“Sure, the worst of the storm is; but we’ve got to get some place out of here, and there are two things we don’t want to run into,—one is Rogero’s army and the other is Injuns.”
“That’s so,” assented Billy, “have you any plan?”
“Wall,” drawled Ben, “the source of the San Juan River ought to be right around to the south of here some place, and I figure that by traveling in that direction we are bound to hit it,—if nothing hits us in the meantime. Then we can get a canoe somehow, and drift down to Greytown.”
“You’re the doctor,” remarked Billy, whose cheerfulness was fast returning.
A few hours later a dawn,—as soft and bright as if the events they had passed through had been a nightmare,—broke over the valley at their feet. It was hard for Billy to realize that the hours of horror they had gone through had been real;—but the huge stones that lay all about and the uprooted and lightning blasted trees that strewed the jungle gave but too vivid evidence that it all had been real. Suddenly a thought struck him.
The pillar of fire. It issued from the treasure cliff, and,—as nearly as he could judge,—from a spot right above the White Serpent’s Abyss! He turned to Ben with an anxious look on his face.
“Ben,” he said, “do you think that the passage is blocked?”
“What passage?” asked the practical Ben, who was looking over his revolver to make sure that it was in working order.
“Why the passage—the passage to the Toltec mines.”
Ben whistled.