THE FLOWER OF FLAME.
Ben Stubbs and Billy had stood straining their eyes after the _Golden
Eagle_, when the air-craft flew from Plateau Camp, for as long as they
could detect against the dark sky, the darker shadow of its outline;
then they turned to the camp-fire and Ben Stubbs, whistling loudly,
almost defiantly, set about the task of getting supper. Both occupants
of the camp felt singularly disinclined for talk and it was not until
after supper was finished and Ben’s pipe fairly going, that either
uttered more than a few perfunctory words.
By that time the storm, into which the _Golden Eagle_ had soared on what
proved a fatal voyage, was upon them. It came with the same sharp puff
of wind and far-off flash of lightning that had first alarmed the boys.
“I’m going to double-lash that tent,” remarked Ben Stubbs, briefly,
after he had washed the tin plates. “This is goin’ to be a hummer and no
mistake.”
As for Billy the apprehension he felt would not put itself into words.
As the storm increased, though, and he helped Ben Stubbs to what the old
sailor called “double-gasket” the waterproof tent, his heart sank.
“If the boys could not make a landing?—What then?” It was an unbearable
thought and, as often as it came to him, and, try as he would the young
reporter could not dispossess himself of it—there came with it a
premonition of disaster. Though Ben didn’t mention it the same thought
was chasing itself through his mind. At last he could contain himself no
longer and remarked:
“Now, mate, all’s snugged down and ship-shape and I reckon we’d better
turn in and get what sleep we can,” he looked at the alarm-clock that
hung on the tent pole.
“Eight bells,” he said, “I wonder how it’s going with them boys?” That
was all, but the note of anxiety in his voice showed that the hardened
old salt was as badly worried about what was transpiring on the _Golden
Eagle_ as Billy himself.
“I guess they will be all right, don’t you, Ben?” anxiously asked Billy,
quite willing to catch at even a straw of hope.
For answer Ben pulled the tent flap aside and looked out into the black
night.
“Wall,” he replied slowly, after he had cast his eye up at the sky,
which was ribboned with blue, serpent-like streaks of lightning,—“wall,
I’ve seen dirtier nights; but not many. I don’t know much about air
wessels;” he went on deliberately, “but my opinion, Mister Barnes, is
that this ain’t no kind of weather to be navigating on sea or land.”
Not a word more could Billy get out of him and he could find no comfort
in what the old tar had said.
It was snug enough in the tent, with the lamp hung to the ridge-pole and
Ben’s pipe going, but outside the storm was evidently waxing in fury. As
the thunder crashed and roared its echo was flung against the steep
cliff—on the summit of which lay the Toltec treasure valley—with the
noise of a battery of heavy guns. It was deafening and to Billy, who had
never before experienced a tropic thunderstorm, it was terrifying. He
said nothing, however, but sat nursing his knee on the edge of his cot
while outside the uproar grew every minute more angry and menacing.
As for Ben Stubbs his conduct was singular. He sat, pipe in mouth, with
his head on one side, as though listening intently for something—for
what Billy had no idea—and as Ben didn’t seem in a talkative mood he
didn’t ask him.
Suddenly there came a lull in the storm and the old sailor ran to the
flap of the tent. Outside he threw himself on the ground, holding one
ear close to it. He was up in a second and back in the tent.
Billy looked at him wonderingly. The grizzled veteran of the sea and
mountain looked worried.
“What’s the matter, Ben?” demanded Billy, struck by the singular aspect
of Ben’s countenance.
“Matter?” replied the sailor, “matter enough. This is only a Dutchman’s
hurricane to what’s in the wind. Listen! Do you hear that?”
He held up a finger to command attention.
Billy listened and to his ears there was borne, in a lull of the storm,
a sound like the far-off whining of thousands of tortured animals. It
was like nothing he had ever heard before.
Suddenly he jumped to his feet with an alarmed yell.
“There’s something under my cot!” he cried.
“It’s shaking it!” he shouted the next minute.
“There ain’t nothing under yer cot but the solid earth, mate,” replied
the sailor gravely, “and it’s that what you feels a’ shaking. It’s the
terremoto and it’s going to be a bad ’un.”
“The terremoto?”
“Yes; the earthquake,” was Ben’s reply.
“Now, mate,” went on Ben Stubbs gravely, “the main thing ter do in er
case like this, is ter keep yer head. Keep cool and we’ll come out all
right.”
As he spoke there came a violent convulsion that almost threw Billy off
his feet,—at the same moment a terrific puff of wind ripped out the tent
pegs in spite of all Ben’s “double-gasketing” and the two occupants of
it were struggling in its folds, while beneath them the earth shook and
above the sky seemed to open and pour out a dreadful flood of living
fire.
To Billy it seemed that his last hour had come. To make matters worse
the oil had spilled out of the lamp as the tent collapsed and caught
fire. The reporter, struggling desperately for release, realized this
and shouted aloud,—not from any good he thought it might do, but from
mere instinct. He could actually—or so it seemed to him—feel the flames
at his legs when suddenly something ripped open the canvas that
enveloped his head, and he felt the blessed air.
It was Ben Stubbs’ knife that had saved him.
“Close call that, mate,” commented the imperturbable Ben, as if he had
just warned his companion not to step in front of a street-car, or
something like that.
There was no time to answer. There came a deafening crash of thunder and
another violent shaking of the earth. In the light of the blazing tent,
which lit up the scene like a bonfire, they could see great trees
crashing down and the forms of terrified wild animals rushing through
them in a wild hope of escaping the fury of the earthquake and the
storm. None of the fleeing wild beasts seemed to have the slightest fear
of the men or even to notice them. Terror of the aroused forces of
nature had overcome all their aversion to their human enemies.
“It’s a shame ter see all that good game going to waste,” was Ben’s only
comment on the terrific scene that was taking place about them.
Billy looked at him in surprise. Was this man made of steel or iron? He
seemed as impassive as either. From his companion’s calm demeanor Billy
caught renewed courage and thought to himself, with a sort of desperate
pride:
“Well if he can stand it I can.”
“How long is this likely to last?” Billy asked in a trembling voice of
Ben, as the earth fairly heaved under the convulsions that now seemed to
be rending its very crust.
“No telling, mate;” shouted Ben, with his mouth at Billy’s ear, “it may
last an hour or a day—or not more’n five minutes more. Holy Moses——!”
The abrupt exclamation was called forth by an extraordinary sight.
From the Treasure Cliff, as the boys had christened it—there suddenly
shot upward a tall pillar of flame, which died down again as abruptly. A
sulphurous reek filled the air at the same moment.
Ben seized Billy by the arm with a grip that pained.
“Come on; run for your life—” he shouted—“the whole blame mountain’s
going.”
“Where are we to go?” gasped Billy, who shrank from the idea of the
forest; where trees were crashing down every minute.
“Come on, I tell you, don’t stop to ax questions,” shouted Ben plainly
excited, and Billy knew,—even in the turmoil in which his feelings then
were,—that the peril must be serious indeed that would excite the
cool-headed ex-prospector.
“That’s only the beginning,” shouted Ben as they ran, “if we stay here
ten minutes longer our lives won’t be worth an old chew of terbacey.”
As he spoke he fairly dragged Billy along with him. Their way lay down
the steep hill, and they stumbled and slipped, and fell down and
scrambled up again like men fleeing from a remorseless enemy.
To Billy it all seemed like a hideous dream. Suddenly the whole scene
was illumined by a fresh out-gush of flame from the summit of the
treasure cliff. The amazing pillar of fire shot straight up for a height
of fully fifty feet and blossomed out, whitely, as its summit into the
resemblance of a huge fiery chrysanthemum. Even in his terror Billy
could not help admiring, awestricken, the awful, majestic beauty of the
sight. It was plain enough now to him what had happened,—the earthquake
had opened up some hidden seam in the mountain, possibly that bottomless
pit of the White Snakes and this pillar of fire was gushing upward from
the bowels of the earth.
Ben, far from being struck with the overpowering majesty of the
spectacle, seemed to regard it merely as a fresh cause for apprehension.
By this time they were stumbling along through the forest; but the
brilliant light of the volcanic flame behind them, made their way as
light as day. Right across their way lay a huge fallen tree with a trunk
fully forty feet in diameter. Ben uttered a cry of joy as he saw it.
“Quick, Billy, in under it!” he exclaimed, at the same time dragging the
reporter to the ground and fairly pushing him under the massive trunk,
as if he were afraid Billy would not obey quickly enough.
There was a low growl as he did so and a spotted form slunk away. It was
a jaguar that had sought the same shelter as themselves; but such was
the savage beast’s terror that it made no attempt to attack them and
merely crouched, with its ears back and lashing tail, gazing at them
from the other end of the trunk. After a few minutes it slunk off into
the brightly illuminated jungle and they lost sight of it.
“That’s a wise beast,” remarked Ben, “purty near as wise as we are.
Nothing like getting a roof over your head when there’s trouble of the
kind that’s a comin’ around.”
As he spoke there was a tiny patter on the leaves all about them.
“Rain!” exclaimed Billy with some glee, recollecting the old New England
idea that when rain breaks the worst of a thunderstorm is over.
“Rain,” scornfully snorted Ben, “it’s the kind of rain you couldn’t keep
off with an umbrella, son.”
Billy looked at him puzzled.
“It’s what you might call a rocky rain,” explained Ben. “Hark!”
The light patter that Billy had heard rapidly increased to a rattling
sound as if some giant were throwing gravel over the jungle. In a few
minutes huge stones began to fall all about them and the blazing
mountain to emit a roar like a thousand blast furnaces.
“Now do you see why we got under this tree?” demanded Ben, as the
stones, thrown up from the mouth of the blazing pit, fell all about
them, but, of course, did not harm them in their snug shelter.
Billy merely nodded, he was past speaking; but, with all his own alarm,
and that was not a little, his mind still reverted to the boys. Could
they ride out this awful night in safety?
How long they lay there, crouching low and listening to the terrible
stony downpour about them Billy never knew, but it seemed a veritable
eternity. From time to time wild beasts would creep under the same
shelter with them without taking any more notice of the two men than if
they had been of their own kind. This in itself—so unnatural was
it—added to Billy’s alarm.
Suddenly, however, Ben uttered an exclamation.
“Don’t it appear to you, Billy, that she’s dying down at the top?” he
asked, pointing to the great flowering pillar of flame. Billy looked,
and for several minutes they both gazed at the volcanic blast furnace in
silence. Then they uttered a glad cry.
There was no doubt about it,—the flame was dying down.
The incessant rain of stones too had ceased and the storm had resolved
itself into frequent flashes and low growls of distant thunder. Billy
gave a whoop of joy.
“Don’t holler till yer out of the wood, mate,” admonished Ben, “and we
ain’t out of this yet, by a long shot.”
“But the worst is over, isn’t it?” asked Billy.
“Sure, the worst of the storm is; but we’ve got to get some place out of
here, and there are two things we don’t want to run into,—one is
Rogero’s army and the other is Injuns.”
“That’s so,” assented Billy, “have you any plan?”
“Wall,” drawled Ben, “the source of the San Juan River ought to be right
around to the south of here some place, and I figure that by traveling
in that direction we are bound to hit it,—if nothing hits us in the
meantime. Then we can get a canoe somehow, and drift down to Greytown.”
“You’re the doctor,” remarked Billy, whose cheerfulness was fast
returning.
A few hours later a dawn,—as soft and bright as if the events they had
passed through had been a nightmare,—broke over the valley at their
feet. It was hard for Billy to realize that the hours of horror they had
gone through had been real;—but the huge stones that lay all about and
the uprooted and lightning blasted trees that strewed the jungle gave
but too vivid evidence that it all had been real. Suddenly a thought
struck him.
The pillar of fire. It issued from the treasure cliff, and,—as nearly as
he could judge,—from a spot right above the White Serpent’s Abyss! He
turned to Ben with an anxious look on his face.
“Ben,” he said, “do you think that the passage is blocked?”
“What passage?” asked the practical Ben, who was looking over his
revolver to make sure that it was in working order.
“Why _the_ passage—the passage to the Toltec mines.”
Ben whistled.
“Son,” he replied, “there ain’t no more chance of that there passage
being there to-day than there is that this yer gun wouldn’t blow my
brains out if I pointed it at my head and pulled the trigger.”
This was bad news; as Billy knew that the boys had meant to come back
with a properly equipped expedition and make a thorough investigation of
the Toltec Valley. He recollected too Ben Stubbs’ bar gold that was
cached there.
“Why, Ben, you’ve lost a fortune if that’s true,” he exclaimed
petulantly, “and you don’t seem to worry over it? You’ve lost your bar
gold.”
“Hev I,” rejoined Ben in a quiet voice that made Billy’s cheeks crimson,
“well, youngster, I’ve got my life and I’m thankful for one mercy at a
time.”
After that there was no more talk from Billy of the lost treasure.
They struck out to the South at once and about noon, after passing
through terrible evidences of the ravages of the storm, and the
earthquake, reached the banks of a muddy stream that reeked of malaria
and disease. Ben, after a brief period of reconnoitering, announced that
it was the San Juan River in his opinion, and that anyhow whatever
watercourse it was it would bring them to the coast. Luck was with them
for, after an hour or so of casting about, they found a rough native
canoe drawn up on the bank. Not far from it, crushed beneath a mighty
tree that had fallen in the earthquake, lay the figure of the Indian to
whom it had belonged.
“Poor fellow,” said Stubbs, “I guess he’s beyond minding if we do borrow
his property.”
A few minutes later they were on board the rough dug-out, which Ben
handled as skilfully as a canoe, and on their way to the coast. Not
before, however, Ben had cut two sticks of wood from a low growing
umbrella tree, with his ever handy knife, and, lashing them together
with a bit of creeper, formed a rude cross,—which he placed in the
ground at the dead Indian’s head.
“Now that’s all ship-shape;” he exclaimed as after viewing his handiwork
with satisfaction he stepped cautiously into the cranky native craft and
shoved off into the rapid current.