CHAPTER XVIII
THE ISLAND IN THE AIR
For a minute, perhaps, not a word was uttered. The hopelessness of theirsituation was all too evident to the five boys. No one dared to suggestthat the passage from which they had rolled the bowlder would lead toany possibility of escape.
"Now you have done it!" Hal gasped at length. "How in the world are weever going to get out of this?"
Nobody answered. There was no reply to make. The situation was toofearful to permit of excuses or shifting responsibility.
Hal was the only member of the party who did not seem to be paralyzed.He advanced toward the bowlder and flashed his lantern over it. Theopening in the rocky cliff was not entirely closed, but the rock waswedged in such a position that it was folly to try to make an exit here.The top of the crevice filled by the big stone converged almost to apoint, the rest of the opening, eight or ten feet long and three or fourfeet wide, being over a sheer drop of thirty feet. There was nopossibility of creeping around the bowlder and gaining a footing on theslanting cave wall.
"C-can't we break the ground here and make the stone fall down?"suggested Ferdinand in chattering accents.
"Break the ground?" Hal replied fiercely.
"Don't you see we're standing on granite? You could hardly break it withdynamite--and we haven't even a wooden crowbar, to say nothing of apick. I don't know what we're going to do. We'll starve to death. Iguess the only thing we can do is to sit down an' wait till morning,"announced Hal gloomily as he finished his inspection. "I wonder whattime it is."
Byron looked at his watch and announced that it was nearly midnight.Then Hal continued:
"I don't see that we can do anything before daylight. Let's all huddleup close together and go to sleep."
This seemed to be the most sensible thing to do. The summer nights inColorado are cool, and the boys found it necessary to huddle together inorder to keep warm. Of course, they did not go to sleep at once. Therewere several reasons why it was difficult for them to drift off intoslumber. First, they were in trouble, serious trouble; second, their bedwas very hard; third, the place was wild, and the noises were strange.Then the moon arose, giving the scene a most lonesome appearance.
But at last all consciousness left the strange camp, and the next thingthe boys knew it was morning.
Hal awoke first. He suddenly found himself wondering at the hardness ofhis bed; then, like a flash, the truth came back to him. Quietly hearose, gazed a moment at his sleeping companions and then turned towardthe blocked exit. Another examination of the roof-opening of the caveproved that he had judged rightly. Certainly there was no possibility oftheir escaping this way without a pick or other steel tool.
Next he turned his attention toward the passage from which the heavybowlder had been rolled. It seemed almost as if this way must have beencut by the hand of man. It ran with considerable upward incline betweenthe bulk of the mountain and a huge rocky bluff.
Leaving his companions still asleep, Hal started up this pass, which rana hundred feet through almost solid rock. Underfoot it was rough, withrocky projections and bowlders, but the boy passed over it rapidly untilhe reached the end. Here he found himself at the foot of a wooded slope,not so very steep, that ran upward for several hundred feet.
"Why, I believe we could climb the mountain from this point," heexclaimed half-aloud.
"There's a ledge up there that runs right over the Mummy, and there'sanother slope over that and then some rocks. It doesn't look nearly sosteep up here. I'm going back and wake the fellows."
He hastened back and found Byron and Walter sitting up and lookingaround them. Remembering his predicament, Pickles began to sniffle withfright. This awakened Frank and Fes.
"Oh, fellows!" exclaimed Hal eagerly, "I've made a wonderful discovery."
Pickles ceased to cry.
"Have you found a way down?" inquired Ferd.
"No, not yet, but maybe we'll find one. But I believe we can climb up tothe top."
"On top of Flathead!" Byron exclaimed.
"Yes, on top of Flathead."
"What good will that do us?" inquired Frank. "That won't help us getdown."
"I don't know--it may," replied Hal hopefully. "Anyway, it's better thanstaying here. We're a long distance from the road, and the bushesgrowing along the edge here would keep anybody from seeing us. Maybe wecan throw some stones down and attract somebody's attention over nearthe pass."
This suggestion struck the others as a good one, and they were all readyin an instant to begin the climb. They realized that they would soon behungry and thirsty and that they must do something soon. So they startedwithout further delay.
The ascent up the wooded incline was quickly made and in twenty minutesthey were standing on the ledge over the Mummy. Here they stopped ashort while and rested. They looked eagerly along the government roadfor travelers, but saw none. Then they started upward again.
After passing through a second belt of timber, the boys found itnecessary to follow a winding course, along ledges, around steep places,then up a slope less steep, but rocky. From a distance this ascentappeared much steeper than it proved to be in the climbing, and at notime did the boys feel they were in danger of falling.
At last they reached the top. The journey upward had seemed much longerthan it really was, for they had had no breakfast. Of course they werevery hungry, but fortunately they had found a clear spring on the way upand quenched their thirst with deep satisfaction.
Ordinarily their interest in this newly discovered country--for the topof the mountain seemed almost extensive enough to be termed acountry--would have been eager, but under the present circumstances avastly more important question occupied their minds. They had come up inorder to get down, and they now directed their attention to devising aplan.
Immediately they began an exploration of the mountain top in the hope offinding a way to get down. This flat-top area was fairly regular incircumference and half a mile in diameter. On reaching the highest pointof their climb, they rested for half an hour and then started to walkaround the edge.
Their view of the mesa through field-glasses from Porcupine Hill a fewweeks before proved to have afforded them a fairly accurate idea of thetop of Flathead. The eastern half was covered with a growth of spruce,the western half was rather hilly and craggy, and in the center was apool of water, occupying a hollow that seemed to be the catch-basin ofthe whole expanse.
The exploration of the plateau was begun at a southeastern point and theboys decided to take a course northward along the eastern edge. Thistook them through the wooded section. After they had proceeded a quarterof a mile or more they found themselves on a great ledge within astone's throw, it seemed, of the government road.
Eagerly they scanned the highway for passing teams, and they were notdisappointed. Two were approaching from the south and one from thenorth, the latter just entering the canyon through the northern pass. Halpicked up a stone half as big as his fist and hurled it out toward theroad.
The result was disheartening. He had miscalculated the distance. Thestone fell into the river, fifty yards short of the highway.
"My goodness!" Hal exclaimed. "We can't attract anybody's attention thatway."
"Let's holler," suggested Frank. "Maybe they can hear us."
All joined in a lusty scream, which, too, was disappointing, for theyfelt instinctively, after it died away, that it had not penetrated farbelow. None of the travelers seemed to pay any attention to it. If theyheard it, they caught no significance in the sound.
"We've got to do something else," Hal announced desperately. He did hisbest to appear cheerful, but as he looked into the tired faces of hiscompanions, he felt his heart sink heavily.
"Let's make some bows and arrows," Pickles suggested.
"Pick, you're a peach!" Hal exclaimed. "That's just the thing. We'll tiesome notes to arrows and shoot 'em at the people passing."
"We'll have to
hit them or they probably won't see the arrows," wasByron's advice.
"I've got a scheme to make 'em hear the arrows," announced Hal.
"How?" asked Fes.
"Make whistles on the ends."
The boys had done this before by way of amusement. All of them wereskilled in making whistles of any twig or small limb from which the barkcould be removed in the form of a tube.
"We haven't got any string to make a bow," Frank objected.
"Yes we have," replied Kenyon, holding up his runaway bundle of clothes,around which was wound a liberal supply of fishline.
Realizing that their situation was desperate, the boys set to work witha will. Fes and Byron made a bow, while Hal and the other two boys begana search for arrow wood. They found a patch of shrubbery that containedan abundance of long straight stems, and they cut a score or more ofthese and made them into arrows. By this time the bow-makers hadproduced a good mountain-ash bow with a strong string of severalfish-cord strands, and Hal and his helpers had three whistle-arrowsready to shriek a novel message through the air.
Hal now tore several leaves from a notebook, inscribed messages ofdistress on them and wrapped one around each of the arrows and tied itfast. Then he took his stand on the ledge overlooking the road in thecanyon, while the other boys, seated on the ground, made morewhistle-arrows.
Presently Kenyon fitted an arrow to the bow, and the shaft-makers sprangto their feet to watch the effect of his first shot. The whistle-tippedstem flew with a sharp, piercing sound that thrilled all with hope.Eagerly they followed its flight, while the shriek died away and thearrow sped far out and down, just beyond the road and the traveler atwhom the shaft was aimed.
"I'll attract his attention pretty soon if I can keep on makin' as goodshots as that," declared Hal as he let fly another arrow.
It was impossible to determine whether or not the attention of thedriver in the buggy had been attracted by the first twowhistling-arrows, but the third certainly had a startling effect. Theboys high overhead saw the horse suddenly spring forward and race alongthe road at a break-neck speed. Around a curve he went, the carriagetipping over and spilling its occupant out. The horse tore loose fromthe harness fastenings and sped madly along the road, past a team comingfrom the opposite direction, and out through the northern pass.
"Is he killed?" gasped Byron.
"No," replied Hal, leaning forward eagerly. "See, he's got up and isrunning after his horse. I hope he finds the arrow and reads the note."
"You hit the horse, didn't you?" Frank inquired.
"I must have, unless it was the whistle that scared him."
With feelings of deep disappointment, the boys watched the man run, orwalk rapidly, along the road until he disappeared through the pass.Meanwhile the work of making more whistle-arrows continued, and severalwere sent screaming down toward two other teams that had appeared inview. Evidently, the attention of the occupants of these carriages wasattracted by the strange sound in the air, but none of the note-bearingshafts were discovered by them.
For several hours the boys continued at the work, and more than a scoreof arrows were sent flying down toward passing vehicles. Meanwhile, theyhad become very hungry and thirsty and some of them visited the pool ofwater, but it was stale and brackish and they could not drink it.
By the middle of the afternoon all were thoroughly disheartened,although they continued in their attempts to attract the attention ofpassers on the road below.
Finally a new element of expectancy was introduced when Fes calledattention to a strange looking object in the air two miles to the north.He was very excited when he beheld it, and exclaimed:
"Look! Look! Off there! What's that?"
All looked eagerly. They were in a mood to hope for help from anyimprobable source.
For several minutes they gazed silently at the moving object, at firstbelieving it to be a huge bird. Finally Hal electrified his companionsby announcing wildly:
"It's Mr. Miles in his new airship!"