Up and up the steep hillside they struggled, bidding the jungle good-by, negotiating shelves and rocky escarpments that turned out to be ledges ten feet high when they came to them. Far overhead towered the flat side of the mountain, almost a precipice, and the depths dropping below warned them that it would be mountaineering of the most dangerous kind.
A few more ledges; soul-harrowing crawls up rocky faces to which they clung with feet digging into tiny crevices and fingers clawing desperately at crumbly holds, and they had reached the bottom edge of the vein!
Dwight’s pick dug into the rich, red ore, and a lump of translucent scarlet crystals, hard as adamant and surrounded with a matrix of crumbling red ore, fell out into his hand. He passed it to the curator.
“We’ve sure gone through hell for it, sir!” he exclaimed. “I guess we’ve done our bit for New Guinea, eh?”
“We sure have!” exclaimed the curator, feelingly. “You and Nicky each get a specimen like this and stow it in your packs. And now, fellows, an air line for our camp on the lagoon. We can make it in two days!”
XI
THE FLIGHT TO THE COAST
DAWN was paling in the east as they crept slowly down the ledges of Red Mountain. The going down was far worse than the climb up, and the tent flies had to be called in play again to get over vertical drops of ten feet or more where one’s eyes could not see below how to climb down. Even then the haunting fear that some old pygmy watcher from the village might have spied them on the mountain side lent haste to their descent. It was with relief that they all gathered in the depths of the jungle again.
“Now, then, fellows, there’s only one way we can do this march to the coast. We three will have to keep together while Sadok scouts on ahead. Baderoon I’m going to turn loose, and let him run for it for Cassowary Camp and then down that trail to the Outanata village, where he can get a war party started back to rescue us.
“Baderoon, you-fellah run catch’m Outanata man?” he asked.
The negro grinned. He looked fresh and fit, and his long legs could take him like a moose through the jungle.