“It’s the only thing to try, as long as we haven’t dynamite to blast it,” agreed Tom. “Come on, we’ll take a look.”
They went back to where the rock closed the tunnel, but a long and frantic search failed to show the least projection, lever, handle or any other thing, that could be moved.
“What in the world do you suppose those ancients made such a terrible contrivance for?” Ned wanted to know.
“Well, if we could read the warning on the statue we might know,” replied Mr. Damon. “That probably says that whoever disturbs the status will close up the golden city forever.”
“Maybe there’s another way out—or in,” suggested Tom hopefully. “We didn’t look for that. It must be our next move. We must not let a single chance go by. We’ll look for some way of getting out, at the far end of this underground city.”
Filled with gloomy and foreboding thoughts, they walked away from the stone barrier. To search for another means of egress would take some time, and the same fear came to all of them—could they live that long?
“It was a queer thing, to make that statue hollow,” mused Ned as he walked between Mr. Damon and Tom. “I wonder why it was done, when all the others are solid gold?”
“Maybe they found they couldn’t melt up, and cast in a mould, enough gold to make a solid statue that size,” suggested Mr. Damon. “Then, too, there may have been no means of getting it on the pedestal if they made it too heavy.”
They discussed these and other matters as they hurried on to seek for some way of escape. In fact to talk seemed to make them less gloomy and sad, and they tried to keep up their spirits.
For several hours they searched eagerly for some means of getting out of the underground city. They went to the farthest limits of it, and found it to be several miles in diameter, but eventually they came to solid walls of stone which reached from roof to ceiling, and there was no way out.
They found that the underground city was exactly like an overturned bowl, or an Esquimo ice hut, hollow within, and with a tunnel leading to it—but all below the surface of the earth. The city had been hollowed out of solid rock, and there was but one way in or out, and that was closed by the seamless stone.
“There’s no use hunting any longer,” declared Tom, when, weary and footsore, they had completed a circuit of the outer circumference of the city, “the rock passage is our only hope.”
“And that’s no hope at all!” declared Ned.
“Yes, we must try to raise that stone slab, or—break it!” cried Tom desperately. “Come on.”
“Wait a bit,” advised Mr. Damon. “Bless my dinner plate! but I’m hungry. We brought some food along, and my advice to you is to eat and keep up our strength. We’ll need it.”
“By golly gracious, that’s so!” declared Eradicate. “I’ll git de eatin’s.”
Fortunately there was a goodly supply, and, going in one the houses they ate off a table of solid gold, and off dishes of the precious, yellow metal. Yet they would have given it all—yes, even the gold in their dirigible balloon—for a chance for freedom.
“I wonder what became of the chaps who used to live here?” mused Ned as he finished the rather frugal meal.
“Oh, they probably died—from a plague maybe, or there may have been a war, or the people may have risen in revolt and killed them off,” suggested Tom grimly.
“But then there ought to be some remains—some mummies or skeletons or something.”
“I guess every one left this underground city—every soul.” suggested Mr. Damon, “and then they turned on the river and left it. I shouldn’t be surprised but what we are the first persons to set foot here in thousands of years.”
“And we may stay here for a thousand years,” predicted Tom.
“Oh, good land a’ massy; doan’t say dat!” cried Eradicate. “Why we’ll all be dead ob starvation in dat time.”
“Before then, I guess,” muttered Tom. “I wonder if there’s any water in this hole?”
“We’ll need it—soon,” remarked Ned, looking at the scanty supply they had brought in with them. “Let’s have a hunt for it.”
“Let Rad do that, while we work on the stone gate,” proposed the young inventor. “Rad, chase off and see if you can find some water.”
While the colored man was gone, Tom, Ned and Mr. Damon went back to the stone gate. To attack it without tools, or some powerful blasting powder seemed useless, but their case was desperate and they knew they must do something.
“We’ll try chipping away the stone at the base,” suggested Tom. “It isn’t a very hard rock, in fact it’s a sort of soft marble, or white sand stone, and we may be able to cut out a way under the slab door with our knifes.”
Fortunately they had knives with big, strong blades, and as Tom had said, the stone was comparatively soft. But, after several hours’ work they only had a small depression under the stone door.
“At this rate it will take a month,” sighed Ned.
“Say!” cried Tom, “we’re foolish. We should try to cut through the stone slab itself. It can’t be so very thick. And another thing. I’m going to play the flames from the gas torches on the stone. The fires will make it brittle and it will chip off easier.”
This was so, but even with that advantage they had only made a slight impression on the solid stone door after more than four hours of work, and Eradicate came back, with a hopeless look on his face, to report that he had been unable to find water.
“Then we’ve got to save every drop of what we’ve got,” declared Tom. “Short rations for everybody.”
“And our lights, too,” added Mr. Damon. “We must save them.”
“All out but one!” cried Tom quickly. “If we’re careful we can make them gas torches last a week, and the electric flashes are good for several days yet.”
Then they laid out a plan of procedure, and divided the food into as small rations as would support life. It was grim work, but it had to be done. They found, with care, that they might live for four days on the food and water and then—
Well—no one liked to think about it.
“We must take turns chipping away at the stone door,” decided Tom. “Some of us will work and some will sleep—two and two, I guess.”
This plan was also carried out, and Tom and Eradicate took the first trick of hacking away at the door.
How they managed to live in the days that followed they could never tell clearly afterward. It was like some horrible nightmare, composed of hours of hacking away at the stone, and then of eating sparingly, drinking more sparingly, and resting, to get up, and do it all over again.
Their water was the first to give out, for it made them thirsty to cut at the stone, and parched mouths and swollen tongues demanded moisture. They did manage to find a place where a few drops of water trickled through the rocky roof, and without this they would have died before five days had passed.
They even searched, at times for another way out of the city of gold, for Tom had insisted there must be a way, as the air in the underground cave remained so fresh. But there must have been a secret way of ventilating the place, as no opening was found, and they went back to hacking at the stone.
Just how many days they spent in their horrible golden prison they never really knew. Tom said it was over a week, Ned insisted it was a month, Mr. Damon two months, and Eradicate pitifully said “it seem mos’ laik a yeah, suah!”
It must have been about eight days, and at the end of that time there was not a scrap of food left, and only a little water. They were barely alive, and could hardly wield the knives against the stone slab. They had dug a hole about a foot deep in it, but it would have to be made much larger before any one could crawl through, even when it penetrated to the other side. And how soon this would be they did not know.
It was about the end of the eighth day, and Tom and Ned were hacking away at the rocky slab, for Mr. Damon and Eradicate were too weary.
Tom paused for a moment to look
helplessly at his chum. As he did so he heard, amid the silence, a noise on the other side of the stone door.
“What—what’s that?” Tom gasped faintly.
“It sounds—sounds like some one—coming,” whispered Ned. “Oh, if it is only a rescue party!”
“A rescue party?” whispered Tom. “Where would a rescue party—”
He stopped suddenly. Unmistakably there were voices on the other side of the barrier—human voices.
“It is a rescue party!” cried Ned.
“I—I hope so,” spoke Tom slowly.
“Mr. Damon—Eradicate!” yelled Ned with the sudden strength of hope, “they’re coming to save us! Hurry over here!”
And then, as he and Tom stood, they saw, with staring eyes, the great stone slab slowly beginning to rise!
CHAPTER XXIV
THE FIGHT
The talk sounded more plainly now—a confused murmur of voices—many of them—the sound coming under the slowly raising stone doorway.
“Who can it be—there’s a lot of them,” murmured Ned.
Tom did not answer. Instead he silently sped back to where they had slept and got his automatic revolver.
“Better get yours,” he said to his companions. “It may be a rescue party, though I don’t see how any one could know we were in here, or it may be—”
He did not finish. They all knew what he meant, and a moment later four strained and anxious figures stood on the inner side of the stone door, revolvers in hand, awaiting what might be revealed to them. Would it be friend or foe?
At Tom’s feet lay the golden head—the hollow head of the statue. The scene was illumined by a flickering gas torch—the last one, as the others had burned out.
Slowly the stone went up, very slowly, for it was exceedingly heavy and the mechanism that worked it was primitive. Up and up it went until now a man could have crawled under. Ned made a motion as if he was going to do so, but Tom held him back.
Slowly and slowly it went up. On the other side was a very babble of voices now—voices speaking a strange tongue. Tom and his companions were silent.
Then, above the other voices, there sounded the tones of some one speaking English. Hearing it Tom started, and still more as he noted the tones, for he heard this said:
“We’ll be inside in a minute, dad, and I guess we’ll show Tom Swift that he and his crowd can’t fool us. We’ve got to the city of gold first!”
“Andy Foger!” hoarsely whispered Tom to Ned.
The next moment the stone gate went up with a rush, and there, in the light of the gas torch, and in the glare of many burning ones of wood, held by a throng of people on the other side, stood Andy Foger, his father, Delazes, and a horde of men who looked as wild as savages.
For a moment both parties stood staring at one another, too startled to utter a sound. Then as Tom noticed that some of the natives, who somewhat resembled the ancient Aztecs, had imitation human heads stuck on the ends of poles or spears, he uttered two words:
“Head-hunters!”
Like a flash there came to him the warning of the African missionary: “Beware of the head-hunters!” Now they were here—being led on by the Mexican and the Fogers—the enemies of our friends.
For another moment there was a silence, and then Andy Foger cried out:
“They’re here! Tom Swift and his party! They got here first and they may have all the gold!”
“If they have they will share it with us!” cried Delazes fiercely.
“Quick!” Tom called hoarsely to Ned, Mr. Damon and Eradicate. “We’ve got to fight. It’s the only way to save our lives. We must fight, and when we can, escape, get to the airship and sail away. It’s a fight to the finish now.”
He raised his automatic revolver, and, as he did so one of the savages saw the golden head of the statue lying at Tom’s feet. The man uttered a wild cry and called out something in his unknown tongue. Then he raised his spear and hurled it straight at our hero.
Had not Mr. Damon pulled Tom to one side, there might have been a different ending to this story. As it was the weapon hissed through the air over the head of the young inventor. The next minute his revolver spat lead and fire, but whether he hit any one or not he could not see, as the place was so filled with smoke, from the powder and from the torches. But some one yelled in pain.
“Crouch down and fire!” ordered Tom. “Low down and they’ll throw over our heads.” It was done on the instant, and the four revolvers rang out together.
There were howls of pain and terror and above them could be heard the gutteral tones of Delazes, while Andy Foger yelled:
“Look out dad! Here, help me to get behind something or I may be hit. Mr. Delazes, can’t you tell those savages to throw spears at Tom Swift and his gang?”
“They are doing it, Senor Foger,” replied the Mexican. “Oh, why did I not think to bring my gun! We haven’t one among us.” Then he called some command to the head-hunters who had apparently been enlisted on the side of himself and the two Fogers.
The automatic revolvers were soon emptied, and the place was now so full of smoke that neither party could see the other. The torches burned with a red glare.
“Reload!” ordered Tom, “and we’ll make a rush for it! We can’t keep this up long!”
It took but an instant to slip in another lot of cartridges and then, on Tom’s advice, they slipped the catches to make the automatic weapons simple ones, to be fired at will.
They sent several more shots through the door-way but no cries of pain followed, and it was evident that their enemies had stepped back out of the line of fire.
“Now’s our chance!” cried Tom. “The way is clear. Come on!”
He and the others dashed forward, Tom carrying the golden head, though it was hard work. It was not very heavy but it was awkward.
As they rushed through the now open gateway they crouched low to avoid the spears, but, as it was one grazed Tom’s shoulder, and Eradicate was pierced in the fleshy part of his arm.
“Forward! Forward!” cried Tom. “Come on!”
And on they went, through the smoke and darkness, Ned flashing his electric torch which gave only a feeble glow as the battery was almost exhausted. On and on! Now they were through the stone gateway, now out in the long tunnel.
Behind them they could hear feet running, and several spears clattered to the stone floor. Lights flickered behind them.
“If only the river bed is dry!” gasped Tom. “We may yet escape. But if they’ve filled the channel—”
He did not dare think of what that would mean as he ran on, turning occasionally to fire, for he and the others had again reloaded their revolvers.
CHAPTER XXV
THE ESCAPE—CONCLUSION
The noise behind our friends increased. There were shouts of rage, yells of anger at the escape of the prey. High above the other voices were the shrill war-cries of the head-hunters—the savages with their grewsome desires.
“Can—can we make it, Tom?” panted Ned.
They were almost at the river channel now, and in another instant they had reached it.
By the feeble rays of Ned’s electric torch they saw with relief that it was empty, though they would have given much to see just a trickle of water in it, for they were almost dead from thirst.
Together they climbed up the other side, and as yet their pursuers had not reached the brink. For one moment Tom had a thought of working the black knob, and flooding the channel, but he could not doom even the head-hunters, much less the Fogers and Delazes, to such a death as that would mean.
On ran Tom and his companions, but now they could glance back and see the foremost of the other crowd dipping down into the dry channel.
“The steps! The steps!” suddenly cried Ned, when they had run a long distance, as a faint gleam of daylight beyond shewed the opening beneath the stone altar. “We’re safe now.”
“Hardly, but a few minutes will tell,” said Tom. “The balloon is in sh
ape for a quick rise, and then we’ll leave this horrible place behind.”
“And all the gold, too,” murmured Ned regretfully. “We’ve got some,” said Mr. Damon, “and I wouldn’t take a chance with those head-hunters for all the gold in the underground city.”
“Same here!” panted Tom. Then they were at the steps and ran up them.
Out into the big auditorium they emerged, weak and faint, and toward the hidden dirigible balloon they rushed.
“Quick!” cried Tom, as he climbed into the car, followed by Mr. Damon and Eradicate. “Shove it right under the broken dome, Ned, and I’ll turn on the gas machine. It’s partly inflated.”
A moment later the balloon was right below the big opening. The blue sky showed through it—a welcome sight to our friends. The hiss of the gas was heard, and the bag distended still more.
“Hop in!” cried Tom. “She’ll go up I guess.”
“There they come!” shouted Ned, as he spoke the foremost of the head-hunters emerged from the hole beneath the stone altar. He was followed by Delazes.
“Stop them! Get them! Spear them!” cried the contractor. They evidently thought our friends had all the gold from the underground city.
Fortunately the temple was so large that the balloon was a good distance from the hole leading to the tunnel, and before the foremost of the head-hunters could reach it the dirigible began to rise.
“If they throw their spears, and puncture the bag in many places we’re done for,” murmured Tom. But evidently the savages did not think of this, though Delazes screamed it at them.
Up went the balloon, and not a moment too soon, for one of the head-hunters actually grabbed the edge of the car, and only let go when he found himself being lifted off the temple floor.
Up and up it went and, as it was about to emerge from the broken dome, Tom looked down and saw a curious sight.
Mr. Foger and Andy, who brought up in the rear of the pursuing and attacking party, had just emerged from the hole by the great stone altar when there suddenly spouted from the same opening a solid column of water. A cry of wonder came from all as they saw the strange sight. A veritable geyser was now spurting in the very middle of the temple floor, and the head-hunters, the Mexicans and the Fogers ran screaming to get out of the way.
The Tom Swift Megapack Page 139
