There was a change in the note of the chopper's engine, me pre-arranged signal that Rider was ready for the next stage of the operation, and slowly it began to descend again with me bulk of the cargo hanging below on the winch cable. Hastily I began to reel in the cord hand over hand until the shapeless bundle at the end of the winch cable was level with me, but sixty feet away and hanging thirty feet above the water of the cenote.
I wrapped three turns of me cord around the tree to serve as a friction brake and then began to haul in. At first it came easily but the nearer it got me harder it was to pull it in. Rider came lower as I pulled which made it a bit easier, but ft was still back-breaking. Once the chopper wobbled alarmingly in the air, but Rider got it under control again and I continued hauling.
I was very glad when I was able to lean over and snap the hook of me canvas belt on to the end of the winch cable. A blow at the quick-release button let the cargo fall heavily to the ground. I looked up at the chopper and released the cable, which swung in a wide arc right across the cenote. For a moment I thought it was going to entangle in the trees on the other side, but Rider was already reeling it in fast and the chopper was going up like an express lift. It stopped at a safe height, then orbited three times before leaving in the direction of Camp Two.
I sat on me edge of the cenote with my feet dangling over the side for nearly fifteen minutes before I did anything else. I was all aches and pains and felt as though I'd been in a wrestling match with a bear. At last I began to unwrap the gear. I put on the shirt and trousers that had been packed, and also the calf-length boots, men lit a cigarette before I went exploring.
At first I chopped around with the machete because the tank of the flame-thrower didn't hold too much fuel and the thing itself was bloody wasteful, so I wanted to save the fire for the worst of the undergrowth. As I chopped my way through that tangle of leaves I wondered how the hell Fallon had expected to travel half a mile in an hour; the way I was going I couldn't do two hundred yards an hour. Fortunately I didn't have to. All I had to do was to clear an area big enough for the helicopter to drop into.
I was flailing away with the machete when the blade hit something with a hell of a clang and the shock jolted up my arm. I looked at the edge and saw it had blunted and I wondered what the devil I'd hit. I swung again, more cautiously, clearing away the broad-bladed leaves, and suddenly I saw a face staring at me -- a broad, Indian face with a big nose and slightly crossed eyes.
Half an hour's energetic work revealed a pillar into which was incorporated a statue of sorts of a man elaborately dressed in a long belted tunic and with a complicated head-dress. The rest of the pillar was intricately carved with a design of leaves and what looked like over-sized insects.
I lit a cigarette and contemplated it for a long time. It began to appear that perhaps we had found Uaxuanoc, although being a layman I couldn't be certain. However, no one would carve a thing like that just to leave it lying about in the forest. It was a pity in a way, because now I'd have to go somewhere else to carve my helicopter platform -- the chopper certainly couldn't land on top of this cross-eyed character who stood about eight feet tall.
I went back to the edge of the cenote and started to carve a new path delimiting the area I wanted to clear, and a few random forays disclosed no more pillars, so I got busy. As I expected, the flame-thrower ran out of juice long before I had finished but at least I had used it to the best advantage to leave the minimum of machete work. Then I got going with the chain saw, cutting as close to the ground as I could, and there was a shriek as the teeth bit into the wood.
None of the trees was particularly thick through the trunk, the biggest being about two and a half feet. But they were tall and I had trouble there. I was no lumberjack and I made mistakes -- the first tree nearly knocked me into the cenote as it fell, and it fell the wrong way, making a hell of a tangle that I had to clean up laboriously. But I learned and by the time darkness came I had felled sixteen trees.
I slept that night in a sleeping-bag which stank disgustingly of petrol because the chain saw around which it had been wrapped had developed a small leak. I didn't mind because I thought the smell might keep the mosquitoes away. It didn't.
I ate tinned cold chicken and drank whisky from the flask Fallon had thoughtfully provided, diluting it with warmish water from a water-bottle, and I sat there in the darkness thinking of the little brown people with big noses who had carved that big pillar and who had possibly built a city on this spot. After a while I fell asleep.
