The Passage Perilous
No time was lost in making preparations for the long trek. Each man
had to carry as much as he possibly could without impeding his
movements. Uncle Brian took the remaining parts of the secret-ray
apparatus, which he discovered lying in the sand undamaged and still
in the haversack. The rest of his load consisted of a rifle and
ammunition, a blanket and waterproof sheet, and about ten pounds of
foodstuffs. Peter loaded himself up with his sleeping-bag, twenty
pounds of provisions, the liquid compass from the flying-boat, a
coil of light line, his automatic, matches, and--in anticipation of
finding water--an empty water-bottle with slings attached.
"We shan't have to do very much climbing to get out of this,"
declared Uncle Brian. "And I shall be very disappointed if we don't
find water within an hour or two. At one time this place was a
mountain lake. The water has drained away--where? Not through the
sand, because it's a certainty that the bed of the lake was hard
rock similar to the surrounding mountains. It flowed away through a
canyon. If we find the canyon we find our way of escape."
Peter agreed, but up to the present there was not the slightest
visible sign of a gorge. The enclosing wall of rock seemed
continuous, without a rift lower than five hundred feet above the
plain.
Progress was slow. The sand, although tolerably firm, was hard
going. The heat of the sun, coupled with the weight of their
burdens, distressed both men severely.
Presently they came to a shallow depression resembling a North
American gulch or a South African drift, only bone-dry. At one time
it had been a watercourse. The bed was littered with small stones.
Uncle Brian stooped, picked up one of the rough pebbles, and
examined it.
"Would you like to be rich beyond the dreams of avarice, Peter?" he
asked. "If so, load up. These are rough diamonds."
His nephew looked incredulous. He half suspected that the sun,
following the concussion of the crash, had affected his uncle's
brain.
"Fact," continued Brian Strong. "The quantity of diamonds here would
make the De Beer's reserve look silly in comparison. We'll take a
few--just a few--to support our statement, should we be lucky enough
to come through. Personally, I'd rather have a pint of pure water at
the present time.... Enough, Peter! Don't sacrifice mobility to
cupidity. Later on, perhaps."
In his present state of mind, Peter, once he was convinced of the
sincerity of his uncle's announcement, was not greatly impressed by
the magnitude of the discovery. The mere fact that untold wealth lay
at his feet was as nothing compared with his anxiety to get clear of
the mountain-enclosed arena. He hardly doubted his ability to find a
way out; but it was the long and tedious tramp that rather appalled
him. The change from speedy flying to a trudge afoot at two and a
half miles an hour, when time was of the utmost importance, was a
disconcerting prospect.
"There's an outlet," declared Uncle Brian, pointing to a bluff that
even at a short distance merged into the sombre greyness of the
mountainous wall. "We'll find a gorge close to it."
"Let's hope so," added Peter.
"There must be some egress," continued Uncle Brian. "At some
time--centuries ago--when this place was a lake--the overflow
escaped in a northerly direction. Why? Because to the south'ard are
the Sierras, which form a watershed between Rioguay and Venezuelan
territory. For some reason--an earthquake, most likely--the feeders
dried up or were diverted. Consequently, the lake ran dry. Yes, here
we are."
The cleft was so narrow that there was barely room for the two men
to walk abreast. The walls, up to a height of thirty feet, were
quite smooth, bearing evidence of the friction of sand and water for
countless ages. Above that height they were rugged and irregular, so
that in many places the sky was completely shut out from view.
For nearly a hundred yards they progressed with tolerable ease. Then
the gorge contracted to such an extent that Peter's broad shoulders
were rubbing against either wall. Once or twice he had to turn
sideways and drag his pack after him.
"Hope it isn't going to be a blind alley!" he exclaimed.
"Never fear," declared Uncle Brian encouragingly. "The floor is on
the down-grade all the time. That's a sure indication that----"
"We're done this trip!" interrupted his nephew. "There's been a fall
of rock."
In the subdued light the defile appeared to terminate abruptly in a
barrier of enormous stones, some of which must have weighed at least
a thousand tons, rising to quite seventy feet.
"Fallen recently," commented Peter. "By Jove! If there's another
smash-up, we'll either be flattened out, or trapped. Let's go back!"
Uncle Brian deliberately unburdened himself of his load.
"Let me get past you," he said. "Before we talk of going back, I'll
make a brief examination. H'm, yes! Recent fall, eh? You're wrong,
Peter. That mass of rock probably subsided a thousand years ago. The
dryness of the atmosphere accounts for the fresh-looking stone."
"Possibly," rejoined Peter, "but that isn't of much consequence to
us, is it? It doesn't make our job any easier. I might be able to
scramble up and lower the rope for you."
"No climbing for me, thank you," replied his uncle. "I'm going to
crawl under."
He pointed to a small cavity, barely two feet in height and
triangular in section, between two masses of stone inclined one to
the other.
"You can't possibly," began Peter.
"Can't I?" retorted his uncle. "Wait till we shift some of the sand.
It may be ten feet deep, but it has accumulated since this rock
fell. The stone is quite smooth.... Just come here a minute and
kneel down. I fancied I saw daylight; do you?"
Peter looked through the narrow tunnel. Sure enough, at about fifty
feet away, he could discern the farther end of the horizontal shaft.
"No need to dig," he declared. "Stand by. I'll crawl through and pay
out the rope."
It was a nerve-racking experience. Notwithstanding Uncle Brian's
assurance as to the well-established nature of the barrier, Peter
was haunted by the dread that the wall of the tunnel might subside;
and when about half-way through, he had grave doubts whether he
could wriggle past a particularly narrow section. At any rate, there
he was. He could not turn to crawl back. He simply had to go on, or
get stuck.
With his heart figuratively in his mouth, the perspiration pouring
down his face, his hands and knees raw with the friction of the
sand, Peter continued his way, turning on his side in order to
negotiate a couple of narrow places where the rocks protruded.
"Worse than the double bottoms of a battleship, any old time," he
soliloquized. "Now, if I butt into a particularly venomous snake at
the far end--that will be the limit!"
At length Peter emerged from the tunnel, rose to his feet, and drew
in a copious draught of fresh air.
"Through!" he shouted.
"Right-o!" sang out his uncle. "Steady on while I finish with the
gear.... Now then, haul away!"
Peter began to haul in the line. It was heavy work, for at the other
end was attached the baggage belonging to both men, Brian Strong's
haversack with its precious contents being secured for safety within
the folds of the blankets and sleeping-bag.
"Good thing the rope's new," thought Peter, carefully coiling away
the line as he hauled it in. "If it did part half-way through
there'd be a fine old lash-up!"
Presently an increased tension of the rope announced that the load
was passing the narrowest part of the tunnel, which was about
fifteen feet from the end. Then there was a sudden jam. Something
had fouled, and the whole of the gear was wedged tightly, forming a
formidable barrier between Peter and his relative.
In vain the former heaved and hauled. He could hear Uncle Brian
plaintively inquiring when he would be able to crawl through.
"There's no help for it," decided Peter. "I'll have to go in again
and clear the lash-up."
He did not relish the task, but it had to be done. The journey
through had been bad enough, but now, although the distance was much
shorter, he was additionally hampered by the fact that he was
working in utter darkness and that the baggage, filling the height
and breadth of the tunnel, considerably interfered with the air
supply.
Peter realized the possibility of having to cast off the rope and
remove each bundle separately--a task entailing at least half a
dozen trips into the shaft.
Fortunately this was spared him; for on feeling cautiously, he
discovered the cause of the "block". The rifle had come unhitched
and, swinging round until the muzzle caught the projecting rock, had
jammed the whole contraption. It was a fairly simple matter to
release the rifle and drag it into the open. Then the rest of the
gear was hauled out with comparative ease.
"All clear," shouted Peter again.
Brian Strong made the passage quickly and easily. As a mining
engineer, he was used to crawling through narrow passages. Had it
been a case of making their way aloft to the fire-control platform
of a battleship in a heavy sea-way, Peter would have won easily; but
as a tunnel crawler, he admitted unhesitatingly that he did not
shine.
For the next mile, it was fairly easy going. The floor of the ravine
was wider, but the height of the walls correspondingly higher. Here
and there were pieces of rock that had become dislodged and had
fallen, half buried in the sand. Once a stone as big as a man's head
came hurtling down within twenty paces of them.
The end of the chasm was now in sight, but they were not yet out of
danger or difficulty. At about four hundred yards from the end their
progress was arrested by a single slab of rock about ten feet in
height that completely obstructed the passage.
This time there was no tunnel. The only way was to climb over.
"I'll give you a leg up, Uncle," suggested Peter. "Then I'll send up
the gear and swarm up by the rope."
He took up his stand close to the rock and was about to bend down to
enable Uncle Brian to clamber on his back, when his boot came in
contact with something hard, buried a few inches under the sand. As
he trod on it, it gave with a rasping sound.
"Hello!" he exclaimed. "What's this?"
With the toe of his boot, he pushed aside the covering layer of
sand, revealing a rusty breast-plate. Grasping the metal, he pulled
it up. It came quite easily, disclosing a number of human bones
lying on the backpiece of a suit of mail. A short distance away was
a steel morion, together with fragments of a skull.
The discovery roused Peter's interest far more than had the sight of
the diamond-studded sand.
"We're not the first people to find the gorge," he remarked. "How
old is this, do you think, Uncle?"
"Seventeenth century or late sixteenth," replied Brian Strong. "The
lace-holes in the breast-plate prove that. A Spaniard, I should
imagine. He was crushed by the rock. I don't suppose he was alone.
We may have walked over the bodies of his comrades buried underneath
the sand."
"It would be interesting to know----" began Peter, then he broke off
suddenly, adding, "Come on, let's get clear of this rotten hole as
fast as we can."
Half an hour later, they emerged from the canyon. Ahead stretched a
seemingly endless expanse of trackless forest; behind them, the
mountains.
"There's bound to be water down there," said Brian. "And if there's
water, there's a stream. The stream becomes a river, and the river
flows into the sea--in our case, the Caribbean. We'll have to skirt
the fringe of the forest until we strike a stream."
This reasoning proved to be sound. It was not long before they came
across a small rivulet gushing from the hillside.
This they followed, noting with satisfaction that it grew steadily
in volume. For four days they kept to one of its banks, sometimes
cutting a way through dense undergrowth, at others wading in the
clear shallow stream. Wild animals they neither heard nor saw.
Several times they had narrow escapes from poisonous reptiles. At
night they were tormented by mosquitoes; by day they were almost
knocked out by the moist, enervating heat. Their clothing was in
rags, their boots cut almost to ribbons.
Yet they held doggedly on their way, living on short rations and
sustained by the hope that every step brought them nearer to the
sea, though there were no signs of approaching the outskirts of the
forest.
On the fifth day, both men felt utterly done up. Too exhausted even
to speak, they plodded on, until their progress was arrested by the
stream flowing into a wide river, literally alive with caymans.
"Voices!" exclaimed Peter.
Both men listened intently.
Brian Strong shook his head.
"Imagination!" he replied briefly.
"'Fraid you're right," rejoined his companion disconsolately, but
seized with an inspiration, he drew his automatic and fired two
shots into the air.
A few minutes later, a dug-out canoe, manned by a dozen Indians,
appeared round the bend of the river.