CHAPTER XIV
In Utter Darkness
How long it was before he returned to consciousness, Don could not tell. It might have been minutes or it might have been hours.
Slowly, very slowly, he was able to recall what had happened to him. He had seen the cavalcade riding past. Then he had been clambering among the rocks. It had been a long climb, he remembered. There were many of the rocks and the slope had been steep. He must have barked his shins against some of them. They were very sore. Yes, he must have barked his shins. Careless of him, to be sure, but a little arnica would fix them up all right.
Was there anything else? He tried to think. Oh, yes, he had called out something. What was it he had been shouting about? Oh, it was the rock! Of course, it was the rock. Why had he not thought of that before? Well, he had thought of it now. That was something. He felt rather proud about that rock. He had been the first to see it. Good boy, Don. You are not so bad!
He lay for a moment, pleased with the recollection.
What else was there? He and Teddy had started running for it. Good old Brick! They had been running pretty fast. Why had they not got to it then? Where was the rock? Where was he?
Then suddenly the truth burst on him, and he sat up with a start, a cold perspiration breaking out all over his body.
He remembered the ground seemingly melting under his feet, the sickening descent, the crash.
He looked wildly about him, but he might as well have been blind for all that he could see. Even his hand was not visible, as he held it up before his face.
He felt of his arms and his legs, with an awful fear that one or more of them might have been broken. But they were whole, as far as he could tell, and when he tried to move them they responded.
But he was torn and scratched in innumerable places and blood was trickling from his wounds.
He dragged himself up to a standing position and propped himself against an earth wall that he could feel but not see. But his head swam so that he had to sit down again, for fear he should fall.
It was strange, he thought, that there was no light in the place. If there had been a hole for him to fall through, there should be a hole for light to come through. But absolute blackness met him as he turned his eyes upward.
He steadied himself and tried to think. What should he do? How could his uncles find him? What would Brick—
Brick! He had been right beside him. Had he also—Could he—
“Brick!” he called.
There was no answer.
“Brick!” he repeated.
There was a faint rustling, and a weak voice answered:
“That you, Don?”
The next instant Don was making his way in the direction of the voice. He caught an outstretched groping hand and his own tightened convulsively over it.
For a moment both were too deeply moved to speak. Don was the first to break the silence.
“Are you hurt, old boy?” he asked anxiously.
“Somewhat disfigured, but still in the ring,” answered Teddy, with a touch of his old levity, though his voice was far from steady. “You see you can’t shake me. I came along with you. I’m sore as a boil, but no bones broken, as far as I know. How in the mischief did we get down here?”
“How in the mischief are we going to get out?” responded Don.
“I’d give a good deal to know,” complained Teddy.
“Let’s feel our way around these walls and see if they suggest anything,” said Don.
Still badly shaken, but with their strength coming back and their heads momentarily growing clearer, the two boys groped about the walls of their prison. They discovered an almost cylindrical passage extending upward that seemed to be the one through which they had made their unexpected descent.
“Give me a back, Brick.”
Teddy bent over, and Don mounted on his back. But with hands extended to the uttermost he could touch nothing above.
Climbing was out of the question, for the walls, though of earth, were as hard and smooth as though they had been shaped by machinery and offered no crevices to which hands or feet could cling.
“Do you know, Brick, I don’t believe we fell through any natural opening. If we had, there’d be some light coming from up there. The hole wouldn’t have closed up so suddenly.”
“What’s your idea then?” asked Teddy wonderingly.
“I think there was a hinged door there, concealed by earth, that sprang back again when it dumped us here. A trap laid, perhaps, by the old Pharaoh to catch anybody who should come prying about his tomb.”
“The old gink!” exclaimed Teddy. “Who’d ever thought he had such a sour disposition?”
“That would explain why the walls are so smooth,” continued Don. “If any one wasn’t killed by the fall he couldn’t climb up again. Well, we’re in for it now, and we’re up against it for fair.”
“They must be looking for us outside,” said Teddy, sobered by their plight. “Suppose we shout to them. They may hear us.”
It was a good suggestion, and they shouted till their throats were so hoarse they could do little else but whisper.
But there were no answers except the echoes.
For some time after the boys had realized that their efforts were fruitless, they remained without speaking. Each was busy with his own thoughts. And they were not pleasant ones. Their situation dawned on them in all its horrors.
They were trapped, shut out, perhaps forever, from the sight of men, doomed possibly to die amid the lingering agonies of hunger and thirst in this subterranean enclosure, to which greater terrors were added by the darkness.
Life was sweet to them. They had barely tasted its delights, were merely standing on its threshold. The blood ran strongly through their veins. Were they to be cheated of their birthright?
From these gloomy meditations, Don roused himself with a determined shake of his shoulders.
“Brace up, Brick,” he counseled. “We’re worth a dozen dead men yet. Let’s see if we can’t find some way out of this hole.”
They felt around the walls until they found a passage, so narrow that it permitted them to walk abreast only by crowding against each other.
“Let’s go,” said Don. “Whatever it leads to can’t be any worse than this.”
They had gone along for perhaps a hundred feet when suddenly their feet slipped out from under them and they sat down with a thud on a pavement as smooth as glass and shot down a steep slope as swiftly as though they were on a toboggan!