“Piffle!” Francis snorted. “Not the will of the gods, but of the ancient Maya priests who invented their gods as well as this particular device. Somewhere down that hole the peon’s body struck the lever that opened stone flood-gates. And thus was released some subterranean body of water in the mountain. This is that water. No goddess with a monstrous mouth like that could ever have existed save in the monstrous imaginations of men. Beauty and divinity are one. A real and true goddess is always beautiful. Only man creates devils in all their ugliness.” So large was the stream that already the water was about their ankles. “It’s all right,” Francis said. “I noticed, all the way from the entrance, the steady inclined plane of the floors of the rooms and passages. Those old Mayas were engineers, and they built with an eye on drainage. See how the water rushes away out through the passage.—Well, old man, read your knots, where is the treasure?” “Where is my son?” the old man counter-demanded in dull and hopeless tones. “Chia has slain my only born. For his mother I broke the Maya law and stained the pure Maya blood with the mongrel blood of a woman of the tierra caliente. Because I sinned for him that he might be, is he thrice precious to me. What care I for treasure? My son is gone. The wrath of the Maya gods is upon me.” With gurglings and burblings and explosive air-bubblings that advertised the pressure behind, the water fountained high as ever into the air. Leoncia was the first to notice the rising depth of the water on the chamber floor. “It is half way to my knees,” she drew Francis’ attention. “And time to get out,” he agreed, grasping the situation. “The drainage was excellently planned, perhaps. But that slide of rocks at the cliff entrance has evidently blocked the planned way of the water. In the other passages, being lower, the water is deeper, of course, than here. Yet is it already rising here on the general level. And that way lies the only way out. Come!” Thrusting Leoncia to lead in the place of safety, he caught the apathetic priest by the hand and dragged him after. At the entrance of the elbow turn the water was boiling above their knees. It was to their waists as they emerged into the chamber of mummies. And out of the water, confronting Leoncia’s astounded gaze, arose the helmeted head and ancient-mantled body of a mummy. Not this alone would have astounded her, for other mummies were over-toppling, falling and being washed about in the swirling waters. But this mummy moved and made gasping noises for breath, and with eyes of life stared into her eyes. It was too much for ordinary human nature to bear——a four-centuries old corpse dying the second death by drowning. Leoncia screamed, sprang forward, and fled the way she had come, while Francis, in his own way equally startled, let her go past as he drew his automatic pistol. But the mummy, finding footing in the swift rush of the current, cried out: