DYNAMITING TO FREEDOM.
Ben Stubb’s welcome solution of the problem of how to escape from the
valley, came as a great relief to the boys. As he had related the
narrative of his years of solitude up there, their hearts had sunk as
the realization, that they too might be doomed to the same fate, had
invaded them. With the discovery that the prospector had dynamite and
the needful apparatus for setting off a blast without injury to the man
who fired it, however, their future had assumed a bright tinge, and when
they went to bed that night in the rough cave that had been the
outcast’s home for such a long time, their dreams of the morrow were
pleasant and hopeful.
Both the Chester boys had been deeply worried at the idea of the anxiety
their unexplained absence must be causing their father, and Frank
bitterly blamed himself for having decided to go forward with the
exploration of the tunnel before he had notified his father of their
discovery.
They were up betimes and set about the ticklish business of transporting
the keg of dynamite to the Serpent Chasm, where it was to be put to such
effective use. It was decided that for the purpose for which they
required it only a small quantity would be necessary—in fact none of
them wanted to run the risk of widening the chasm by placing too heavy a
charge. Ben, who was experienced in the use of explosives, figured—the
force of dynamite being downward—that if the blast was fired at a depth
of roughly two hundred feet down the chasm, that there would be no
danger of damaging the upper edges of the abyss so as to render them
impossible or to dislodge the chain on which they depended to make their
way to freedom.
Before the final preparations to evacuate the valley were set about,
however, Ben took steps to hide the bar gold away carefully, with the
aid of the boys, who, the warm-hearted sailor insisted, were to receive
a share of it as soon as they could make up an expedition to the valley,
and return to carry the precious metal out to civilization.
The castaway, too, had another important mission to perform. Beneath
that little grove of palms, at the wooded end of the valley already
mentioned, there were two rough graves over which Ben had erected two
headstones bearing simply his dead comrades’ names and the date of their
deaths, carved by his knife. Alone the man who had shared their
loneliness went to the spot where the dead prospectors slept their last
sleep, and knelt bareheaded over the rough mounds. When he turned to the
cave he was more serious than the boys had ever seen him during their
brief friendship and he did not speak till everything was declared ready
and it was time to lower the keg of high explosive into the shaft.
With the rawhide lariat with which he had rescued them, the keg was
carefully belayed into the hole and then one by one the adventurers slid
down it. It was with moist eyes the boys looked about them, as they once
more trod what, but for Ben Stubbs’ timely intervention, would have been
their tomb. One by one they wrung his hand warmly.
“That’s all right, shipmates,” Ben kept repeating, much embarrassed,
“’twarn’t nothing at all—nothing at all—I’d have liked—” he added, with
a touch of wistfulness in his voice—“for my poor dead mates to have been
here, too, this day.”
As they started down the passage under such different auspices to those
under which they had made their way up it, Frank suddenly stopped and
with his knife cut off about six inches of the trailing rawhide rope. He
sliced this length up again into four pieces, kept one himself and
handed one to each of his three companions. Long afterward they were to
remember those souvenirs and treasure them as among their choicest
possessions.
Frank had contrived a sort of sling, out of blankets, in which the heavy
keg of powder was slung. Through the loop that this formed a long branch
with a hooked end was thrust. This was to grapple the chain with, after
the explosion from which they hoped so much had taken place. It was a
short time later that they reached a spot about half-a-mile from the
White Serpents’ Chasm, and here the keg was left after Ben had selected
a couple of long brownish sticks from it. These he tipped with fulminate
of mercury caps, which were later in their turn to be attached to the
five hundred feet of sparking wires of the battery.
At this moment Frank recollected something that sent a thrill of
disappointment through him.
“How old is your battery?” he asked anxiously of Ben.
“All of five years,” responded the prospector, “why?”
“Because I’m afraid it’s too old to be any good,” was the reply that
sent a shock of bitter disappointment through them all.
Anxiously they watched while Frank made a test. His fear was only too
true. No encouraging blue spark responded, when the detonating key was
pressed down. In the first feeling of dumb despair nobody found words.
Billy was the first to speak:
“Hold on there,” he cried, “you fellows have got electric light torches
in your pockets?”
“By Jove,” cried Frank happily, “what a dumb idiot I am—thank you,
Billy. I never thought of that.”
To the boys’ delight the batteries from their torches, which luckily
they had had made of extra power and efficiency, answered perfectly.
When they were connected up to the wires a good “fat” spark was shown.
“That’s a massive brain of yours, Billy,” complimented Frank.
“Oh, pshaw, Frank; you’d have thought of it later,” protested the
reporter, delighted nevertheless at having gained the young leader’s
approbation.
“Now then,” said Ben, when all was declared ready, “this thing is one
man’s job. Old man dynamite don’t like a crowd around when he
celebrates. You boys stay back here.”
In view, however, of the danger of an attack by the aroused serpents he
consented finally to allow Frank to accompany him down the tunnel to the
chasm. The two companions,—the seasoned, toughened man and the brave
boy,—set forth on their dangerous mission in silence. It was no time for
talking. All their plans were agreed upon. Ben was to lower the sticks
of dynamite, cautiously over the brink of the serpent-filled abyss and
Frank, with his rifle ready for emergencies, was to stand behind him
ready to drop any of their scaly enemies that might protest against the
invasion of their long undisputed kingdom.
A creepy feeling came over Frank as their candles showed them that they
were hard upon the chasm. The hour of the experiment upon which so much
hung was at hand. Ben without the quiver of an eyelid, held up a hand to
enjoin absolute silence and crept on his belly to the edge of the pit.
So far everything had gone well. There was not a sign, but the peculiar
odor of musk that filled the air, that they were on any more dangerous
task than the placing of an ordinary placer mine blast. Frank, as he
watched Ben proceed to work, realized the purpose of a long bit of heavy
board the prospector had brought with him.
Ben stuck one end of the board, which was about six feet long, out about
two feet beyond the edge of the pit brink, having previously rigged the
wires into a notch he had cut in its outer end. Frank saw at once that
this was to obviate any danger of the giant powder striking the edge of
the chasm as it was lowered and causing a premature explosion, which
would certainly have cost them their lives.
All went well till Ben had lowered possibly sixty feet of wire and then
there came a loud angry hiss, which soon grew into a sound of furious
reptilian rage that reverberated in the narrow tunnel, like waves
breaking on a beach. As Frank heard, with a chill of horror, this
indisputable evidence that at that very moment the dynamite was brushing
the soft scaly backs of a nest of huge white serpents, his blood ran
cold.
Suddenly, Ben straightened himself up with a shout.
“All set!” he roared, and, leaping to his feet, started running like a
jack rabbit back down the tunnel toward the battery-box. As if his cry
had been a signal, an enormous white head, with the same sightless eyes
that had distinguished the serpent Billy escaped from, arose from the
edge of the pit with an angry hiss. In its snow-white head, its red
tongue darted in and out like a flash of livid flame.
“Run Frank! Run for your life!” shouted Ben, as the loathsome monster
hurled itself out of the pit and started after him. Hardly knowing what
he did, Frank fired point-blank at the creature in a perfect spasm of
disgust and fear. He saw it writhe in great convulsions and as if in a
nightmare, witnessed the awful spectacle of two of its enraged brethren
wriggle toward him at lightning speed over the edge of the pit. He
turned to run but stumbled. As he fell he felt himself picked up by Ben
Stubbs and fairly dragged over the ground up the tunnel to where the
battery stood. He saw Ben bend over the box and shout back into the
tunnel to where the others were: “Lie flat everybody!”
Mechanically, Frank lay still and mechanically he heard the quick snap
as Ben closed the circuit.
The next moment there was a roar that seemed to be the tearing out of
the bowels of the earth. The tunnel became filled with choking fumes and
Frank knew no more till he found himself crawling back with bleeding and
cut hands and face to where the others lay, also stunned from the
terrific concussion of the explosion in the small space in which it
occurred.
Dazed and staggering the boys still managed to regain their wits in a
few minutes, and made their way down the tunnel to where Ben Stubbs had
set his battery-box. To their inexpressible relief they found the hardy
outcast sitting up with a cheerful grin on his countenance, dabbing away
at a wound on his forehead.
“Kind ’er like settin’ in a gun-barrel, when someone pulls the trigger,
eh, boys?” he remarked cheerfully, “but I guess we set off our little
Fourth of July celebration just in time.”
It was even as Ben said. When they had sufficiently recovered from their
daze to proceed, they discovered the bodies of the three serpents—the
one Frank had shot and the two others—torn almost to rags by the force
of the concussion.
“There ain’t much sarpint life left in that hole now, I’m thinking,”
remarked Ben, leading the way to the edge of the chasm. The blue smoke
of the explosion still curled up from it; but when they threw down some
rocks by way of experiment, no answering hiss came back. Modern dynamite
had wiped out the Toltecs’ watch-dogs.