Mechanically, Frank lay still and mechanically he heard the quick snap as Ben closed the circuit.
The next moment there was a roar that seemed to be the tearing out of the bowels of the earth. The tunnel became filled with choking fumes and Frank knew no more till he found himself crawling back with bleeding and cut hands and face to where the others lay, also stunned from the terrific concussion of the explosion in the small space in which it occurred.
Dazed and staggering the boys still managed to regain their wits in a few minutes, and made their way down the tunnel to where Ben Stubbs had set his battery-box. To their inexpressible relief they found the hardy outcast sitting up with a cheerful grin on his countenance, dabbing away at a wound on his forehead.
“Kind ’er like settin’ in a gun-barrel, when someone pulls the trigger, eh, boys?” he remarked cheerfully, “but I guess we set off our little Fourth of July celebration just in time.”
It was even as Ben said. When they had sufficiently recovered from their daze to proceed, they discovered the bodies of the three serpents—the one Frank had shot and the two others—torn almost to rags by the force of the concussion.
“There ain’t much sarpint life left in that hole now, I’m thinking,” remarked Ben, leading the way to the edge of the chasm. The blue smoke of the explosion still curled up from it; but when they threw down some rocks by way of experiment, no answering hiss came back. Modern dynamite had wiped out the Toltecs’ watch-dogs.
CHAPTER XXII.
IN AN AEROPLANE IN AN ELECTRIC STORM.
The boys were for pressing on at once but the deliberate Ben Stubbs insisted on a stop being made to “overhaul ship,” as he put it, meaning to tend to the injuries they had all received from the hail of flying rocks driven like small shot by the blast. Had it not been for the prospector’s shouted warning to “lie flat” they would undoubtedly have fared worse. As it was a few cuts, that looked alarming but really didn’t amount to much, constituted the worst of their injuries.
Lighting his pipe Ben sat down by the battery-box and took what he called a “comft’ble smoke,” of palm-bark tobacco of his own manufacture, before he would stir a foot. After that he consented to press forward and, carrying the long stick brought for the purpose of reaching the chain, the little party started on the last stage of their journey. Grappling it with the long stick Frank brought the chain to the side on which they stood without the slightest difficulty.