CHAPTER XX.
THE LONE CASTAWAY.
When Frank opened his eyes he found himself lying on a rough sort ofcouch, spread with coarse net over clean blankets, in a place that he atfirst thought was the rocky chamber at the bottom of the shaft. Squarewindows, cut in the walls, however, through which strips of bright bluesky were visible, and a large sort of altar in the corner on whichsomething that gave forth an appetizing odor, was cooking in an earthenpot, soon disillusionized him. It was a rough dwelling, but after whatthey had endured, the recollection of the details of which was still dimin the boy leader’s mind, it seemed like a taste of paradise. Outside hecould hear the voices of Harry and Billy and another that was notfamiliar to him.
Throwing off the blanket that had been thrown over him, the boy,—stillso weak that his knees seemed to have developed strange sort of hingesand his head reeled,—felt his way along by the rough walls of thedwelling to the door. Harry and Billy, already recovered from theirexperience, were seated outside the place, which Frank now saw, was dugout in the face of a steep cliff, on a bench also cut out of a kind ofsoft sandstone. The boys jumped up with a loud “Whoop,” when they sawFrank, and throwing their arms round him, escorted him to the bench anddragged him down by their sides.
“This is our rescuer, Frank;” announced Harry gratefully, indicating athick-set, sinewy man, burned almost to the color of the cliffs roundabout by exposure. Frank recognized the hair-fringed face,—almostmonkey-like,—with its kindly eyes as the same that he had seen peeringover the edge of the shaft as he had looked up, as he thought to take agood-bye to life. The figure of the man who had saved their lives was noless remarkable than his face. He wore rough rawhide sandals and hisclothes were shaggy garments, apparently contrived from deerskins. Hishat was an ingenious plaited arrangement of manacca palm leaves.
Frank gazed about him in amazement at the place in which he foundhimself after the first words of gratitude had been exchanged. It was acliff-rimmed basin possibly two miles in circumference thickly woodedtoward one end, but in the portion in which they were seated, bare andsterile as the Treasure Cliff. The steep walls, however, were piercedwith numerous openings, some square and some oblong. The honeycomb ofancient cliff dwellings was joined by steep flights of wide steps cutout of the living rock.
After Frank had eaten a good portion of broth out of the earthen pot, hewas prepared to hear the story of their rescue and the no lessremarkable narrative of their savior. It appeared that late in theafternoon before that man in the deerskin garments had seen Frank’ssmoke signal curling up from the mouth of the shaft, which lay abouthalf-a-mile away. He had at once hastened over and gazed down at thefirst white face he had seen in two long years.
At first he was so startled that he could not believe that the ladslying apparently dead at the bottom of the tunnel were human beings as,for a reason which will be given later, he believed that the other endof the tunnel was impossible of entrance or exit. After the first fewminutes of stunned surprise, however, he realized that they were realboys and in sore need of help.
He hastened at once to the burrow that he had selected as his dwellingand secured a long rawhide rope for which he had never imagined he wouldhave any use again. Fastening this to a bush near the top of the shaft,he had hastily secured a bowl of water and some food and after lettingthese articles down carefully, one at a time, he had lowered himself.After the first application of water to their parched lips the boysrecovered their senses and strength rapidly—that is, all but Frank, whofor a time they feared was past recovery. Their rescuer, after the boyswere sufficiently recovered to be able to stand up and eat some of thestewed, dried deer’s flesh and roasted bread-fruit he had lowered intothe shaft, then clambered up on his rawhide rope. The next to reach thesurface was Billy with the aid of the man above pulling with all hismuscular might.
The rope was then lowered again to Harry who attached it beneath Frank’sarmpits, padding it where it came in contact with his body, with theirsoft felt hats. Harry then clambered up and then all three laid on tothe rope and hoisted the senseless Frank to the surface.
“How long ago was this?” asked Frank, who had no idea what day it mightbe.
“Two days,” was Harry’s astonishing reply.
It was then the turn of the man who had come to their aid in the nick oftime to tell his story. His name was Ben Stubbs, and before he became acastaway under as strange circumstances as ever befell a man, he hadbeen a sailor before the mast. He had quit the sea when on the westcoast of Guatemala to become a mahogany hunter. From this he had driftedinto prospecting for gold in Central America, and about two yearsbefore, while sojourning with a band of wandering Nicaragua Indians, hadcured the cacique of the tribe of a deadly fever. In return they hadconfided to him the secret of a legendary basin, high in the mountainsworked at one time, so they told it, “by old, old people who were herelong before us, when the land was young,” meaning, as Ben realized, theToltecs.
They offered to escort him to the place up a hidden trail and theex-seaman, after consulting with a couple of friends in Corinto—asadventurous characters as himself—decided that they would at least testfor themselves the truth of this marvelous legend. They traveled severaldays’ journey from the western coast and at last had reached a deepravine in the heart of a rugged chain of mountains. Their path had lainup a trail apparently once well worn, but at the time they traversed itso ruined by time that it was hard for the burros, on which they carriedtheir mining implements and camp equipment, to maintain a footing.
The ravine was crossed by a rough bridge formed of the trunk of a singlehuge tree. The white men got across it in safety, the Indians biddingthem farewell at that point, saying that the land beyond was haunted by“spirits of the men that came before them,” and that they could go nofurther. Beyond the ravine a sheer cliff shot up, but the Indians toldthe adventurers that by making a day’s march to the north they wouldfind an opening in it. The trail they then followed began at the end ofthe bridge and was so narrow that at times it was necessary to blindfoldeven the surefooted mountain burros. On one side lay the huge ravine, onthe other the steep cliff. They found the opening, or rather bore, inthe cliff exactly as the Indians had told them, and after traversing ashort passage had entered the cup-like valley in which the boys andtheir rescuer now were.
“That was two years ago, shipmates,” sighed Ben Stubbs, “and it seemslike fifty. We thought we would all be millionaires afore long. PoorJack Hudgins, Bill Stowe and me. Well, mates, we found it all as theInjuns had tole us—the shafts an’ all; but we hadn’t got no way ofgittin’ down ’em. Howsomever that didn’t worry us none as we foundenough bar gold stored up in them houses on the cliff above to make usall rich. We loaded it on our burros after a week’s work, and got allready for the start back.
“That night there come a bit of an earthquake. Not much as you might sayfor these lands—just a little tremor—we was so used to ’em we paid no’tention to ’em. The next day was bright and fair and we hit the trailfor the timber bridge and riches and the land of the free. Of course, wemeant to cache the gold some place and take it out by degrees as theydon’t like Yankees to take any money out of these countries, an’ ifthey’d caught us they’d have taken the gold an’ jailed us. But it wasn’tter be. We gets to the end of the trail where the bridge ought to be an’there weren’t none! The earthquake had dislodged it.
“I guess, then we all went a little mad. There we were trapped. We hadto drive the burros off the cliff. There was no room to turn them. Everyday for months we used to walk down that trail to where it broke off,an’ there was a drop plumb clear down to nothing as you might say, andholler and holler just like we was all locoed, and I guess we were. Yousee we figured that maybe them Injuns would come back; but they neverdid. Well, shipmates, first poor Jack sickened and died; the thought ofhis wife and kiddies in ’Frisco, as ’ud never know what had become ofhim, drove him inter a so
rt of consumption, I guess. Then Bill Stowe gotbit by a rattler as he was on his way to the big bell on the top of theeast cliff. You see——”
“The big bell,” exclaimed all the boys, recollecting the mysteriousclangor.
“Yes,” replied the castaway, “it’s on the top of the cliff, yander,” hepointed to the east, “I guess the old timers put it there. We’d go upthere and watch sometimes out over the valley, an’ when we’d see thecamp-fires of rubber men or mahogany hunters or travelers, we’d jus’naturally ring it to beat thunder. Only the other night I seen a firedown there and I rung and then at last I looked over, but it didn’t dono good——”
“Why, Ben,” shouted the boys, “that was our fire you saw.”
“Your fire,” repeated Ben, thunderstruck.
“Yes, you scared us almost to death,” went on Frank, “we couldn’t makeout what it was.”
“Thought it was a monkey,” put in Billy.
“Well, I guess I’m more monkey than man at that,” sighed Ben Stubbs,“living the way I’ve done, trapping and stalking my food and clothesfrom the animals in the wood yonder—but, tell me, how did you fellowsever get up here if that was your camp I seen?”
Rapidly they told him of their discovery of the tunnel and it was theex-sailor’s turn to sit back and look astonished.
“But how did you cross that ’ere hole in the ground?” he demanded, “Longago, when me and my mates was first stranded on this ’ere island, as youmight call it, we tried to get out that way—yes, an’ we tried othertunnels, too, but we couldn’t find no way of doin’ it. If we’d knownabout the sarpints, I’ll bet you we wouldn’t have tried.”
Frank told him about the chain and about the impossibility of reachingit.
The sailor’s rugged, bearded face took on an interested air.
“You say you left it dangling thar?” he demanded.
“That’s about it,” replied Frank. “We could reach it with a long hook orbranch, but how are we to overcome the difficulty of the white serpents?It means death to try to get across that chasm, now that they have beenaroused from their long sleep.”
To the boys’ amazement Ben Stubbs winked sententiously. He said not aword, but rising to his feet, led the boys up the cliff to a small cave.In it were several kegs.
“Read that,” commanded the ex-sailor pointing to the stenciled letteringon them. Bending down the boys read:
DYNAMITE—(GIANT POWDER)—KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE OR BOILERS m’f’d by THE VULCAN EXPLOSIVE COMPANY OF S. F.
“I guess if we set off a keg of that stuff in that thar hole it won’t be’xactly healthy for them thar sarpints, eh?” questioned the castaway.
“The very thing,” excitedly cried Frank, who had begun to fear that inbeing rescued by Ben Stubbs, they had only got into another trap. Thenext minute, however, his hope dropped down to zero once more.
“What about the battery and the fuse wires and the fulminate of mercurycaps,” he cried, “we can’t set a charge off without them.”
“We could do without ’em, I reckon——,” began Ben.
“You mean throw a stick of dynamite down in there,” cried Frank, “why,man, it would kill the serpents all right, but it would kill the man whothrew it.”
“——but we don’t have to,” calmly continued the castaway, “’cause wethree was practical miners as came up here, two years ago, and webrought ’em with us.”