noh-och Yum Chac.

“Thus I imagined the sacrifice at the Sacred Well—a sacrifice enacted not once but hundreds of times through many centuries. Thus has it been handed down in a dozen Maya legends and I wondered whether this grim old well really held at its far murky bottom the relics of the ancient rites or, after all, the sacrifices were mere myths founded on some trivial event, which grew and grew with each telling.

“Granting that such sacrifices had been, every vestige of evidence might well have disintegrated into nothingness a thousand years before my time. Assuming even that at the bottom of this watery pit was all I sought, what a mad venture it was for one lone man with but a little money and no great mechanical skill to attempt to recover these evidences!

“And yet my faith was strong. I felt that my quest was not to be in vain and that somehow I would make the well yield up its treasures. At least I must attempt the feat or continue to be haunted by the idea all the rest of my life.