CHAPTER X
THE CAPTAIN EXPLORES
Captain Horn had heard the story of Cheditafa, he walked away from therest of the party, and stood, his eyes upon the ground, stillmechanically holding his gun. He now knew that the great danger he hadfeared had been a real one, and far greater than he had imagined. Asystematic attack by all the Rackbirds would have swept away his singleresistance as the waters had swept them and their camp away. As to parleyor compromise with those wretches, he knew that it would have beenuseless to think of it. They allowed no one to go forth from their handsto reveal the place of their rendezvous.
But although he was able to appreciate at its full force the danger withwhich they had been threatened, his soul could not immediately adjustitself to the new conditions. It had been pressed down so far that itcould not easily rise again. He felt that he must make himself believe inthe relief which had come to them, and, turning sharply, he called out toCheditafa:
"Man, since you have been in this part of the country, have you everseen or heard of any wild beasts here? Are there any jaguars or pumas?"
The African shook his head. "No, no," said he, "no wild beasts. Everybodysleep out of doors. No think of beasts--no snakes."
The captain dropped his gun upon the ground. "Miss Markham!" heexclaimed. "Mrs. Cliff! I truly believe we are out of alldanger--that we--"
But the two ladies had gone inside, and heard him not. They appreciatedto the full the danger from which they had been delivered. Ralph, too,had gone. The captain saw him on his post of observation, jamming the endof his flagpole down between two rocks.
"Hello!" cried the boy, seeing the captain looking up at him, "we mightas well have this flying here all the time. There is nobody to hurt usnow, and we want people to know where we are."
The captain walked by the little group of Africans, who were sitting onthe ground, talking in their native tongue, and entered the passage. Heclimbed over the barrier, and went to the lake. He did not wish to talkto anybody, but he felt that he must do something, and now was a goodtime to carry out his previous intention to cross over the empty bed ofthe lake and to look out of the opening on the other side. There was noneed now to do this for purposes of vigilance, but he thought that if hecould get out on the other side of the cave he might discover some clewto the disappearance of the lake.
He had nearly crossed the lake bottom, when suddenly he stopped, gazingat something which stood before him, and which was doubtless the objecthe had struck when swimming. The sun was now high and the cave welllighted, and with a most eager interest the captain examined the slimyand curious object on which his feet had rested when it was submerged,and from which he had fallen. It was not the horizontal trunk of a treewith a branch projecting from it at right angles. It was nothing that wasnatural or had grown. It was plainly the work of man. It was a machine.
At first the captain thought it was made of wood, but afterwards hebelieved it to be of metal of some sort. The horizontal portion of itwas a great cylinder, so near the bottom of the lake that he couldalmost touch it with his hands, and it was supported by a massiveframework. Prom this projected a long limb or bar, which was now almosthorizontal, but which the captain believed to be the thick rod which hadstood upright when he clutched it, and which had yielded to his weightand had gone down with him. He knew now what it was: it was a handlethat had turned.
He hurried to the other end of the huge machine, where it rested againstthe rocky wall of the cavern. There he saw in the shadow, but plainenough now that he was near it, a circular aperture, a yard or more indiameter. Inside of this was something which looked like a solid wheel,very thick, and standing upright in the opening. It was a valve. Thecaptain stepped back and gazed for some minutes at this great machinewhich the disappearance of the water had revealed. It was easy for him tocomprehend it now.
"When I slipped and sank," he said to himself, "I pulled down that lever,and I opened the water-gate and let out the lake."
The captain was a man whose mind was perfectly capable of appreciatingnovel and strange impressions, but with him such impressions alwaysconnected themselves, in one way or another, with action: he could notstand and wonder at the wonderful which had happened--it always suggestedsomething he must do. What he now wanted to do was to climb up to thegreat aperture which lighted the cavern, and see what was outside. Hecould not understand how the lake could have gone from its basin withoutthe sound of the rushing waters being heard by any one of the party.
With some difficulty, he climbed up to the cleft and got outside. Here hehad a much better view of the topography of the place than he had yetbeen able to obtain. So far as he had explored, his view toward theinterior of the country had been impeded by rocks and hills. Here he hada clear view from the mountains to the sea, and the ridge which he hadbefore seen to the southward he could now examine to greater advantage.It was this long chain of rocks which had concealed them from theirenemies, and on the other side of which must be the ravine in which theRackbirds had made their camp.
Immediately below the captain was a little gorge, not very deep nor wide,and from its general trend toward the east and south the captain was surethat it formed the upper part of the ravine of the Rackbirds. At thebottom of it there trickled a little stream. To the northeast ran anotherline of low rock, which lost itself in the distance before it blendedinto the mountains, and at the foot of this must run the stream which hadfed the lake.
In their search for water, game, or fellow-beings, no one had climbedthese desolate rocks, apparently dry and barren. But still the captainwas puzzled as to the way the water had gone out of the lake. He did notbelieve that it had flowed through the ravine below. There were no signsthat there had been a flood down there. Little vines and plants weregrowing in chinks of the rocks close to the water. And, moreover, had avast deluge rushed out almost beneath the opening which lighted the cave,it must have been heard by some of the party. He concluded, therefore,that the water had escaped through a subterranean channel below the rocksfrom which he looked down.
He climbed down the sides of the gorge, and walked along its bottom fortwo or three hundred yards, until around a jutting point of rock he sawthat the sides of the defile separated for a considerable distance, andthen, coming together again below, formed a sort of amphitheatre. Thebottom of this was a considerable distance below him, and he did notdescend into it, but he saw plainly that it had recently contained water,for pools and puddles were to be seen everywhere.
At the other end of it, where the rocks again approached each other, wasprobably a precipice. After a few minutes' cogitation, Captain Horn feltsure that he understood the whole matter: a subway from the lake led tothis amphitheatre, and thus there had been no audible rush of the watersuntil they reached this point, where they poured in and filled this greatbasin, the lower end of which was probably stopped up by accumulations ofsand and deposits, which even in that country of scant vegetation hadaccumulated in the course of years. When the waters of the lake hadrushed into the amphitheatre, this natural dam had held them for a while,but then, giving way before the great pressure, the whole body of waterhad suddenly rushed down the ravine to the sea.
"Yes," said the captain, "now I understand how it happened that althoughI opened the valve at noon, the water did not reach the Rackbirds untilsome hours later, and then it came suddenly and all at once, which wouldnot have been the case had it flowed steadily from the beginning throughthe outlet made for it."
When the captain had returned and reported his discoveries, and he andhis party had finished their noonday meal, which they ate outside on theplateau, with the fire burning and six servants to wait on them, Mrs.Cliff said:
"And now, captain, what are we going to do? Now that our danger is past,I suppose the best thing for us is to stay here in quiet andthankfulness, and wait for Mr. Rynders. But, with the provisions we have,we can't wait very long. When there were but five of us, we might havemade the food hold out for a day or two longer, but now that
we are ten,we shall soon be without anything to eat."
"I have been talking to Maka about that," said the captain, "and he saysthat Cheditafa reports all sorts of necessary things in the Rackbirds'storehouse, and he proposes that he and the rest of the black fellows godown there and bring us some supplies. They are used to carrying thesestores, and six of them can bring us enough to last a good while. Nowthat everything is safe over there, I can see that Maka is very anxiousto go, and, in fact, I would like to go myself. But although theredoesn't seem to be any danger at present, I do not want to leave you."
"As for me," said Miss Markham, "I want to go there. There is nothing Ilike better than exploring."
"That's to my taste, too," said the captain, "but it will be better forus to wait here and see what Maka has to say when he gets back. Perhaps,if Mr. Rynders doesn't turn up pretty soon, we will all make a trip downthere. Where is Ralph? I don't want him to go with the men."
"He is up there on his lookout, as he calls it," said his sister, "withhis spy-glass."
"Very good," said the captain. "I will send the men off immediately. Makawants to go now, and they can come back by the light of the young moon.When they have loads to carry, they like to travel at night. We shallhave to get our own supper, and that will give Ralph something to do."
The party of Africans had not gone half-way from the plateau to the beachbefore they were discovered by the boy on the outlook rock, and he camerushing down to report that the darkies were running away. When he wastold the business on which they had gone, he was very much disappointedthat he was not allowed to go with them, and, considerably out of temper,retired to his post of observation, where, as it appeared, he wasdividing his time between the discovery of distant specks on the horizonline of the ocean and imaginary jaguars and pumas on the foot-hills.