THE ISLAND IN THE AIR
For a minute, perhaps, not a word was uttered. The hopelessness of their
situation was all too evident to the five boys. No one dared to suggest
that the passage from which they had rolled the bowlder would lead to
any possibility of escape.
"Now you have done it!" Hal gasped at length. "How in the world are we
ever going to get out of this?"
Nobody answered. There was no reply to make. The situation was too
fearful 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. The
opening in the rocky cliff was not entirely closed, but the rock was
wedged 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 a
point, the rest of the opening, eight or ten feet long and three or four
feet wide, being over a sheer drop of thirty feet. There was no
possibility of creeping around the bowlder and gaining a footing on the
slanting 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 with
dynamite--and we haven't even a wooden crowbar, to say nothing of a
pick. I don't know what we're going to do. We'll starve to death. I
guess the only thing we can do is to sit down an' wait till morning,"
announced Hal gloomily as he finished his inspection. "I wonder what
time 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 huddle
up close together and go to sleep."
This seemed to be the most sensible thing to do. The summer nights in
Colorado are cool, and the boys found it necessary to huddle together in
order to keep warm. Of course, they did not go to sleep at once. There
were several reasons why it was difficult for them to drift off into
slumber. First, they were in trouble, serious trouble; second, their bed
was 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 thing
the boys knew it was morning.
Hal awoke first. He suddenly found himself wondering at the hardness of
his bed; then, like a flash, the truth came back to him. Quietly he
arose, gazed a moment at his sleeping companions and then turned toward
the blocked exit. Another examination of the roof-opening of the cave
proved that he had judged rightly. Certainly there was no possibility of
their escaping this way without a pick or other steel tool.
Next he turned his attention toward the passage from which the heavy
bowlder had been rolled. It seemed almost as if this way must have been
cut by the hand of man. It ran with considerable upward incline between
the bulk of the mountain and a huge rocky bluff.
Leaving his companions still asleep, Hal started up this pass, which ran
a hundred feet through almost solid rock. Underfoot it was rough, with
rocky projections and bowlders, but the boy passed over it rapidly until
he 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," he
exclaimed half-aloud.
"There's a ledge up there that runs right over the Mummy, and there's
another slope over that and then some rocks. It doesn't look nearly so
steep up here. I'm going back and wake the fellows."
He hastened back and found Byron and Walter sitting up and looking
around them. Remembering his predicament, Pickles began to sniffle with
fright. 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 to
the 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 get
down."
"I don't know--it may," replied Hal hopefully. "Anyway, it's better than
staying here. We're a long distance from the road, and the bushes
growing along the edge here would keep anybody from seeing us. Maybe we
can throw some stones down and attract somebody's attention over near
the pass."
This suggestion struck the others as a good one, and they were all ready
in an instant to begin the climb. They realized that they would soon be
hungry and thirsty and that they must do something soon. So they started
without further delay.
The ascent up the wooded incline was quickly made and in twenty minutes
they were standing on the ledge over the Mummy. Here they stopped a
short while and rested. They looked eagerly along the government road
for travelers, but saw none. Then they started upward again.
After passing through a second belt of timber, the boys found it
necessary to follow a winding course, along ledges, around steep places,
then up a slope less steep, but rocky. From a distance this ascent
appeared much steeper than it proved to be in the climbing, and at no
time did the boys feel they were in danger of falling.
At last they reached the top. The journey upward had seemed much longer
than it really was, for they had had no breakfast. Of course they were
very hungry, but fortunately they had found a clear spring on the way up
and quenched their thirst with deep satisfaction.
Ordinarily their interest in this newly discovered country--for the top
of the mountain seemed almost extensive enough to be termed a
country--would have been eager, but under the present circumstances a
vastly more important question occupied their minds. They had come up in
order to get down, and they now directed their attention to devising a
plan.
Immediately they began an exploration of the mountain top in the hope of
finding a way to get down. This flat-top area was fairly regular in
circumference and half a mile in diameter. On reaching the highest point
of their climb, they rested for half an hour and then started to walk
around the edge.
Their view of the mesa through field-glasses from Porcupine Hill a few
weeks before proved to have afforded them a fairly accurate idea of the
top 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 a
pool of water, occupying a hollow that seemed to be the catch-basin of
the whole expanse.
The exploration of the plateau was begun at a southeastern point and the
boys decided to take a course northward along the eastern edge. This
took them through the wooded section. After they had proceeded a quarter
of a mile or more they found themselves on a great ledge within a
stone's throw, it seemed, of the government road.
Eagerly they scanned the highway for passing teams, and they were not
disappointed. Two were approaching from the south and one from the
north, the latter just entering the cañon through the northern pass. Hal
picked up a stone half as big as his fist and hurled it out toward the
road.
The result was disheartening. He had miscalculated the distance. The
stone fell into the river, fifty yards short of the highway.
"My goodness!" Hal exclaimed. "We can't attract anybody's attention that
way."
"Let's holler," suggested Frank. "Maybe they can hear us."
All joined in a lusty scream, which, too, was disappointing, for they
felt instinctively, after it died away, that it had not penetrated far
below. None of the travelers seemed to pay any attention to it. If they
heard it, they caught no significance in the sound.
"We've got to do something else," Hal announced desperately. He did his
best to appear cheerful, but as he looked into the tired faces of his
companions, 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 tie
some notes to arrows and shoot 'em at the people passing."
"We'll have to hit them or they probably won't see the arrows," was
Byron'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 were
skilled in making whistles of any twig or small limb from which the bark
could 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 with
a will. Fes and Byron made a bow, while Hal and the other two boys began
a search for arrow wood. They found a patch of shrubbery that contained
an abundance of long straight stems, and they cut a score or more of
these and made them into arrows. By this time the bow-makers had
produced a good mountain-ash bow with a strong string of several
fish-cord strands, and Hal and his helpers had three whistle-arrows
ready to shriek a novel message through the air.
Hal now tore several leaves from a notebook, inscribed messages of
distress on them and wrapped one around each of the arrows and tied it
fast. Then he took his stand on the ledge overlooking the road in the
cañon, while the other boys, seated on the ground, made more
whistle-arrows.
Presently Kenyon fitted an arrow to the bow, and the shaft-makers sprang
to their feet to watch the effect of his first shot. The whistle-tipped
stem flew with a sharp, piercing sound that thrilled all with hope.
Eagerly they followed its flight, while the shriek died away and the
arrow sped far out and down, just beyond the road and the traveler at
whom the shaft was aimed.
"I'll attract his attention pretty soon if I can keep on makin' as good
shots as that," declared Hal as he let fly another arrow.
It was impossible to determine whether or not the attention of the
driver in the buggy had been attracted by the first two
whistling-arrows, but the third certainly had a startling effect. The
boys high overhead saw the horse suddenly spring forward and race along
the road at a break-neck speed. Around a curve he went, the carriage
tipping over and spilling its occupant out. The horse tore loose from
the harness fastenings and sped madly along the road, past a team coming
from 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 is
running 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, or
walk rapidly, along the road until he disappeared through the pass.
Meanwhile the work of making more whistle-arrows continued, and several
were sent screaming down toward two other teams that had appeared in
view. Evidently, the attention of the occupants of these carriages was
attracted by the strange sound in the air, but none of the note-bearing
shafts were discovered by them.
For several hours the boys continued at the work, and more than a score
of arrows were sent flying down toward passing vehicles. Meanwhile, they
had become very hungry and thirsty and some of them visited the pool of
water, 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 of
passers on the road below.
Finally a new element of expectancy was introduced when Fes called
attention 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 any
improbable source.
For several minutes they gazed silently at the moving object, at first
believing it to be a huge bird. Finally Hal electrified his companions
by announcing wildly:
"It's Mr. Miles in his new airship!"