CHAPTER XXV
THE LAKE OF FIRE
Drew was all animation in an instant at the new hope that sprang upwithin him with its offer of possible safety for his companion andhimself.
"Why didn't I think of it before?" he repeated, his voice shaken withexcitement.
"You didn't think of it before, because you were working like a slave.No man can work like that and think of anything but what he is doing.Oh, Allen, won't it be great if you are right?"
"I'm going to see if I am right," he replied.
"How can you tell?" she asked divining that he was fumbling at hispocket.
"In this way," he answered, drawing out the oilskin bag that containedhis precious matches.
He struck a match and held it aloft.
At first the flame mounted straight up in the air. Then an instantlater it was deflected and stood out at a distinct angle from the stick.
"See," cried Allen jubilantly. "There's a current of air in the cave.It's too slight for us to feel, but the flame feels it. If we weresealed up utterly in the cave, the air would be still. Somewhere theair is coming in from the outside world and it's up to us to find outwhere."
"Thank God!" murmured Ruth tremulously.
In the sudden transition from despair to hope, they took little accountof the difficulties they might have to overcome before they reachedthat other entrance--or the exit, from their point of view--which theyhad reason to believe existed. But as their first jubilation subsidedsomewhat, a soberer view began to thrust itself upon them.
Admitting that there was an exit, what guarantee had they of reachingit? Suppose a fathomless gulf barred their way? Suppose the passagenarrowed to a point too small for them to thrust themselves through?Suppose when the coveted exit should at last be found it should proveto be in the ceiling of the cave instead of the side, and hopelesslyout of reach?
But they quickly dismissed these dismal forebodings. Those problemscould wait for solution until they faced them. The present at leastwas illumined by hope.
"Come along, Ruth," cried Allen gaily. "Pack up your trunks and let'sbe moving."
"Only too gladly," the girl responded, falling into his mood. "I neverdid care much for this place anyway."
But suddenly a reflection came to her.
"How are we to find our way in this pitch darkness?" she asked. "Idon't know how many matches you have with you, but at the most theycan't last long. And the time may come when a match would be moreprecious than a diamond."
Drew took out his bag again, and, taking the greatest precautions notto drop one, counted the matches by the sense of touch.
"Just thirty-two," he announced when he had counted them twice.
"Only thirty-two!" echoed Ruth. "And we may need a hundred andthirty-two before we get to the other mouth of the cave."
For a moment Drew pondered.
"You're right, as always, Ruth," he agreed. "We can't depend on thematches alone. We'll have to get something that will serve as a torch.While I was digging, I remember I came across many branches of treesthat had been carried down by the slide in its rush. We'll see if wecan't make some torches out of them."
He set lustily to work and soon had as many as ten good-sized sticksthat promised to supply his need. He was afraid that not beingseasoned wood they would prove difficult to light. But there proved tobe a resinous quality in the wood that atoned for its greenness, andbefore long he had a torch that burned steadily though rather murkily.
"Eureka!" he cried waving it aloft.
"Good for you, Allen," applauded Ruth. "Now give me the rest of thosesticks to carry and you go ahead with the lighted torch."
"I'll carry them myself," he protested.
"No you won't," she said decidedly, at the same time gathering them upin her arms. "You'll have the torch in one hand and you need to havethe other free for emergencies."
He recognized the common sense of this, but found it hard to let her doit.
"It's too much like the Indians," he said. "You know that with themthe buck carries his dignity, while his squaw carries everything else."
"But I'm not your squaw," slipped saucily from Ruth's lips before shecould realize the possible significance of her remark.
"Not yet," replied Allen daringly, wanting to bite his tongue out amoment later for having taken advantage of her slip.
"But let's hurry now, Ruth," he went on hastily to cover their mutualconfusion. "Follow close in my steps and don't keep more than two orthree feet behind me at any time."
They set off on the unknown path whose end meant to them eitherdeliverance or death. The chances were against them, but their heartswere high and their courage steadfast.
They had need of all their fortitude, for they had not advanced fortypaces before danger menaced them.
Drew holding his torch high so as to throw its light as far ahead aspossible, stepped on what seemed to be a crooked stick in the path.Instantly the stick sprang to life, and a powerful, slimy coil wounditself around the man's leg as high as the knee.
His first impulse was to spring back. His next was to grind down withcrushing force on the squirming thing beneath his heel. The secondimpulse conquered the first and he stood like a statue while a coldsweat broke out all over his body.
For he had realized by the feel that it was the reptile's head that wasbeneath his heel and must be kept there at all costs until the life wascrushed out of it.
Gradually the writhings grew feebler, until at last the coils relaxedand fell in a heap about his foot.
"What is it Allen?" asked Ruth in alarm at his sudden stop and rigidpose. "Do you see anything?"
"There's no danger," he assured her, though his voice was not quitesteady. "I must have stepped on a lizard or something like that, andit gave me a start."
He kicked the mangled reptile out of the path, but not before Ruth'shorrified glance had seen that it was no lizard but something far moredeadly.
Here was a new terror added to the others. For all they knew theremight be a colony of the reptiles in the cave. And in thatsemi-tropical region, the chances were vastly in favor of their beingpoisonous. At all events it behooved them to advance with redoubledcaution.
They kept a wary lookout for anything that looked like a crooked stickafter that, and their progress, already slow, became still slower asthey went on.
Before long they came to a place where the cave seemed to divide intothree separate passageways. Two of them had nothing to distinguishthem from each other, but in the third they distinguished a faint lightin the distance.
"The blessed light!" exclaimed Ruth fervently.
"I guess that's the path to take, all right," exulted Drew. "In allprobability that light comes from the outlet of the cave. Hurrah forus, Ruth!"
Ruth echoed his enthusiasm, and they accelerated their pace. The hopethat they had cherished seemed now about to become certainty.
But the way was rougher now, and at one place they had to make a longdetour. But they made no complaint. As long as no impassable barrierof rock loomed up before them they could feel that they were gettingnearer and nearer to freedom and life.
But before long both became conscious of a steadily-growing heat in theair of the cave. The perspiration flowed from them in streams. Atfirst they were inclined to attribute this to their strenuous exertionsand the mental strain under which they were laboring.
"Strange it should be so frightfully hot," remarked Drew, as he stoppedfor a moment to wipe his brow.
"It's no wonder," responded Ruth. "It's hot enough on this island evenwhen you're in the outer air, and it would naturally be worse still inthis confined place."
"But we didn't feel that way ten minutes ago," objected Drew.
"We've done a good deal of walking since then," said Ruth, thoughrather doubtfully. "But let's get along, Allen. I'm just crazy to getto the outlet."
They were about to resume their journey, when a great flame of fireleaped to th
e very roof of the cave about a hundred yards in front ofthem.
They stopped abruptly, and in the smoky light of the torch both oftheir faces were white as chalk, as they faced each other with aquestion in their eyes.
"Fire!" gasped the man.
"Yes," assented Ruth quietly but bitterly. "What we thought wasdaylight is nothing other than fire."
"Shall we keep on?" debated Allen.
"We're so close that we might as well," advised Ruth. "Perhaps we maybe able to get around it somehow."
They went forward, though with excessive care, and a moment later stoodon the brink of the most awe-inspiring spectacle they had everwitnessed.
In a deep pit perhaps six hundred feet in circumference was a lake ofliquid fire! The molten lava twisted and writhed as though a thousandserpents were coiling and uncoiling. A vapor rose from the fiery massthat glowed with a hideous radiance in all the colors of the spectrum.
At intervals, huge geysers of living flame spurted up from the surfaceto a height of many feet and fell back in a glistening of molten goldand coruscating diamonds.
It was a scene that if it could have been viewed with safety would havedrawn tourists in thousands from every corner of the globe.
But to the two spectators the thought that they were looking on one ofthe marvels of the world brought nothing but desolation and despair.
"This must be the source of the lava flow when the whale's hump is ineruption," said Drew in a toneless voice.
"I suppose so," said Ruth in a voice that for dreariness was a replicaof his own. "Do you think it's possible for us to get around it in anyway, Allen?"
"Not a chance in the world," answered Drew. "You can see that thepassage we followed ends at the brink of the crater. From there on,there's just a wall of solid rock. The only thing left for us to do isto get back to the place where the cave split into three parts."
They retraced their steps with hearts that grew heavier at every step.The passage that had seemed most promising had yielded nothing butbitter disappointment. Only two other chances remained, and who couldtell that they led anywhere but to death?
At the juncture of the passageways, they hesitated for a moment only.There was absolutely nothing to indicate that they should take one ofthe remaining two paths rather than the other. Impenetrable blacknesscovered both.
"Which shall it be, Ruth?" asked Drew.
"You do the choosing, Allen," Ruth responded.
At a venture he took the one leading to the left, but had not proceededmore than a hundred feet when he stopped abruptly on the very brink ofa chasm that spanned the entire width of the passage-way. There was noledge however narrow to furnish a foothold along its sides. Once morethey were absolutely blocked.
Drew checked a groan and Ruth stifled something suspiciously like asob. The tension under which they were was fast reaching the breakingpoint.
"Never mind," said Drew, stoutly recovering himself. "There's luck inodd numbers and the third time we win."
"First the worst, second the same, last the best of all the game,"responded Ruth with an attempt at heartiness.
Again they went back and took the only way remaining. Upon the endingof that passage their life or death depended.
But as they advanced steadily and no barrier interfered, their spiritsrose. Then suddenly they cried aloud in their joy, for on turning asharp bend in the path a rush of air almost extinguished the torch thatDrew was carrying.
A hundred feet ahead was an opening thickly covered with bushes, butlarge enough to admit of forcing a passage!
Ruth dropped her load of surplus torches. Drew, grasping her arm,hurried her along. He forced the bushes apart and pushed her through.Then he followed. They heard a wild shout and the next minute Ruth wassobbing in her father's arms, while Tyke--hardy grizzled old Tyke--hadthrown his arms around Allen in a bear's hug and was blubbering like ababy.