CHAPTER XVIII.
THE RAVINE OF THE WHITE SNAKES.
The sound was not repeated; but, perhaps it was because the long spellin the darkness had got on their nerves, or possibly there was some sortof uncanny influence in the air of the long deserted place; but on atleast two of the party, namely Harry and Billy, the chasm had a mostdepressing effect. Not so with Frank. Difficulties only increased hisdetermination to conquer them.
“Come,” said the boy leader briskly, “if we are going to jump out of ourskins and get nervous at every noise we hear we won’t get very far withour exploration. Probably there is a subterranean stream at the bottomof that pit. I have often read of underground rivers.”
“It’s funny we didn’t hear the stones splash then,” objected Billy; butto himself.
The chain, which was very heavy and solid, was looped to the wall by ahook, as if the last person who had used it had carefully adjusted it inplace before leaving.
“Now for a test,” cried Frank, detaching it and dragging it back a fewfeet from the edge of the chasm. Under his direction all three boysseized hold of it and pulled and tugged with all their might. Theirunited efforts and weights had no effect on it. The chain was as solidas the day it was put there by a forgotten race centuries before.
“I will go first,” announced Frank, when the boys had completed theirtest of the chain and there seemed no reason to doubt it was perfectlycapable of bearing their united weight.
There was some protest from Harry at the idea of his brother risking hislife in making the first practical test of the chain. Frank howeverridiculed his fears.
“There’s absolutely no danger,” he exclaimed, “if there were I would bethe last person on earth to tackle it needlessly. We have come this farand I simply won’t give the search up just now for a little swing acrossa space which, if we didn’t know how deep it was, would seem like ajoke. Besides, think of the thousands that must have used this chainbridge safely in the dead ages.”
His arguments carried weight and finally Harry and Billy consented tolet him be the first to cross. Billy claimed the right to come last ashe was the lightest.
Frank extinguished his candle after admonishing the boys to hold theirshigh so that he would be able to see to make a fair landing on thefurther side. This done he gripped the chain firmly, ran back a fewsteps and then, with his foot in the lower link, swung easily across thechasm and alighted on the other side with as little effort as a manswinging on a trapeze.
“Easy as falling off a log!” he cried from the ledge opposite on whichhe now stood. “Come on, Harry, it’s your turn.”
Harry made the swing as successfully as had his brother and the chainwas now swung back to Billy. The reporter was frankly nervous and arepetition of the long sigh that they heard from the chasm some minutesbefore didn’t tend to make him less so.
“It sounds like something or somebody waking up from a long sleep,” heshuddered.
The young reporter could not have described the sound better if he hadcast about for a definition of the emanation from the ravine for anhour. That was exactly what the noise did sound like. The first sigh ofsomebody, “or something,” as Billy said, stretching himself as his eyesopen after a long deep slumber.
“Come on, Billy, don’t be all night,” shouted Frank, as the youngreporter hesitated and fumbled with the chain that Harry had swung backto him.
“Well, I suppose I’ve got to do it sometime, and it might as well benow,” decided Billy suddenly, making up his mind like a boy about toplunge into his cold tub on a winter morning. As he spoke he gave thenecessary run back to gain impetus and started on the swing.
Frank and Harry, standing on the opposite ledge, ready to catch him ashe landed, heard the boy scream in mortal terror as he shot over thecenter of the black gulf.
“Frank! Harry! Save me!” he shrieked.
At the same moment before the boys’ horrified eyes a long, wicked whitehead, with sightless slits for eyes, shot up out of the black mouth ofthe pit and darted at Billy.
“FRANK! HARRY! SAVE ME,” SHRIEKED BILLY.]
As it did so Frank’s revolver spat out its whole magazine of tenhigh-powered cartridges. Harry, his arms about Billy, who wouldotherwise certainly have toppled back into the abyss in his terror, sawthe wicked wedge-shaped head vanish instantly as the bullets hummedabout 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 theloathsome white head and the dry scraping sound that had followed itsdisappearance, “a giant snake that has lain torpid here for who knowshow long.”
“But a white snake,” objected Harry. As for Billy, he was not yetsufficiently recovered from his terror to say anything but leaned ashyand sickened against the rock wall.
“Most probably a boa constrictor or an anaconda,” replied Frank, “thatfrom its long years of life in the dark has lost its pigmentaryattributes. A plant, you know, kept in the dark will become white andanimals 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 possiblyvast number kept here by the Toltecs to guard their mines from would-beinvaders. I can think of no other solution, unless it had something todo 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 feelthe awful sensation yet. I could almost feel its cold coils about me.”
Far down in the pit there came again that scraping sound, like silkdrawn over a rough surface. This time all the boys exchanged glances ofhorror and antipathy.
“Bah!” exclaimed Frank, “think of the horror of falling into that pitinto possibly a mass of those creatures.”
“I have it,” cried Harry suddenly, “they must—supposing there areseveral of them—have been lying torpid. I suppose it was our shower ofstones, Frank, that aroused them.”
“I think that is entirely likely,” replied Frank, “but, say, boys, lookat this,” he held his candle up to a mass of carvings on the wall. Theyrepresented men in the grasp of serpents with birds’ heads and otherunfortunates having their lives trampled out by huge quesals. One row ofdrawings like an Egyptian frieze actually showed a man, presumably, fromthe fact that he wore only a loin cloth, a slave, being dragged from achain, which was evidently the one by which they had just crossed, by ahuge serpent.
Gazing upon the sacrifice was a group of bearded men in tall cone-shapedhats.
“Priests,” said Frank, “but see here, boys,” he pointed excitedly to arow 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 shownin profile, each with one leg drawn up in exactly the same manner as ifthey were executing a solemn dance of some kind, was formed of a blazingred stone. In the gleaming glow of the boys’ candles they flashed firelike the orb of the living bird.
“Rubies,” cried Harry.
“I certainly believe that they are,” replied Frank, taking out hispocket axe and hacking at the rock surrounding one of the blazingcrimson 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 hisefforts with the axe met success and one of the fiery, beaming stonesdropped into his hand, “feel the weight of it.”
There were ten of the dancing quesals, and the ruby in the eyes of eachwas of exactly the same size. One by one the boys prised them out andthen gazed wonderingly at them.
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bsp; “Why, that’s $100,000,” gasped Harry.
“Estimated,” laughed Frank.
“Suppose they turn out to be only glass,” put in the skeptical Billy, onwhom Frank’s conservative manner had had its effect.
For reply the boy leader of the little train that had unveiled whatturned out afterward to be the portal to the Toltec mines gave one ofthe 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 upand showed that its surface was as unmarred by the blow as if it hadbeen a diamond.
The boys were busy congratulating themselves on their finds and pokingabout the mouth of the new tunnel that opened its blackness before themthat till now they had given no attention to one most importantthing—how were they going to get back?
The question was propounded by Frank who was badly worried over theproblem. The first flush of the excitement of estimating the value oftheir discovery and speculating on what lay before them had quiteobliterated for the time the consideration of this important matter. Itwas then with a serious voice that he turned to his young followers andasked:
“How about getting back?”
The idea of the serpent fresh in their minds the notion of recrossingthe chasm on the swinging-chain appealed to none of the boys; but, as itdid not seem probable there was any other means of exit—at least thatthey were likely to discover—it was self-evident that they would becompelled to take the desperate chance or starve to death in theblackness 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 middleof the chasm.
In his excitement at dragging Billy from the coils of the huge whitesnake 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.