“How know you that it was a gold mine?” inquired Piñone, visibly surprised at Topsie’s exclamation.
“Because, Piñone,” answered the girl, “by your descriptions we recognise the place. It was this mine that we visited with the old man of the Andes, and it was there he died. He lies buried in the bank of flowers which you mentioned, and where you found the little raft. You remember when we rejoined you in the Andes, two years ago, and all we told you? Well, that is the very river up which I and my brother voyaged.”
“Wonderful!” mused the Indian; “the medicine of the great Gualichu is inscrutable. Ay, truly it was a gold mine, stacked with piles of the precious stuff. When I and Cuastral perceived how this cave terminated, we determined to enter and explore it, and to see if by any chance there was an outlet of escape from within it. On bringing the raft up to the opening, we found that the river ran in part of the way, and the cave was dark save for a small blue light at the end. We made our raft safe to some creepers and entered, whereupon the queen Trauco sent forth an angry trumpet note from above. In entering we stepped up to our chiripas in water, but as we advanced it grew shallower and shallower, and soon barely covered our feet. We made towards the blue light at the far end, which, on reaching, turned out to come from a huge, wide fissure in the roof of the cave, which opened into two separate compartments, one on the right, the other on the left. To reach this latter, we had to follow the stream of water issuing from the cave, and suddenly came upon the river’s source. A huge deep pool lay in the centre of this compartment, fed from a mountain torrent that came dashing from the rocks above with sullen roar; and all around the pool lay lumps of gold, some big, some small, in thousands and thousands. But why describe it? Have not your eyes feasted already on those wonders? With feelings of mixed astonishment and awe we gave ourselves up to a thorough search of the cave, examining every nook and corner, to see if escape was possible without detection from the Traucos. We were busily employed in this work, when above the roar of the cataract a strange rumbling made itself heard. We paused and listened. The rumbling increased, and quickly developed into a crashing sound, as if the trees of the forest were being uprooted and hurled below with terrific violence. Outside we could hear the shrieking wind and hissing rain, and we knew that a frightful tornado had burst upon us. We were congratulating ourselves upon being safely protected from its fury, and were peering into a small cave-like aperture in the rock, when a grinding sound above our heads made us look upwards. As I did so, the blood froze in my veins, but I retained sufficient presence of mind to seize my father and push him into the little cave which we had been examining, and to follow him myself with as much speed as possible. Only just in time, though, as a huge rock came crashing down upon the spot whereon a second before we had been standing. For a few minutes we were too dazed by the danger from which we had escaped, to notice that we stood in a situation of extreme peril, in comparison with which death would indeed have been preferable. But it quickly dawned upon us, as we saw all exit from our place of refuge barred by the huge rock which had fallen in front of the cavelet’s mouth. Then, indeed, the whole horror of our position faced us as does the grinning skull of the dead, and we felt that we were doomed. Here we should die of slow hunger and thirst, with food not a stone’s throw away, with the sound of rushing water in our ears, and with tons of gold before us.
“Ah, it was terrible! In those hours of suffering my father’s raven hair turned grey.
“As if to mock us, the huge rock had fallen in such a way, that its sides were jammed against protruding masses of stone either way, and a wide gap opened from below on the outer side, large enough to admit of a big man’s head and shoulders. But on our side the rock rounded to the ground, leaving an aperture only large enough to admit one’s hand and arm. Above, too, the uneven formation of the fallen block enabled us to look out and see the outer cave, but that was all.
“Our position was enough to turn the coolest brain mad. Nothing could save us but herculean strength from outside, which could raise the rock sufficiently high to enable us to crawl under. Strong men with thick bars might have accomplished this. Alas! we were far away from human help.
“In this moment of agony I bethought me of the Trauco queen and her followers who watched outside, and for the first time felt myself longing for her presence. If she could but behold our plight, I argued to myself, she would assuredly come to our aid.
“And thus we remained for many hours, my father half stupefied with the magnitude of our misfortune, while I paced our narrow prison in an agony of suffering and mental pain. I had given up hope; I was contemplating the wisdom of a self-imposed death, for had we not our knives still by us?
“A vigorous cooing awoke me suddenly from my painful thoughts. The blood rushed to my face with a great joy. It was the Trauco queen, surrounded by her followers, who had traced us to our prison, and who would assuredly devise some method of rescue.