CHAPTER XVI
In the Grip of Doom
The first impulse of the boys was to flee. But their limbs refused to obey them. They were as though paralyzed, rooted to the spot. Their hearts seemed to stop beating and their blood turn to ice.
Then, when it seemed to be almost upon them, the dreadful figure faded away as suddenly as it had appeared and they were again shrouded in darkness.
They were shaking as if with an ague, and neither felt ashamed of it. Coming on top of what they had already endured that day, the shock was almost beyond bearing.
They fell rather than sat down on the stone floor, their hands closely interlocked.
“Oh, Don, what was it?” quavered Teddy. “A ghost?”
“Ghost, nothing!” declared Don, trying to infuse stoutness into his denial. “You know as well as I do that there’s no such thing as a ghost.”
“I never did believe it till now,” said Teddy. “But what was that, if it wasn’t a ghost? Lots of people believe in them. Perhaps it’s the old king this tomb belongs to, and he’s come to warn us against coming here.”
“Nonsense!” replied Don.
“What was it then if it wasn’t a ghost?” challenged Don’s companion.
“How do I know?” countered Don, who by this time was getting back some of his usual self-possession. “It may have been some crazy person. Heaven knows, it’s enough to make any one crazy to be in here. It may have been a trick of some kind. Perhaps this is a robbers’ cave, and that’s a way they have to scare out intruders. I don’t know what it was, but I’m dead sure that it isn’t a ghost. And you know it isn’t, either.”
“I suppose it isn’t,” admitted Teddy, as common sense once more took the helm. “But it sure had me going for a minute.”
“Me, too,” confessed Don. “I never had such a scare thrown into me in my life.”
“If only it doesn’t come back!” sighed Teddy.
“If I had my rifle with’ me, I’d put a bullet in it,” declared Don, bitterly regretting the absence of his weapon, which had flown from his hand when he fell.
“One thing is certain, that I won’t get a wink of sleep to-night,” affirmed Teddy, staring fearfully through the dark in the direction from which the ghostly visitor had come.
“I guess I’m with you there,” replied Don.
But nature was stronger than all their beliefs and resolutions, and before long they were sleeping the sleep of absolute exhaustion, from which they did not wake until a pale suffusion of light through the cavern told them it was morning.
The light, faint as it was, brought them new courage. And if they ever needed courage, it was then.
They were ravenously hungry, but they took only a nibble at their scanty store, far more precious to them at the moment than its weight in gold. They washed it down with a mere swallow of water, and then set about discovering a way of escape from what was now their prison, but threatened to become their tomb.
“Do you know, Brick,” said Don thoughtfully, “I’ve changed my opinion about that place we fell down? I don’t believe it was a trap.”
“What was it then?” asked Teddy.
“I think it was an entrance for those who were supposed to have a right to come here,” replied Don. “In the first place, if they’d wanted to kill intruders, they’d probably have made a better job of it—put a few spikes at the bottom for them to be caught on, or some playful thing like that.”
“Don’t!” urged Brick, with a shudder.
“You see it didn’t kill us,” pursued Don.
“Born to be hung, perhaps,” conjectured Teddy.
“And then too they wouldn’t have left that passage open to the tomb,” continued Don. “They’d have walled that hole all the way around. But they didn’t. They left it open for their own purposes.”
“Well, suppose they did, what does all this lead to?”
“Just this,” replied Don. “That those who came in that way didn’t expect to go back that way. No one could climb up that toboggan. It’s too steep and it’s too slippery, and there’s absolutely nothing to hold on to. You might as well try to climb up a looking glass.
“Now if they didn’t expect to go back that way, they must have meant to get out some other way. Get me?”
“Oh!” exclaimed Teddy, as a light broke in on him. “You mean there’s some other entrance to this place?”
“Yes,” replied Don. “Though in our case, as it was in theirs, it will be an exit. There must be some such place, and it’s up to us to find it.”
The boys drew new hope from the conclusion and set out at once to look for their one hope of safety. They tried to find the source from which the light filtered in, thinking, naturally, that this would be the key to the enigma.
But search as they would, the secret evaded them. The marvelously cunning architects and engineers of ancient times had done their work well, if their intention was to confuse and bewilder any unwarranted visitor.
Another proof of ingenuity soon warned them of the necessity of keeping together. They found that the many rooms that surrounded the central hall were arranged on the principle of a maze or labyrinth, with so many and such unexpected openings, one into the other, that it was almost impossible to meet at any agreed spot. And there were so many of these rooms and passages that the vast underground construction suggested the Catacombs of Rome.
In the middle of the day they took another morsel of food and a swallow of water. Soon even this would be denied them. Again they set out on their desperate quest, tightening their belts to still the gnawings of hunger. Their tongues became swollen and their lips cracked from the thirst that tortured them.
The coming of the night found them again at their rendezvous in the central hall, baffled and defeated, no nearer the solution of their terrible problem than when they had started in the morning.
A tiny morsel of food and a sip of water were all they dared allow themselves. Then, haggard and hollow-eyed, they crouched as near as they could get to each other and—waited.
For what?
The same unspoken thought was in the mind of each.
Would that terrible figure appear again?