CHAPTER XXII.
THE DWELLING OF A VANISHED RACE.
“Gee, it’s kind of lonesome, ain’t it?” said Pete, expressing exactlywhat they all felt.
Although they now stood in the presence of the long-sought goal,somehow each one of the party felt uncomfortably impressed. A namelessfear hung about the place. It was with difficulty that they shook offthe feeling and examined the surroundings further.
The entrance to the cave itself must have escaped observation had onenot known it was there. It was square, with a mighty cross-bar ofunhewn stone supporting its summit. In this cross-bar were cut somerude hieroglyphics, but even the professor, savant though he was, couldnot hazard a guess at their meaning.
The professor, alone, seemed unimpressed by the gloomy majesty andmystery of the place. His eyes burned with a scientific fire and herubbed his hands briskly together.
“At last!” he breathed, as if in an ecstasy, “who knows what unknowntreasures we may reveal to the world, beyond that portal!”
“Shall we go inside?” asked Jack presently.
“We might as well now as at any other time,” said the professor,“Ralph, will you and Walter go back to the camp and get the torches?”
The lads at once hastened off on their errand. Truth to tell, they wereeach rather glad to get, for a short time only, out of the spell ofthat somber spot.
The torches referred to were of the kerosene variety, but speciallymade to burn for twenty-four hours continuously. They had been made tothe professor’s order for the expedition.
The boys returned shortly with the illuminants. Ralph also brought asupply of matches and a canteen of water, and both boys had stuffedtheir pockets full of what food they could hastily get together. Theprofessor praised their foresight and then, from his own pocket,produced a huge spool of coarse, strong thread.
“I took the hint from the classics,” he said, “you all recollect thetale of the labyrinth? Well, we will make this thread fast at theentrance, and as we go along we will unwind it. In that way if we getlost we can find our way back by feeling along the thread.”
“That’s a splendid idea,” cried Jack, “I tell you I shouldn’t muchfancy the idea of going in there, unless I was pretty sure how I wasgoing to get out again.”
“I don’t blame you,” said the professor, “and now are we all ready?”
“All right!” came in a chorus, and led by the man of science, theadventurers crossed the mystic threshold. A thrill shot through evenCoyote Pete, the least impressible of the party, as they did so. Howlong had it been since the race of ancient dwellers of the Chinipal hadswarmed those subterranean corridors, now as silent as midnight?
The torches soon became necessary for the passage sloped abruptlydownward from the portal. The smoky light showed them that they werein a sort of corridor, seemingly hewn out of the rock. It was aboutten feet in width and some eight or nine in height. The floor was wornalmost concave by the constant tread of the feet that had passed andrepassed in the bygone ages.
For some distance the sloping passage ran on, and then they suddenlyfound themselves in a vaulted chamber where their footsteps rangechoingly. Great stalactites hung from the roof glittering whitely asthe torch light fell upon them.
“This is magnificent!” breathed the professor, “a wonderland ofscience.” His voice, raised a little in his enthusiasm, went boomingand reverberating hollowly through the place. From the remotest cornersthere came rumbling back echo-like the last words of his exclamation.
“I guess we had better not talk so loud,” said Ralph, shivering a bitat this uncanny manifestation.
“No, somebody might hear you,” scoffed Walt, who was putting on an airof great assurance. Suddenly he emitted a yell and jumped about fourfeet. Something had crept up behind him in the darkness and laid a coldhand on the back of his neck. It was Coyote Pete who had noted theboy’s arrogance and wanted to give him a lesson. After that Walt was asquiet as a lamb.
Pressing forward, their torches showed them the entrance to anotherdark passage on the other side of the vaulted chamber.
“Shall we keep on?” asked the professor of his young charges.
“By all means, so far as I am concerned,” was Jack’s reply. “I don’tknow about Walt, though,” he added a trifle maliciously.
“Oh, I’m all right. Don’t worry about me,” the ranch lad assured him.
“Then forward it is,” announced the professor, plunging once more intothe narrow confines of a subterranean corridor.
But suddenly an alarming thing happened. A great rush of wind beatagainst their faces accompanied by a roaring, rushing sound, somewhatlike the voice of the cloudburst on the never-to-be-forgotten nightwhen they had lost their equipment.
In a flash their torches were extinguished and they were plunged intototal darkness, something soft and clammy brushed by Jack’s head andthen a perfect avalanche of the same unpleasant things was upon them.They were knocked down like ten pins by the charge, and badly scared,too, as you may imagine.
Presently the noise and the turmoil ceased, and the passage was quietonce more with the roar of the mysterious creatures dying away in thedistance.
“Let’s get out of this!” cried Walt tremblingly.
“Nonsense,” said the professor. “We might have expected some suchthing. Those were bats. Thousands of them, I guess, who have made theirhome here undisturbed for centuries.”
“Wonder if they are of the kind that suck your blood?” shudderedRalph, with the horror of the contact of the clammy bodies still uponhim.
“Vampires, you mean?” asked the professor. “No, at least I don’t thinkso. We are too far north for that. The vampire is found in SouthAmerica, in Brazil and so on. But let us light up the torches again.”
Ralph produced the matches and a cheerful red glow soon radiated uponthe stone walls and roof. A sickly, musty smell, the trace of the bats,was still in the air, however, as a reminder of their passing.
The passage soon ended, and the professor’s feet encountered a steepflight of steps cut in the stone, or so it seemed.
“Be careful, boys,” he warned, “a slip here might prove fatal.”
Very cautiously, therefore, they descended into what at first appearedto be a bottomless pit. Suddenly their torches glittered on somethingthat shone like molten metal beneath them.
“Water!” cried the professor.
“A lake,” added Jack, raising his torch so that the light illuminedwhat appeared to be a considerable body of water.
“Water, sure enough,” echoed Pete, “maybe it’s another subterraneanriver like that one at the Haunted Mesa.”
“This is no river,” said the professor. “See, its surface is as smoothas glass.”
By this time they had descended to the rocky shelf which ran all aroundthe edge of the subterranean lake, while above their torch-light fellredly on a domed roof of dark stone.
“Look! Look!” cried Walter suddenly, “Fish!”
Sure enough, they could now see shoals of white-tinted fish swimmingnear the surface.
“Can it be that the light attracts them?” wondered Jack.
“Not likely,” said the professor, “I guess they are blind. It is notunusual to find fish in these subterranean lakes. Specimens have beenfound in our own country and in many places in Europe which boastsimilar bodies of water.”
Walt had been leaning over the edge of the lake intent, apparently, ontrying to catch one of the blind fish. Suddenly he gave a sharp outcry,which was immediately followed by a splash.
“He is overboard!” cried Pete, rushing to the spot and throwing himselfon his stomach so as to catch Walt when he rose to the surface. But atthat instant a startling thing happened.
Simultaneously almost with the splash of the unlucky ranch boy, therecame a sound as of some great body rushing through the water from someremote corner of the cave to which their light did not penetrate. Thenext instant a cry of real horror broke from all their throats
as aterrible misshapen head with blind eyes reared itself above the waterand darted at Walt as he rose to the surface.
It was apparently a might eel, a creature of undreamed of dimensions.Its slimy, whitish-colored body was thick as a barrel and its lothsomehead and sightless slits of eyes gave it a hideously repulsiveappearance.
“Pete! Pete! Save me!” shrieked Walt.
But in another instant it would have been too late had it not been forthe old plainsman’s coolness. Stretching out one hand to Walt as hestruggled in the water, the cow-puncher’s other hand slid to his waist.The next instant a shot rang out sharply, and they saw the monster’shead sink, a stream of red blood crimsoning the water where theirtorches gleamed upon it.
Trembling in every limb at this narrow escape, Walt was dragged out.The professor had had the foresight to carry with him some stimulatingmedicine, and a portion of this he poured down the half-fainting lad’sthroat. Under its influence the naturally strong lad soon revived, butthere was still a scared look in his eyes.
“What could that monster have been?” asked Jack with a shudder in histones.
“Undoubtedly a creature of the eel or giant conger tribe,” rejoined thescientist, “I have read that some of the ancient races used to keepsuch creatures, and in some cases worshipped them even to the horrorof nourishing them on human lives.”
“Ugh!” exclaimed Jack, “I’m glad that Coyote’s shot killed the beast.But it could hardly have been one of the original ones.”
“Hardly,” said the professor, with a smile, “but there is no reason whysuch creatures should not multiply, and, as we know, there are plentyof fish in the lake for them to feed upon.”
“Then there may be others in the water?” asked Ralph.
“I see no reason why not. In fact, I—but, good gracious, what is that?”
The water became suddenly violently agitated as the body of the deadeel, fully forty feet in length, arose lazily to the surface. Thereason was an onrush of its brethren gathering to a cannibal feast.It was a fearsome sight to see their jaws clamping and tearing, whiletheir long white tentacles waved.
“Let’s get away from here,” said the professor presently. “See thereis another passage. Let us find out what that leads to.”
As he spoke there came a startling interruption.
A rumbling sound, somewhat as if a heavy train were passing overhead,filled the cavern. It shook violently and the waters of the lake becamewildly agitated. The monsters at once left their feast and sank intothe lake, leaving the mangled body of their dead mate floating on thesurface.
The rumbling grew louder and the cavern shook till the lake was lashedinto little wavelets.
“It is the voice of the Trembling Mountain,” said the professorsolemnly; “somewhere the mighty forces of nature’s forges are at work.”