The Boy Aviators in Nicaragua; or, In League with the Insurgents

“Well, you are a wonder,” cried Billy. “Whatever made you think of fetching those along?”

“What made the cat stay out of the wet, Master Barnes?” replied Frank merrily, “Forethought. Of course we have our electric torches,” he added, “but the candles will shed a more diffused light.”

Arrived with their baggage at the edge of the hole there was an excited contest between Harry and Billy as to who should enter first. Frank decided the matter by going himself. With a lighted candle held above his head he carefully descended the first of the steps and warned the boys behind him to be cautious, as they had no means of knowing what sort of a pitfall they might encounter at any moment. For the first few feet of course they had the light of day to guide them; and never had it seemed so sweet to them as when, after they had descended about twenty feet or so, they were plunged into pitchy darkness.

With Frank’s candle shedding a yellow glare about them they descended fearlessly after him down what seemed to be an interminable staircase. They had so far followed a straight course down with a slight incline which led inward beneath the face of the cliff. The steps were cut deep and wide and, except for the damp slime with which they were covered, the lads had no difficulty in following them or in maintaining a foothold.

“Can’t we light our candles, too, Frank, and have a little more light?” asked Harry suddenly after the little train had descended in silence for some minutes.

“We’ve got all the light we want,” responded the young leader, “and besides, we can’t afford to waste illumination. We may need it badly before we get through.”

As they got lower the walls of the stairway, as wide as the opening itself where they had entered, began to close in until the boys’ elbows were rubbing against the walls on either side of them.

“This would be an awkward place to get caught in by anything coming the other way,” remarked Frank, “we couldn’t even turn round.”

His mouth had hardly framed the words when he uttered a sudden shout of “Lookout!”

The next minute the boys felt a great billow of wind coming toward them and a queer rushing sound as of a great river flowing between rocks. Frank’s candle was blown out instantly and they were enveloped in total darkness.

Frank and Harry felt their faces beaten against by countless leathern wings and Billy was fairly knocked over by the onslaught, – which had scared him not a little. It was all over as quickly as it had begun almost.

“Jimminy crickets, what on earth was that?” demanded Billy, picking himself up.

“Bats,” laughed Frank, “no wonder they were in a hurry to get out. They must have been imprisoned in here since last that stone swung into place.”

“I hope they’ve all taken their walking, or rather flying papers,” commented Billy, sputtering and coughing as were the other boys from the terrific dust the creatures had fanned up with their wings, “anything more like that would get on my nerves.”

Frank soon had his candle relit and they resumed their descent. The stairway did not continue very much further, however. When they had reached a point which Frank estimated must have been back underground about half a mile from the face of the cliff their feet suddenly encountered a hard level floor. It was a welcome change from the monotonous downhill march.

“We have a few tons of mountain on top of us now,” remarked Harry, who had also taken careful note of the direction the stairway followed.

“Yes,” agreed Frank, who had verified his guess of the direction in which they had been proceeding by his compass. “Just think of the work those fellows – or rather their slaves – accomplished when they dug this tunnel through solid rock without powder or dynamite, so far as we know.”

“It must have been well traveled,” exclaimed Harry, “look here.” He called his brother’s attention to the narrow walls of the stairway by which they had descended. They were grooved on each side, at a height of about three and a half feet, with a smooth, worn, shallow sort of trench.

“What did that, do you suppose?” asked Billy.

“Slaves’ elbows, no doubt,” replied Frank, “the thousands of people who must have used this passage in the dead centuries could easily have worn away the walls in that manner. Just as,” he continued, “in old cathedrals you will find the altar steps worn by the knees of the countless worshipers who have knelt there.”

“Maybe they were bringing out treasure,” hazarded Billy.

“That’s entirely likely,” replied Frank, “in such a case their burdens would naturally have expanded their arms till they rubbed these grooves in the walls with the passage of time.”

The little party had come to a halt during this conversation, but now Frank turned to the others.

“We can take our choice,” he said, “of going on or of returning to the surface and getting together a more complete equipment.”

The unanimous vote was for keeping on, at least for a time, and the Chester Expedition under its young leader took up the march again. Now, however, the walls of the level passage along which they were proceeding seemed to have broadened out and they could walk three abreast without difficulty instead of proceeding Indian file as hitherto. The air of the passage too seemed purer than that of the staircase, and Frank even thought at times he could detect a cool draught, coming from some unknown outlet possibly. It was, however, insufferably hot; with the close, ardent heat of a coal mine.

The passage began to take a gentle gradient upward after they had proceeded along it for about half an hour, and as they pushed on the air grew noticeably fresher. When Harry held up his candle they could see that the roof of the passage was dripping with huge stalactites of a whity color that glistened as the flame fell on them. On either side too they could perceive the wet gleam of the walls. They were still in a confined place.

They pushed ahead in this manner for perhaps fifteen minutes more when suddenly Frank stopped short.

“Don’t come a step further,” he cried sharply.

The other boys poured out their questions.

“Hark!” was the only reply vouchsafed by Frank.

As he spoke he poked at the floor of the cave with the tip of his shoe and dislodged a stone. He gave it a kick forward and the boys, with tingling scalps and a cold shudder down their spines, heard it plunge down – down into unknown depths till the sound died out in a tiny tinkle, and all was silent as a tomb again.

“Phew!” gasped Harry, “that was a narrow escape, how did you detect it, Frank?”

“I came pretty near not discovering it in time,” laughed the young leader, who now that the danger was over was busy holding his candle at every angle to see what their surroundings might be, “as luck would have it, however, my foot dislodged a small pebble just as I was about to step over into what would have been eternity. I heard it drop down just as you fellows heard the larger one. I guess we’ll have to thank that little bit of stone for saving the life of one of us at any rate.”

“Let’s light up and see where we are?” suggested Harry, after the boys, fascinated by the mystery of the vanishing sound, had hurled dozens of rocks into the depths.

“I hate to squander the candles, but I suppose we’ll have to,” replied Frank. “This one of mine doesn’t come near lighting up the place.”

A simultaneous gasp came from the boys as, with all three candles lighted, they peered over into the black gulf that yawned at their feet. It was a huge fissure, possibly twelve feet across, and of unknown depth. It reached clear from wall to wall of the passage, which at this point had broadened out into what Harry called “a regular Council Chamber.” As if to verify his words the light of the boys’ combined candles revealed that the walls were carved with countless figures of quesals and other hieroglyphics intended apparently to typify the ceremony of the sacrifice. Dust and time, however, had done their work, and in many places the figures were chipped away altogether where the rock had flaked off.

At the further side of the chasm they could make out a spot of darker black against the inky surface of the rock which Frank rightly took to be the mouth of a continuation of the tunnel.

“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.