Was it possible, could it be possible that all the rest would prove true also? I shook off the foolish, superstitious idea with an effort, and strove to use my common sense. Everything so far might have been mere coincidences. The cañon was only a valley of death because the Indians had lost their lives in it. Practically every underground tunnel and cavern might harbor snakes, and alligators swarmed in every forest lake. Yet, there was that image of Chac-Mool upon the giant alligator’s back, and there were the two volcanoes I had seen, and I knew--without looking at my codex--that it bore the symbol of Chac-Mool above the figure of a conventionalized crocodile. But the rest--the eight deserts, the whirlwind, the demon, the fiend and all the other supernatural impossible things, they of course were utter nonsense. For that matter--I laughed at my fears as it occurred to me--the Pool of the Alligators was no bar to us; we could go around it easily enough. Casting all surmises and half-formed fears aside, I rose, told Maliche we would camp on the mountain side, and led the way to a spot far up the hillside where a spring gushed from between the rocks and the wide-spreading roots of a giant tree afforded excellent shelter from a possible shower. CHAPTER V The Demon of the Night I HAD been overconfident when I had assumed that it would be possible to go around the lake and that it formed no real bar to our progress. Everywhere, the water extended for miles among the clumps of bamboos and jungle, and we gave it a wide berth, keeping well up on the hillside and searching for a dry spot where we might cross the valley. But in this we were fated to be disappointed. The water dwindled to a narrow lagoon barely fifty feet in width, and then expanded into a second lake. It would have been a simple matter to have waded across the place had it not been for the alligators or crocodiles (I am not sure which they were); but their presence was attested by the snouts, backs and eyes that everywhere dotted the surface of the water like half-submerged logs. There was, however, one way of crossing it. An immense tree had toppled from the mountain side and had fallen athwart the black pool, its summit resting on the opposite shore. But it was a ticklish bridge at best. It was round, slippery, and its lower surface was in the water itself, so that as one crossed by it, one’s feet were scarcely a yard above the pool with its watchful, lurking inhabitants waiting with hungry jaws to dash at one. For an hour or more we waited, trying to summon up the courage to attempt the crossing, until at last, unable to endure the inaction longer, I rose, removed my shoes, and telling Maliche I was going to risk it, I slipped as silently as possible towards the roots of the fallen tree.