That point having been decided, they started. It was not long, however, before they began to realize that amidst those remarkable cones and thickets and rocky defiles it was a most difficult thing to keep their bearings.
“It seems as though we had come over this part of the ground before,” admitted Dick, “for familiar objects turn up on every hand; and yet how can that be when we have kept going straight into the northwest for nearly an hour now?”
“There is something wrong about it all, I’m afraid, boys,” declared the guide, with a distrustful shrug of his broad shoulders. “I’m thinking we will meet with some queer experiences before we see another sunrise. As for myself, I am wondering whether any of us will get through it alive.”
It was not the hostile Indians that caused Mayhew to say this, nor yet the fact that all sorts of wild beasts doubtless roamed these wild places by night. He was accustomed to taking his chances with such ordinary perils, and scorned them as a true-hearted borderer must. But, deep down in his honest heart, Mayhew feared the supernatural. What he could not understand stood for something dreadful, that sent the cold chill of apprehension up and down his backbone.
“Listen, there is the spouting water at it again!” exclaimed Roger.
True enough, they could catch a deep-throated rumbling sound that seemed to make the very atmosphere vibrate. But Dick immediately made a discovery which he voiced in excited words:
“If that be so,” he told them, “what miracle is this; for we surely hear that sound ahead of us, and all this while we have been in the belief that the great water-spout lay back yonder toward the east!”
That afforded Mayhew another opportunity to look worried.
“It’s black magic, that’s what I believe. The east has become the west! We have all been turned around, and right now I cannot say which way I am looking, although I can see the sun hanging up there above that glittering peak.”