"Water."

"Oh, Jed. You answered me. You can hear. How wonderful. Honey, I wanted so badly to tell you 'I love you, love you, love you'."

"What's even more important -at this moment at least- is that I can hear running water. Come on."

Taking a bearing from the familiar corner, they crawled up to the slab. This time the touch was wet. Even more interesting, the barrier seemed loose. By bracing his legs and shoving with his back, Jed could make it wobble. Every time he rocked the rock, more water dripped down.

"Help push, Jenny," he yelled as each intense effort increased the arc of movement. The increase flow of moisture helped by lubricating the action with mud.

Then, with a gush, the monolith toppled. Jed and Jenny fell backwards into a torrent. It took them a moment to realize the water was rain. A typical late afternoon Panamanian thunderstorm. They had been underground over 24 hours!

Jed let the refreshing drops fall directly into his mouth. Drinking was delicious. Breathing fresh air was incredible. The roar of the storm was, as Jed appreciated for the first time in his life, music to his ears. And, when he blinked his eyes that had been kept shut from the pain of a brightness, there stood Artillio and friends.

Apparently the Chocó had dug a series of trenches with simple pointed sticks that directed the water to a useful work. A feat of hydraulic engineering that totally impressed Jed; in fact, he compared it to the amazing fact that the locks on the Panama Canal operated by water power alone, made possible by the super abundant rainfall on the isthmus. He even went so far, later on, to wonder if after the failure of the French effort to dig a sea level route, whether the American idea of the fresh water lake and lock system hadn't been taken from the Indian's skillful use of a resource others had found a hindrance.

It wasn't until the rain stopped, abruptly, that Jed fully realized what had happened. The crag called the Castle was gone, along with a whole corner of the cliff. The mine portal, what was left of Kearns, and the gold, had simply vanished. Unfortunately this also meant that the encoder was probably a million bits and pieces scattered throughout the jungle, a thousand feet down the mountain.