CHAPTER XIX.

WHERE THE PASSAGE ENDED.

“Yes, you knew it all right!” Carl exclaimed, as the boy stood looking into the dark passage revealed by the falling of the stone. “You always know a lot of things just after they occur!”

“Anyway,” Jimmie answered with a grin, “I knew there ought to be a secret passage somewhere. Where do you suppose the old thing leads to?”

“For one thing,” Carl answered, “it probably leads under the great stone slab in front of the entrance, because when Miguel, the foxy boy with the red and blue lights, disappeared he went down into the ground right there. And I’ll bet,” he went on, “that it runs out to the rocky elevation to the west and connects with the forest near where the machine is.”

“Those old chaps must have burrowed like rabbits!” declared Jimmie.

“Don’t you think the men who operated the temples ever carried the stones which weigh a hundred tons or cut passages through solid rocks!” Carl declared. “They worked the Indians for all that part of the game, just as the Egyptians worked the Hebrews on the lower Nile.”

“Well, the only way to find out where it goes,” Jimmie suggested, “is to follow it. We can’t stand here and guess it out.”

“Indeed we can’t,” agreed Carl. “I’ll go on down the incline and you follow along. Looks pretty slippery here, so we’d better keep close together. I don’t suppose we can put the stone back,” he added with a parting glance into the chamber.

“What would we want to put it back for?” demanded Jimmie.

“How do we know who will be snooping around here while we are under ground?” Carl asked impatiently. “If some one should come along here and stuff the stone back into the hole and we shouldn’t be able to find any exit, we’d be in a nice little tight box, wouldn’t we?”

“Well, if we can’t lift it back into the hole,” Jimmie argued, “I guess we can push it along in front of us. This incline seems slippery enough to pass it along like a sleighload of girls on a snowy hill.”

The boys concentrated their strength, which was not very great at that time because of their wounds, on the stone and were soon gratified to see it sliding swiftly out of sight along a dark incline.

“I wonder what Sam will say?” asked Jimmie.

“He won’t know anything about it!” Carl declared.

“Oh, yes, he will!” asserted Jimmie, “he’ll be looking around before we’ve been absent ten minutes. Perhaps we’d ought to go back and tell him what we’ve found, and what we’re going to do.”

“Then he’d want to go with us,” Carl suggested, “and that would leave the savages to sneak into the temple whenever they find the nerve to do so, and also leave Pedro to work any old tricks he saw fit. Besides,” the boy went on, “we won’t be gone more than ten minutes.”

“You’re always making a sneak on somebody,” grinned Jimmie. “You had to go and climb up on our machine last night, and get mixed up in all this trouble. You’re always doing something of the kind!”

“I guess you’re glad I stuck around, ain’t you?” laughed Carl. “You’d ’a’ had a nice time in that den of lions without my gun, eh?”

“Well, get a move on!” laughed Jimmie. “And hang on to the walls as you go ahead. This floor looks like one of the chutes under the newspaper offices in New York. And hold your light straight ahead.”

The incline extended only a few yards. Arrived at the bottom, the boys estimated that the top of the six-foot passage was not more than a couple of yards from the surface of the earth. Much to their surprise they found the air in the place remarkably pure.

At the bottom of the incline the passage turned away to the north for a few paces, then struck out west. From this angle the boys could see little fingers of light which probably penetrated into the passage from crevices in the steps of the temple.

Gaining the front of the old structure, they saw that one of the stones just below the steps was hung on a rude though perfectly reliable hinge, and that a steel rod attached to it operated a mechanism which placed the slab entirely under the control of any one mounting the steps, if acquainted with the secret of the door.

“Here’s where Miguel drops down!” laughed Jimmie, his searchlight prying into the details of the cunning device. “Well, well!” he went on, “those old Incas certainly took good care of their precious carcasses. It’s a pity they couldn’t have coaxed the Spaniards into some of their secret passages and then sealed them up!”

The passage ran on to the west after passing the temple for some distance, and then turned abruptly to the north. The lights showed a long, tunnel-like place, apparently cut in the solid rock.

“I wonder if this tunnel leads to the woods we saw at the west of the cove,” Carl asked. “I hope it does!” he added, “for then we can get to the machine and get something to eat and get some ammunition and,” he added hopefully, “we may be able to get away in the jolly old _Ann_ and leave the Indians watching an empty temple.”

“Do you suppose Miguel came into this passage when he dropped out of sight in front of the temple?” asked Jimmie.

“Of course, he did!”

“Then where did he go?”

“Why, back into the temple.”

“Through the den of lions? I guess not!”

“That’s a fact!” exclaimed Carl. “He wouldn’t go through the den of lions, would he? And he never could have traveled this passage to the end and hiked back over the country in time to drop the gate and lift the bars in front of the den! It was Miguel that did that, wasn’t it?” the boy added, turning enquiringly to his chum. “It must have been for there was no one else there.”

“What are you getting at?” asked Jimmie.

“This,” replied Carl. “There must be a passage leading from this one back into the temple on the west side. It may enter the room where the bunks are, or it may come into the corridor back by the fountain, but there’s one somewhere all right.”

“You’re the wise little boy!” laughed Jimmie. “Let’s go and see.”

The boys returned to the trap-like slab in front of the temple and from that point examined every inch of the south wall for a long distance. Finally a push on a stone brought forth a grinding noise, and then a passage similar to that discovered in the den was revealed.

“There you are!” said Carl. “There’s the passage that leads to the west side of the temple. Shall we go on in and give Sam and Pedro the merry ha, ha? Mighty funny,” he added, without waiting for his question to be answered, “that all these trap doors are so easily found and work so readily. They’re just about as easy to manipulate as one of the foolish houses we see on the stage. It’s no trick to operate them at all.”

“Well,” Jimmie argued, “these passages and traps are doubtless used every day by a man who don’t take any precautions about keeping them hidden. I presume Miguel is the only person here who knows of their existence, and he just slams around in them sort of careless-like.”

“That’s the answer!” replied Carl. “Let’s chase along and see where the tunnel ends, and then get back to Sam. He may be crying his eyes out for our polite society right now!”

The boys followed the tunnel for what seemed to them to be a long distance. At length they came to a turn from which a mist of daylight could be seen. In five minutes more they stood looking out into the forest.

The entrance to the passage was concealed only by carelessly heaped-up rocks, between the interstices of which grew creeping vines and brambles. Looking from the forest side, the place resembled a heap of rocks, probably inhabited by all manner of creeping things and covered over with vines.

As the boys peered out between the vines, Jimmie nudged his chum in the side and whispered as he pointed straight out:

“There’s the _Ann_.”

“But that isn’t where we left her!” argued Carl.

“Well, it’s the _Ann_, just the same, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” was the reply. “I presume,” the boy went on, “the Indians moved it to the place where it now is.”

“Don’t you ever think they did!” answered Jimmie. “The Indians wouldn’t touch it with a pair of tongs! Felix and Pedro probably moved it, the idea being to hide it from view.”

“I guess that’s right!” Carl agreed. “I’m going out,” he continued, in a moment, “and see if I can find any savages. You lie low till I get back. I won’t be gone very long.”

“What you mean,” Jimmie grinned, “is that you’re going out to see if you won’t find any savages. That is,” he went on, “you think of going out. As a matter of fact, I’m the one that’s going out, because the wild beasts chewed you up proper, and they didn’t hurt me at all.”

The boy crowded past Carl as he spoke and dodged out into the forest. Carl waited impatiently for ten minutes and was on the point of going in quest of the boy when Jimmie came leisurely up to the curtain of vines which hid the passage and looked in with a grin on his freckled face.

“Come on out,” he said, “the air is fine!”

“Any savages?” asked Carl.

“Not a savage!”

“Anything to eat?” demanded the boy.

“Bales of it!” answered Jimmie. “The savages never touched the _Ann_.”

Carl crept out of the opening and made his way to where Jimmie sat flat on the bole of a fallen tree eating ham sandwiches.

“Are there any left?” he asked.

“Half a bushel!”

“Then perhaps the others stand some chance of getting one or two.”

“There’s more than we can all eat before to-morrow morning,” Jimmie answered. “And if the relief train doesn’t come before that time we’ll mount the _Ann_ and glide away.”

While the boys sat eating their sandwiches and enjoying the clear sweet air of the morning, there came an especially savage chorus of yells from the direction of the temple.

“The Indians seem to be a mighty enthusiastic race!” declared Jimmie. “Suppose we go to the _Ann_, grab the provisions, and go back to the temple just to see what they’re amusing themselves with now!”

This suggestion meeting with favor, the boys proceeded to the aeroplane which was only a short distance away and loaded themselves down with provisions and cartridges. During their journey they saw not the slightest indications of the Indians. It was quite evident that they were all occupied with the _siege_ of the temple.

On leaving the entrance, the boys restored the vines so far as possible to their original condition and filled their automatics with cartridges.

“No one will ever catch me without cartridges again,” Carl declared as he patted his weapon. “The idea of getting into a den of lions with only four shots between us and destruction!”

“Well, hurry up!” cried Jimmie. “I know from the accent the Indians placed on the last syllable that there’s something doing at the temple. And Sam, you know, hasn’t got many cartridges.”

“I wouldn’t run very fast,” declared Carl, “if I knew that the Indians had captured Miguel. That’s the ruffian who shut us into the den of lions!”

When the boys came to the passage opening from the tunnel on the west of the temple, they turned into it and proceeded a few yards south. Here they found an opening which led undoubtedly directly to the rear of the corridor in the vicinity of the fountain.

The stone which had in past years concealed the mouth of this passage had evidently not been used for a long time, for it lay broken into fragments on the stone floor.

When the boys came to the end of the passage, they saw by the slices of light which lay between the stones that they were facing the corridor from the rear. They knew well enough that somewhere in that vicinity was a door opening into the temple, but for some moments they could not find it. At last Jimmie, prying into a crack with his knife, struck a piece of metal and the stone dropped backward.

He was about to crawl through into the corridor when Carl caught him by one leg and held him back. It took the lad only an instant to comprehend what was going on. A horde of savages was crowding up the steps and into the temple itself, and Sam stood in the middle of the corridor with a smoking weapon in his hand.

As the boys looked he threw the automatic into the faces of the onrushing crowd as if its usefulness had departed.