“So that’s the cable you crossed on,” commented Ben, “an’ to think that it was hanging there all these two years and I never knowed it.”
“I wonder you never thought of making a bridge, Ben?” commented Harry.
“Wall, now,” drawled Ben sarcastically, “I might have done that, mightn’t I, ’ef I could have carried a big enough stick of timber down here.”
“I didn’t think of that,” replied the abashed Harry, while the other boys laughed.
“Ah, there’s a lot of things that younkers don’t think of,” responded Ben sagely; “now when I was aboard the old Dolphin, bound roun’ the Horn for China——”
“Never mind that now, Ben,” broke in Frank impatiently, “let’s get back to camp. I’m simply dying for a good feed and a sight of the Golden Eagle.”
The mention of the aeroplane was an impetus to everybody—the boys because it meant getting back to La Merced and relieving the anxiety of the people there; Billy because with a reporter’s instinct he grew restless when kept out of touch with the world no matter what exciting adventures he might have passed through, and Ben Stubbs out of pardonable curiosity to see what he called a “full-rigged air-ship.”
One by one the adventurers swung across the chasm which had been so nearly the cause of their death in the tunnel, and when Ben Stubbs, who came last, handed the end of the chain to Frank, the leader of the party hung it upon the hook where it had rested so many years with a peculiar feeling that neither he nor any other man would ever use it again.
An hour later they emerged into the bright sunlight through the Rocking Stone gate as they had dubbed it. The boys made a careful examination of its hidden mechanism as they passed out, but the Toltec mechanics who had put the hidden springs that connected it with the quesal’s eye had done their work well, and the young adventurers were no wiser after their examination than they had been before it.
The Treasure Cliff camp was just as they had left it and it seemed curious to gaze on their familiar surroundings and find them unchanged after such a strenuous period of hardship and adventure as they had encountered. Without losing time they at once started down the mountain-side for the Golden Eagle camp. Here also, things were unchanged and the boys, after a careful scrutiny of their prize craft, announced her fit for a voyage at any time.