IN THE MESA DWELLERS' BURIAL GROUND.
Down, down, they plunged, bumping and scraping painfully in the darkness. Terror had deprived them of speech or the power of uttering a sound, or they would have shouted. As it was, however, when they finally landed in a heap on some hard surface at the foot of the steep declivity down which they had fallen, it was some seconds before any of them breathed a word. Then it was Jack who spoke.
"Fellows!"
"Yes, Jack." The rejoinder came out of the darkness in Walt Phelps' voice.
"Ralph, are you there?"
"No; I'm dead. That is, I feel as if every bone in my body had been broken. What in the name of Old Nick has happened?"
"Thank goodness there are no bones broken," breathed Jack thankfully, as Ralph spoke, "as to what happened, you can take your own guess on it. My idea is that there was some sort of hinged trap-door at the bottom of that altar, and that when our combined weight came upon it at the time I pulled Ralph down, the blamed old thing tipped and dumped us down in here."
"That's my idea, too," chimed in Walt. "Can't account for it in any other way. But what is 'here'? Where are we?"
"You can answer that as well as I can," was the rejoinder. "Anybody got a match? Oh, here; all right, I've got some, plenty in fact—a whole pocketful."
Jack struck a lucifer, and as its yellow glare lit up their surroundings, they could not repress a cry of astonishment. They had landed at the foot of a steep flight of stairs, at the summit of which they correctly surmised was the trap-door through which they had been so startlingly dumped.