Kitabı oku: «The Boy Aviators in Nicaragua; or, In League with the Insurgents», sayfa 9
“Look here, boys” he cried in excitement, pointing across the abyss at the darker shading that marked the mouth of the entrance of the extension of the passage they had already traversed. “Do you know what that means?”
“Well, I suppose it’s another tunnel, but what good does that do us,” grumbled Harry; “unless we can jump this little ditch ahead of us?”
“Not for me,” put in Billy.
“You don’t suppose, do you,” demanded Frank, “that the people who took all the trouble to build this outlet from the mines or temples or whatever is at the end of our trip, would have left this chasm impassable? What would have been the sense of it?”
“That’s so,” rejoined Harry, “but how are we going to find it – if there is some way of getting over?”
“Look for it,” rejoined Frank quietly and, suiting the action to the word, he approached the other side of the passage. After a brief search he uttered a cry of triumph.
“I’ve got it, boys,” he exclaimed, “come here.”
To his wondering young companions he exhibited the lower links of a heavy chain of some sort of metal which was not iron and to which even Frank could not give a name.
“We’re as good as across,” he exclaimed.
“Well, how does that solve the problem?” demanded Billy.
“How, my bright young reporter,” cried Frank, “did you ever, when you were at school, swing over a ditch on a rope?”
“Lots of times,” replied Billy wonderingly; “but – ”
“That’s what we are going to do here – that is, if the chain is not too weak from age to bear us,” replied Frank.
“Do you really mean that?” demanded Harry.
“I certainly do,” rejoined Frank.
“Listen!” suddenly cried Billy, “did you fellows hear something?”
They all three paused and listened intently.
From far down in the dark pit that gaped at their feet there came a sound that seemed like a long drawn-out sigh.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE RAVINE OF THE WHITE SNAKES
The sound was not repeated; but, perhaps it was because the long spell in the darkness had got on their nerves, or possibly there was some sort of uncanny influence in the air of the long deserted place; but on at least two of the party, namely Harry and Billy, the chasm had a most depressing effect. Not so with Frank. Difficulties only increased his determination to conquer them.
“Come,” said the boy leader briskly, “if we are going to jump out of our skins and get nervous at every noise we hear we won’t get very far with our exploration. Probably there is a subterranean stream at the bottom of that pit. I have often read of underground rivers.”
“It’s funny we didn’t hear the stones splash then,” objected Billy; but to himself.
The chain, which was very heavy and solid, was looped to the wall by a hook, as if the last person who had used it had carefully adjusted it in place before leaving.
“Now for a test,” cried Frank, detaching it and dragging it back a few feet from the edge of the chasm. Under his direction all three boys seized hold of it and pulled and tugged with all their might. Their united efforts and weights had no effect on it. The chain was as solid as the day it was put there by a forgotten race centuries before.
“I will go first,” announced Frank, when the boys had completed their test of the chain and there seemed no reason to doubt it was perfectly capable of bearing their united weight.
There was some protest from Harry at the idea of his brother risking his life in making the first practical test of the chain. Frank however ridiculed his fears.
“There’s absolutely no danger,” he exclaimed, “if there were I would be the last person on earth to tackle it needlessly. We have come this far and I simply won’t give the search up just now for a little swing across a space which, if we didn’t know how deep it was, would seem like a joke. Besides, think of the thousands that must have used this chain bridge safely in the dead ages.”
His arguments carried weight and finally Harry and Billy consented to let him be the first to cross. Billy claimed the right to come last as he was the lightest.
Frank extinguished his candle after admonishing the boys to hold theirs high so that he would be able to see to make a fair landing on the further side. This done he gripped the chain firmly, ran back a few steps and then, with his foot in the lower link, swung easily across the chasm and alighted on the other side with as little effort as a man swinging on a trapeze.
“Easy as falling off a log!” he cried from the ledge opposite on which he now stood. “Come on, Harry, it’s your turn.”
Harry made the swing as successfully as had his brother and the chain was now swung back to Billy. The reporter was frankly nervous and a repetition of the long sigh that they heard from the chasm some minutes before didn’t tend to make him less so.
“It sounds like something or somebody waking up from a long sleep,” he shuddered.
The young reporter could not have described the sound better if he had cast about for a definition of the emanation from the ravine for an hour. That was exactly what the noise did sound like. The first sigh of somebody, “or something,” as Billy said, stretching himself as his eyes open after a long deep slumber.
“Come on, Billy, don’t be all night,” shouted Frank, as the young reporter hesitated and fumbled with the chain that Harry had swung back to him.
“Well, I suppose I’ve got to do it sometime, and it might as well be now,” decided Billy suddenly, making up his mind like a boy about to plunge into his cold tub on a winter morning. As he spoke he gave the necessary run back to gain impetus and started on the swing.
Frank and Harry, standing on the opposite ledge, ready to catch him as he landed, heard the boy scream in mortal terror as he shot over the center of the black gulf.
“Frank! Harry! Save me!” he shrieked.
At the same moment before the boys’ horrified eyes a long, wicked white head, with sightless slits for eyes, shot up out of the black mouth of the pit and darted at Billy.
As it did so Frank’s revolver spat out its whole magazine of ten high-powered cartridges. Harry, his arms about Billy, who would otherwise certainly have toppled back into the abyss in his terror, saw the wicked wedge-shaped head vanish instantly as the bullets hummed about it like a loosened hive of bees.
There came upward from the noisome pit a sound of dry scraping, something like the rustle of silk on some rough surface, and the boys’ nostrils were filled with an indescribable odor, something like musk, that was familiar to at least two of them.
“Snakes,” cried Frank and Harry simultaneously.
“A snake,” corrected Frank, shuddering at the recollection of the loathsome white head and the dry scraping sound that had followed its disappearance, “a giant snake that has lain torpid here for who knows how long.”
“But a white snake,” objected Harry. As for Billy, he was not yet sufficiently recovered from his terror to say anything but leaned ashy and sickened against the rock wall.
“Most probably a boa constrictor or an anaconda,” replied Frank, “that from its long years of life in the dark has lost its pigmentary attributes. A plant, you know, kept in the dark will become white and animals that have been discovered in other caves have also been albinos. This snake, as I figure it out, is one of the descendants of a possibly vast number kept here by the Toltecs to guard their mines from would-be invaders. I can think of no other solution, unless it had something to do with their mystical religion.”
“A mighty good thing you were so handy with your revolver,” cried Harry, “eh, Billy?”
“Don’t,” remonstrated the young reporter in a shaken voice, “I can feel the awful sensation yet. I could almost feel its cold coils about me.”
Far down in the pit there came again that scraping sound, like silk drawn over a rough surface. This time all the boys exchanged glances of horror and antipathy.
“Bah!” exclaimed Frank, “think of the horror of falling into that pit into possibly a mass of those creatures.”
“I have it,” cried Harry suddenly, “they must – supposing there are several of them – have been lying torpid. I suppose it was our shower of stones, Frank, that aroused them.”
“I think that is entirely likely,” replied Frank, “but, say, boys, look at this,” he held his candle up to a mass of carvings on the wall. They represented men in the grasp of serpents with birds’ heads and other unfortunates having their lives trampled out by huge quesals. One row of drawings like an Egyptian frieze actually showed a man, presumably, from the fact that he wore only a loin cloth, a slave, being dragged from a chain, which was evidently the one by which they had just crossed, by a huge serpent.
Gazing upon the sacrifice was a group of bearded men in tall cone-shaped hats.
“Priests,” said Frank, “but see here, boys,” he pointed excitedly to a row of dancing quesals below the hieroglyphics they had just examined. The boys gazed and their eyes grew round.
The single eye of each of the ridiculously solemn birds, who were shown in profile, each with one leg drawn up in exactly the same manner as if they were executing a solemn dance of some kind, was formed of a blazing red stone. In the gleaming glow of the boys’ candles they flashed fire like the orb of the living bird.
“Rubies,” cried Harry.
“I certainly believe that they are,” replied Frank, taking out his pocket axe and hacking at the rock surrounding one of the blazing crimson stones.
“Why, they must be worth $5,000 a piece,” gasped Billy.
“Say $10,000 and you’ll be nearer the truth,” replied Frank, as his efforts with the axe met success and one of the fiery, beaming stones dropped into his hand, “feel the weight of it.”
There were ten of the dancing quesals, and the ruby in the eyes of each was of exactly the same size. One by one the boys prised them out and then gazed wonderingly at them.
“Why, that’s $100,000,” gasped Harry.
“Estimated,” laughed Frank.
“Suppose they turn out to be only glass,” put in the skeptical Billy, on whom Frank’s conservative manner had had its effect.
For reply the boy leader of the little train that had unveiled what turned out afterward to be the portal to the Toltec mines gave one of the stones a hard crack with the blunt side of his hatchet head.
“Not much glass about that, I should say,” he laughed as he held it up and showed that its surface was as unmarred by the blow as if it had been a diamond.
The boys were busy congratulating themselves on their finds and poking about the mouth of the new tunnel that opened its blackness before them that till now they had given no attention to one most important thing – how were they going to get back?
The question was propounded by Frank who was badly worried over the problem. The first flush of the excitement of estimating the value of their discovery and speculating on what lay before them had quite obliterated for the time the consideration of this important matter. It was then with a serious voice that he turned to his young followers and asked:
“How about getting back?”
The idea of the serpent fresh in their minds the notion of recrossing the chasm on the swinging-chain appealed to none of the boys; but, as it did not seem probable there was any other means of exit – at least that they were likely to discover – it was self-evident that they would be compelled to take the desperate chance or starve to death in the blackness of the Toltec caves.
The solution of the problem came with a sharp shock to all of them.
There was no way of getting back!
The chain by which they had swung across dangled idly above the middle of the chasm.
In his excitement at dragging Billy from the coils of the huge white snake Harry had forgotten to secure it on the ledge.
Their escape was cut off.
They had to keep on now, or die miserably where they stood.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE BOYS ARE TRAPPED
The numbing sense that comes with an overwhelming disaster tied the tongues of all three boys in this crisis. They stood stupidly gazing at the chain which formed their only hope of escape. It dangled tantalizingly just out of reach, even if it would not have meant death in the white snakes’ coils to have attempted to reach it.
White-faced and despairing, they stood there in their tracks for several minutes. Was this to be the end? Were they to die here in these unknown underground passageways? It was a situation to turn to ice-water the blood of the strongest, most determined man. No wonder that in the face of this greatest crisis of their lives the three boys were stricken tongue-tied with horror and apprehension.
It was Frank who spoke at last. His voice assumed a desperate cheerfulness he was in reality far from feeling.
“Come on, boys,” he cried, “cheer up. While there’s life there’s hope. As we can’t turn back now the only thing for us to do is to push on as long as we have strength to do so.”
“I suppose so,” miserably replied Harry, “I wish to goodness I’d never thrown that rock at the quesal’s eye,” he added in a sort of comic despair.
Under Frank’s confident manner, however, their spirits rallied a little and, extinguishing all the candles but one, – that carried by Frank, – they pushed on after him down the new tunnel that lay in front of them. To their surprise this took a heavy upward slant, and then abruptly doubled back toward the direction they had already traversed. This fact kindled a spark of hope in Frank’s heart which he did not dare to communicate to the other boys, however, for fear of having later to dash the newly awakened hopes.
It seemed reasonable to suppose that if the passage led upward it would at least be likely to bring them out into daylight and fresh air, and these two things meant much to the boys, who were as much exhausted by the bad atmosphere and depressing surroundings of the darkness as by fatigue and the terrible shock they had just undergone.
So Frank, with a stouter heart, plodded steadily along up the path which still rose steeply in front of them. He looked at his compass and found that they were now traveling almost due east or in an exactly opposite direction to that they had taken when they entered the tunnel. A wild idea flashed across Frank’s mind at this discovery that served to further cheer him. Might it not be possible that the path led straight through the mountain? He looked at his watch. It was not yet twelve. They had then been traveling about six hours. Of the exact speed of their progress of course he could make no estimate, but he judged that they had made on an average a little over a mile and a half an hour, allowing for delays. It was possible, too, that the passage had taken windings and deviations which in the darkness they had not perceived.
Suddenly something occurred that brightened the lagging spirits of even Harry and Billy. All three of the boys felt distinctly a cool refreshing draught of air. At first none of them dared to speak of it, for the same reason that Frank had not wanted to express his theory that they were bound through the mountain; but, after a few minutes, the first refreshing draught became a strong steady breeze.
“Hurray,” broke from the throats of all three, a poor cracked cheer it was from their exhausted frames – but it was a cheer; and after that they pressed on with more vigor and cheerfulness. Another ten minutes’ march and a soft greenish light began to flood the tunnel. Still further on it grew light enough to extinguish the candles. Their hearts beating with the hope of speedy escape from the horrors of the underground passage, the little band pressed briskly forward.
Their spirits were due to receive an abrupt check, however. As they pushed hurriedly on the passage made an abrupt turn and they saw at once from whence the light that had gladdened their hearts had proceeded. It streamed down from the opening of an abandoned shaft that led up about thirty feet to a round top fringed with hanging creepers and tropical growth. The circular top of the shaft revealed to the boys’ eyes a round strip of blue sky.
And that was the bitter end of their high hopes of escape from the tunnel.
With fresh despair lying heavy on them the boys examined the walls of the shaft to see if there were not some steps cut there or mounting rounds driven by those who must once have used it, but in whatever manner the ancient Toltecs got in and out of their passage from whatever sort of territory lay at the top of the shaft, they had left no trace of it. The walls were as smooth as a sheet of paper.
“Well,” exclaimed Frank, after the examination was concluded, “we have been in some tight places; but I don’t think we were ever in a neater fix than this seems to be.”
“There’s one chance,” cried Harry, “and only one – it’s just possible that there may be people, civilized people – ”
“Or Indians,” put in Billy, “what difference does it make who or what they are – ”
“As I was about to say,” went on Harry, not noticing the half hysterical interruption of the overwrought boy, “it’s just possible that if there is anyone in the neighborhood of the top of this shaft that we might be able to attract their attention by shouting.”
“A good idea, Harry,” replied Frank. It was at once put into execution. The boys shouted at the pitch of their tired voices for a good hour and then desisted from sheer inability to produce another sound. There was no result. Once a bird hopped onto a creeper at the mouth of the shaft and peeped inquisitively down, but that was the only fruit of their efforts. The boys looked blankly at each other. They were three as brave lads as ever stood together facing hardship and adventure, but who shall blame Billy Barnes if tears did well up in his eyes and topple over, and trickle down his cheeks as, his head in his hands, he sank despairingly on the rock floor at the bottom of the shaft?
The bright blue sky above, the cheerful green of the waving creepers and plants that fringed the mouth of their prison all combined to make their disappointment harder to bear. Each boy felt that if death was to come it would be easier almost to face it in the dark tunnel they had left behind them than here, almost within grasp of life and all they held most dear.
“We’d better take an inventory,” remarked the practical Frank at length, “and see just how long we can last out. When we reach the end we’ve got one desperate chance – ”
His listeners looked up from their despairing attitudes inquiringly.
“We can retrace our steps and try to leap the chasm.”
“A twelve foot jump at least,” exclaimed Harry.
“You’ve done better than that at home many times,” rejoined Frank bravely, “and so have I, and so has Billy, I’ll bet.”
“It’s one thing to do a broad jump at school on the flat ground and another to try it over a chasm full of white serpents,” moaned Harry.
The inventory taken, the boys found that they had the following articles on which to sustain life till they were rescued or till death claimed them – the latter seeming the inevitable contingency.
Three canteens of water – minus about a pint each drunk on the journey.
Four packages each of soup tablets and erbe wurst.
A pocketful apiece of pilot bread.
And that was all. To make matters worse the soup tablets needed water to make them edible and although the boys had an aluminum saucepan with them they realized that in a pinch it is more easy to subsist without food than without water. Their supply of water – the chief consideration – was lamentably small for the situation.
“Maybe we could eat the tablets dry and let them dissolve in our mouths,” suggested Billy, “I’m so ravenously hungry that I’ve got to eat something.”
The idea was hailed as a good one and the boys made a meal at about 2.30 that afternoon off dry soup tablets – two apiece – and one-half round each of their precious pilot bread.
“Tastes like soap more than soup to me,” remarked Billy with a wry face, and then suddenly stopped short, the boy had forgotten for a moment that the “soap” might stand between them and starvation. But the soapy qualities of the tablets were not their worst property. The enterprising manufacturers who made them had seasoned them liberally with salt and pepper, also presumably in compressed form, with the result that half an hour after their meal had concluded the boys were seized with furious pangs of thirst.
They held out as long as they could, knowing the importance of husbanding their water supply, but at last their sufferings became so unbearable that Billy seized his canteen with the remark:
“If I am to die I’m not going to deny myself a drink of water;” and drained a quarter of its contents at one gulp almost. Frank and Harry both possessed plenty of self-control, but the sight of Billy’s assuagement of his thirst was more than they could bear, and simultaneously each of them seized his canteen and throwing back his head let the grateful stream trickle down their parched throats.
“I could hear it sizzle,” exclaimed Harry, putting his canteen aside with a sigh of satisfaction.
That night the boys bravely fought off all temptation to touch any more of their precious water, but when the sun got up and the parching heat of the day penetrated even into the shaft they could bear it no longer. They took their canteens and drank and when they set them down from their lips they contained only a few drops each. As for food they still had some left, but they scarcely dared to eat it fearing to increase the maddening torture of thirst. As the day wore on they sat round the bottom of the shaft in a sort of hopeless apathy.
Their tongues were swollen till they could hardly speak, their eyes were caked with dust and red-rimmed, their lips blackened and parched by their sufferings. They were indeed a different looking group to the trim Chester Exploration Expedition that had set out so light-heartedly the day before. From time to time they fell into a sleep of sheer exhaustion from which they awakened unrefreshed. Strange visions of cool flashing brooks, green orchards and crystal lakes shot through their minds. The first stages of the delirium that precedes death by hunger and thirst were upon them and they realized it. Long before night came and the coolness relieved their sufferings to a slight extent they had emptied the last drops of water in their canteens. They had even resorted to the expedient of staggering back along the tunnel, to where the walls began to grow damp, and licking off the grateful moisture with their tongues. Infinitesimal as the relief was, still it furnished some alleviation of their sufferings.
At daybreak the next day, Harry and Billy were comatose. They lay with their eyes closed at the bottom of the shaft uncaring of their fate. This is the merciful anodyne that nature sometimes brings to those she dooms to die in the cruelest way imaginable. Frank alone held out against the deadly torpor he felt creeping over him.
“While there’s life there’s hope,” he kept whispering through his cracked lips, but he knew that in his heart hope had died and there was nothing to wait for but death.
An idea suddenly struck him. Perhaps some day, long after they were dead, somebody would stumble on them. He would leave a record of their names and how they met their fate. Feverishly, with half palsied hands, he searched through his pockets for a pencil and a scrap of paper. He drew out a handful of odds and ends from his pocket, and sorted through them for a stub of pencil. As he did so his waterproof matchbox fell from the collection and rolled slowly to his feet. He gazed at it stupidly. The idea flashed into his mind, that they would give a lot of fire now for water and here was the means of fire so carefully protected against the element that would give them life. He laughed mirthlessly, but suddenly staggered to his feet, a last hope animating him —
“Fire!”
Across the boy’s reeling brain there shot an idea, as he stared at the matchbox.
If a column of smoke were seen from the shaft mouth it might bring aid. What a fool he was not to have thought of that before. Hastily he tore his shirt into strips and with his blackened, blood-stained hands scraped together some litter that had fallen from the brush above into the shaft.
With trembling hands he lighted it. It caught and blazed brightly up, too brightly in fact. Frank saw that there would have to be more smoke, if his beacon was to be visible. He crawled over to where Harry and Billy lay and ripped their shirts from their backs. The two boys looked at him stupidly, but neither spoke – they were too far gone for that.
As Frank piled the heavy material he had acquired on the blaze, a column of thick blue smoke rolled heavenward out of the shaft mouth. It was their last chance. Nerved by this new kindled hope, Frank gazed at the fire with his rapidly, dimming eyes till it died out into a pile of gray ashes.
Would there be an answer?
How long he sat there Frank never knew. It was long after the ashes had grown cold, however. With a last flicker of consciousness he looked at his watch. Four o’clock. What were they doing at home in New York, what were they thinking at the hacienda? he wondered vaguely.
It was hard to die like this, with the blue sky so near. He gazed up at the shaft mouth as if to take a last farewell of the outer world.
The next minute the exhausted boy leaped to his feet and instantly fell back swooning with a loud cry of joy. Their signal had been seen.
Peering over the top of the shaft, was a wild, brown face fringed with long matted hair and beard, but the eyes were kindly and Frank had read their message of rescue.
