The explorers could hardly believe their eyes. Had they actually emerged from what seemed like certain disaster? It was some time before anyone spoke.
“What do you think of that one?” Karl Sutman’s voice was the first to break the silence. “Couldn’t have been much worse suspense, could there?”
“We didn’t see that we had much chance,” said Joe gravely. “And when we saw that black mass——”
“We’re out of it now, though,” the aviator said. “So why not dismiss it from your mind?”
He was put out to think that the monoplane was several miles off its course, but he refused to let that worry him, since they had had such a miraculous escape.
It did not take long, however, to make up for the lost time, for the young pilot well exceeded the hundred-and-fifty-mile-an-hour cruising speed of the monoplane.
As best he could he kept the machine as near the mountain tops as was safe, so as to make it unnecessary to use oxygen. Getting out the masks and tanks would require much time, and that was what they did not want to spare.
“There’s Mount Panta,” observed Joe, his eyes on a massive peak. “Why can’t we stop and see the archæologists—for only a few minutes, I mean? I suppose they’re still looking for Inca ruins in this region, aren’t they?”
“Yes and no,” laughed Karl. “I mean this: they’re still searching for ruins, all right, but not in this part of the Andes. I stopped to see them just before I flew after you fellows, and they told me they were going to leave for another section over to the east.”