CHAPTER XXVI.
SAVED FROM THE SUN GODS.
Suddenly a thought struck him. Perhaps by joining his belt and Nat’stogether and then leaning over the edge of the pit he could haul hisunfortunate chum up to safety. It was worth trying, anyway.
Going to the edge of the pit and leaning over, Joe communicated hisidea to Nat. By this time the sun was streaming dazzlingly into the pitand only by crouching in one corner could Nat escape its ardent rays.Acting on Joe’s instructions, Nat took off his belt and threw itupward. After one or two trials Joe managed to catch it. Then, takingoff his own, he joined the two together. Then he extended himself atthe edge of the well, and, reaching out his arm to the utmost, loweredthe two joined belts down to Nat. They were about a foot too short forNat to reach them even with the utmost endeavor of which Joe wascapable!
Things began to look black, indeed. Momentarily the sun was nearing thezenith, and the place into which Nat had fallen was so designed thatwhen the luminary reached its highest point in the skies the excavationwould be filled with its rays, magnified many times by the crystallens. The lens, in fact, was nothing more nor less than an immenseburning-glass designed to shrivel up the victims of the ancientpriesthood. How little those who invented such a cruelly ingeniousdevice could have imagined that a boy of the twentieth century wouldever be in danger of losing his life by it! Yet such was the case andneither Nat nor Joe could conceal the fact from themselves an instantlonger.
“Can’t you think of anything? Don’t you think you could climb up just afoot or two?” asked Joe, despairingly.
“The walls are smooth as glass. I don’t believe a fly could get a holdon them,” was the rejoinder. “Joe, the heat is getting awful!” gaspedout poor Nat in conclusion.
“Gracious! What am I to do?” cried Joe to himself. He rose to his feetand gazed about him. Suddenly a thought struck him. If the priests, asseemed only too probable, really roasted people to death in that well,they must have had some means of getting the bodies out. How did theydo it? It must have been by a chain or rope, or something of the sort,was the thought that struck Joe after a minute’s reflection. In thatcase the chain, or whatever they used for the purpose of extricatingtheir victims, must be somewhere in the chamber.
“I’ll find it, if it’s anywhere within reach,” determined Joe.
Then he hailed Nat in as cheerful a voice as he could muster. He toldhim what he was going to do and begged him to keep up his courage. Natreplied bravely that he could hold out a while longer; but the weaknessof his voice made it painfully evident that if help was to be furnishedhim it would have to come quickly or be too late.
Joe noticed, now that his sight was quickened by the need of hastyaction, that off at one side of the chamber was a recess cut in therocks. He hastened over to it and found that within it was an ancientchest of some sort of sweet-smelling wood. This was so dry-rotted withthe ages that a vigorous kick of the lad’s foot smashed the molderinglock off and Joe hastily threw the lid open.
He could not refrain from uttering a cry of joy as his eyes noted itscontents, some spears, axes, of stone or flint—whose former purposeseemed only too evident—and, best of all, a coil of chain, forged ofthe same peculiar greenish metal as the ring had been.
“Hurray!” shouted Joe as he dragged out the chain, “this is what wewanted. Now I’ll have Nat out in no time.”
Hastening back to the lip of the well with the chain, he dangled itsend, which terminated in a hook, over the edge. As he did so he gaspedat the hot fumes which arose from the cylindrical pit. Joe was onlyjust in time. Nat had barely strength enough to fasten the chain underhis armpits and begin scrambling up as Joe hauled with all his might.
But if the hole had not been small enough in circumference for Nat tobrace his legs against one side of it and help work himself up in thisway, Joe would never have got him out. As it was, the task almostexhausted the strength of both boys, and when it was completed they laygasping at the edge of the well for some moments, utterly unable tocommand their limbs.
Joe was the first to recover. The sun had now reached the zenith, andthrough the mammoth burning-glass was pouring hotly into the well. Asudden idea struck Joe. He tore a bit of paper off an old envelope hehappened to have in his pocket and let it flutter into the pit.
As it dropped waveringly the paper turned brown, then black, and as itstruck the bottom of the sun-heated pit it dissolved altogether intoshrivelled cinder.
Joe turned away from the pit with a shudder. The thought of thefearfully narrow escape Nat had had almost unnerved him. But for Nat’ssake he did not let the other lad see how shaken he was. Shortly afterNat, though still weak, was sufficiently recovered to get shakily tohis feet. Then the two lads set about to find a way out of thesacrificial cave. First, however, they armed themselves with astone-axe apiece.
The arched entrance of another passage than the one by which they cameopened off on one side of the cavern, and as they peered into it theycould feel a sharp puff of delightfully cool air. “That means that thispassage leads out into the open,” cried Nat gleefully. “Come on, Joe,we’ll soon be out of this mess.”
Joe, rejoicing as much as Nat, followed the young leader of the MotorRangers. As they advanced the air blew upon them cleaner and sweeterevery instant. Both lads inhaled it in great lungfuls. It seemed as ifthey could never get enough of it after that oven-like chamber of thesun.
“I wonder what part of the city we’ll come out in,” said Nat presently.
“Near the camp, I hope. How astonished the others will be when we tellthem of what has happened to us! I’ll bet they’ve had a tame timecompared to ours.”
“I hope so for their sakes,” said Nat with a laugh, “but I guess we areout of the woods now.”
But were they? It seemed to the two young Motor Rangers, a momentlater, that they were not by any means “out of the woods,” as Nat hadphrased it.
Instead, they soon found themselves at the mouth of the passage; but asfar from finding their friends as ever. For the tunnel emerged in theface of a precipitous cliff, below which glittered the waters of thelake. It was a cruel disappointment.
While they still stood there, almost crushed by the sense that afterall they were still prisoners—and apparently hopeless ones—a startlingthing happened.
In the passage behind them distant voices sounded!
Human voices they were beyond a doubt. They were borne to the ears ofour two young friends with the booming sound produced by the tunnel,which formed, as it were, a giant speaking-tube.
The boys exchanged alarmed glances. Who could these denizens of thesubterranean world of the island be? Survivors of the cruel race ofwhose practices they had just had a terrible revelation? Robbers, orworse, who had made the Lost City their rendezvous? Or was it, afterall, a trick of the imagination?
Determined to test this last idea, Nat slipped a short distance intothe tunnel and listened intently.
A few seconds satisfied him that their imaginations had played them nopranks. Voices, far off, but apparently coming nearer, could bedistinctly heard. Nat turned faint and sick for an instant, and aglance at Joe’s face showed him that his companion, too, was badlyshaken. Nat did not blame him. The knowledge that mysterious beings ofsome sort were within the tunnel and coming toward them—perhaps ontheir track—gave him a most uncomfortable thrill.
He glanced down from the ledge on which they stood. The cliff face wassmooth, although some metal rings showed that a ladder must once haveexisted by which the lake might be reached. Above the mouth of thetunnel the precipice was sheer also.
They were fairly trapped. As they realized this each lad instinctivelygrasped his stone-axe tighter. Nat crouched behind a boulder and Joesqueezed in close beside him.
“Who do you think they are?” he quivered, “survivors of the Lost Race,or—or——”
“I don’t know,” rejoined Nat, with what composure he could summon, “but
this I do know, that they are not likely to be friendly if they findus.”
“Then there is a chance——”
“Yes, a chance that they may not come as far as this, or may not seeus. They may be crossing some intersecting passage from a higher level.”
But a few minutes later the voices grew louder. The perspiration brokeout on Joe’s forehead. He gripped his axe more tightly, but the senseof the mystery surrounding the beings who were approaching made himcatch his breath in agitation. He felt as if he were in some nightmare.
“Mind! Don’t make a hostile move unless they attack us first,” warnedNat in an impressive whisper.
The next instant a high-pitched voice came booming down the tunnel.
“S-s-s-s-say this bub-bub-beats the Sub-ub-ub-ubway!”
“Jumping hop-toads! That’s Ding-dong Bell!” cried Joe, dashing down hishammer.
“And the professor!” cried Nat as another familiar voice came towardthem.
“And Mr. Tubbs! What on earth!”
With wild whoops of joy the two boys who an instant before had beenexpecting to face, they knew not what, peril, rushed to meet theirfriends. They were in such a hurry that they narrowly escaped beingshot, the other party being as much alarmed at their approach as theyhad been at the advance of the professor and his companions.
Matters were soon explained. The professor and his comrades had foundthe mouth of a tunnel in an old temple. Entering this, it had broughtthem underground. Some distance above the lake end of the tunnel whichthe boys had traversed, the passage by which the professor hadtravelled joined it. The hurry of Nat and Joe to reach the fresh airexplained why they had not noticed the branch passage. Had they done soand followed it they would have come out not far from camp.