“You have not yet answered my question about the god Cay,” I replied. “How do you propose to explain that very obvious falsehood?”

“And you think all this is a lie,” he bawled, “just because this priest wove a little religion into his message? And who are we to say that it is not true? Have we been behind that wall of rock where these people remain either alive or dead? How then can we decide what is there or has been there? It will be time enough to say what exists or does not exist when we have made examination.”

Now did one ever hear such nonsense? There may be a queer thing or two loose about the earth, but to ask one to believe that a terror such as that depicted at the foot of the Mayan scroll was alive and being worshipped not much more than three centuries ago was a trifle too much. I said so with no uncertain sound.

“M. de Heatherslie,” answered the little man gravely, “you speak of what you do not know. What is that your poet says? There are more things in heaven and earth than your poor little philosophy thinks of. Why, tell me, are you convinced that such a monster cannot have existed? You but repeat what the ignorant said to M. de Chaillu about the gorilla.”

“Humbug,” said I, getting warm. “Monkeys there always have been, and monkeys there always will be. If this monster was like anything that nature ever invented there might possibly be something in it. But it’s a thing utterly outrageous. Who ever saw a hippopotamus with the neck of a giraffe and the legs of a lizard? and that is practically what the mythological god Cay is, both on the scroll and on the ruins here,” for we had found more representations of the loathsome divinity studded into the twisted inscriptions on the facades and walls of the temples.

Chapter V, pages 72-73