“You were a bit too previous, Mervyn,” he said. “Did you forget that the light only lasted for a few seconds?”
“I had almost persuaded myself that we should emerge into the open air within a few yards,” returned the scientist; “but I think I’ll let Chenobi take the lead. Come along; are you going to stand there all day?”
“Don’t get impatient, old chap,” retorted the Yankee; “we’re comin’ along right now.”
And now began a journey which taxed their strength to the utmost. The floor of the passage sloped almost as steeply as a house-roof, and the adventurers had the greatest difficulty in keeping their feet.
Chenobi, going barefoot, got over the ground rapidly, but with the others, in their heavy boots, slips were frequent. Hour after hour they pressed upward, pausing occasionally for rest and refreshment; then on once again with unflagging energy, knowing that each step brought them nearer to the daylight. Thrice in the course of that climb did the light of the sun penetrate the recesses of the tunnel, so that the journey must have taken them at least three days.
Then the water began to run short, and many were the anxious queries addressed to Chenobi as to the means of renewing the supply.
“There is water above,” he replied to all these questions. “Ere the light shall again strike upon the eye of the carven Ramouni our journey will be at an end.”
Thus encouraged, they increased their pace, and before long a cool breeze fanned their heated cheeks. Used as they had become to the stagnant, motionless atmosphere of the underworld, the gentle current came to the adventurers as a veritable life-giving elixir. It intoxicated them, indeed, for a little while, caused a species of madness, wherein the only thing of which they were conscious was the yearning to get out into the open. It spurred them on to such efforts that the Ayuti, for all his strength, had considerable difficulty in keeping pace with them. Never before had the prospect of gazing upon the face of Nature inspired them with such wildly delirious joy. Even the cool-blooded American succumbed to the rapture of the moment. Hope surged high within them all.
The Ayuti alone was grave and preoccupied. The hours he had spent with these new comrades had been pleasant enough, but he knew that they longed to return to their own world. They could not be happy in the gloom of the underworld. They were children of the light, and Ramouni, the sun god, was calling them back to bask once more in his bright rays; and he, Chenobi, must return to his life of solitude, to range the jungles till death came to him.
So thought the king. Little wonder that he was silent and grave. It had been better, he mused, if these white strangers had never come to his land; he would then have been content with his animals, and with the lonely life to which a cruel fate had doomed him. But now he longed for a comrade to share his solitude, and to divide the spoils of the chase. With an effort he shook off these imaginings, and applied himself more vigorously to the ascent. An hour passed by, and then an excited cry broke from Seymour: