THE DWELLING OF A VANISHED RACE.

“Gee, it’s kind of lonesome, ain’t it?” said Pete, expressing exactly what they all felt.

Although they now stood in the presence of the long-sought goal, somehow each one of the party felt uncomfortably impressed. A nameless fear hung about the place. It was with difficulty that they shook off the feeling and examined the surroundings further.

The entrance to the cave itself must have escaped observation had one not known it was there. It was square, with a mighty cross-bar of unhewn stone supporting its summit. In this cross-bar were cut some rude hieroglyphics, but even the professor, savant though he was, could not hazard a guess at their meaning.

The professor, alone, seemed unimpressed by the gloomy majesty and mystery of the place. His eyes burned with a scientific fire and he rubbed his hands briskly together.

“At last!” he breathed, as if in an ecstasy, “who knows what unknown treasures we may reveal to the world, beyond that portal!”

“Shall we go inside?” asked Jack presently.

“We might as well now as at any other time,” said the professor, “Ralph, will you and Walter go back to the camp and get the torches?”

The lads at once hastened off on their errand. Truth to tell, they were each rather glad to get, for a short time only, out of the spell of that somber spot.

The torches referred to were of the kerosene variety, but specially made to burn for twenty-four hours continuously. They had been made to the professor’s order for the expedition.

The boys returned shortly with the illuminants. Ralph also brought a supply of matches and a canteen of water, and both boys had stuffed their pockets full of what food they could hastily get together. The professor praised their foresight and then, from his own pocket, produced a huge spool of coarse, strong thread.

“I took the hint from the classics,” he said, “you all recollect the tale of the labyrinth? Well, we will make this thread fast at the entrance, and as we go along we will unwind it. In that way if we get lost we can find our way back by feeling along the thread.”

“That’s a splendid idea,” cried Jack, “I tell you I shouldn’t much fancy the idea of going in there, unless I was pretty sure how I was going to get out again.”

“I don’t blame you,” said the professor, “and now are we all ready?”

“All right!” came in a chorus, and led by the man of science, the adventurers crossed the mystic threshold. A thrill shot through even Coyote Pete, the least impressible of the party, as they did so. How long had it been since the race of ancient dwellers of the Chinipal had swarmed those subterranean corridors, now as silent as midnight?

The torches soon became necessary for the passage sloped abruptly downward from the portal. The smoky light showed them that they were in a sort of corridor, seemingly hewn out of the rock. It was about ten feet in width and some eight or nine in height. The floor was worn almost concave by the constant tread of the feet that had passed and repassed in the bygone ages.

For some distance the sloping passage ran on, and then they suddenly found themselves in a vaulted chamber where their footsteps rang echoingly. Great stalactites hung from the roof glittering whitely as the torch light fell upon them.

“This is magnificent!” breathed the professor, “a wonderland of science.” His voice, raised a little in his enthusiasm, went booming and reverberating hollowly through the place. From the remotest corners there came rumbling back echo-like the last words of his exclamation.

“I guess we had better not talk so loud,” said Ralph, shivering a bit at this uncanny manifestation.

“No, somebody might hear you,” scoffed Walt, who was putting on an air of great assurance. Suddenly he emitted a yell and jumped about four feet. Something had crept up behind him in the darkness and laid a cold hand on the back of his neck. It was Coyote Pete who had noted the boy’s arrogance and wanted to give him a lesson. After that Walt was as quiet as a lamb.

Pressing forward, their torches showed them the entrance to another dark passage on the other side of the vaulted chamber.

“Shall we keep on?” asked the professor of his young charges.

“By all means, so far as I am concerned,” was Jack’s reply. “I don’t know about Walt, though,” he added a trifle maliciously.

“Oh, I’m all right. Don’t worry about me,” the ranch lad assured him.

“Then forward it is,” announced the professor, plunging once more into the narrow confines of a subterranean corridor.

But suddenly an alarming thing happened. A great rush of wind beat against their faces accompanied by a roaring, rushing sound, somewhat like the voice of the cloudburst on the never-to-be-forgotten night when they had lost their equipment.

In a flash their torches were extinguished and they were plunged into total darkness, something soft and clammy brushed by Jack’s head and then a perfect avalanche of the same unpleasant things was upon them. They were knocked down like ten pins by the charge, and badly scared, too, as you may imagine.

Presently the noise and the turmoil ceased, and the passage was quiet once more with the roar of the mysterious creatures dying away in the distance.

“Let’s get out of this!” cried Walt tremblingly.

“Nonsense,” said the professor. “We might have expected some such thing. Those were bats. Thousands of them, I guess, who have made their home here undisturbed for centuries.”

“Wonder if they are of the kind that suck your blood?” shuddered Ralph, with the horror of the contact of the clammy bodies still upon him.

“Vampires, you mean?” asked the professor. “No, at least I don’t think so. We are too far north for that. The vampire is found in South America, in Brazil and so on. But let us light up the torches again.”

Ralph produced the matches and a cheerful red glow soon radiated upon the stone walls and roof. A sickly, musty smell, the trace of the bats, was still in the air, however, as a reminder of their passing.

The passage soon ended, and the professor’s feet encountered a steep flight of steps cut in the stone, or so it seemed.

“Be careful, boys,” he warned, “a slip here might prove fatal.”

Very cautiously, therefore, they descended into what at first appeared to be a bottomless pit. Suddenly their torches glittered on something that shone like molten metal beneath them.

“Water!” cried the professor.

“A lake,” added Jack, raising his torch so that the light illumined what appeared to be a considerable body of water.

“Water, sure enough,” echoed Pete, “maybe it’s another subterranean river like that one at the Haunted Mesa.”

“This is no river,” said the professor. “See, its surface is as smooth as glass.”

By this time they had descended to the rocky shelf which ran all around the edge of the subterranean lake, while above their torch-light fell redly on a domed roof of dark stone.

“Look! Look!” cried Walter suddenly, “Fish!”

Sure enough, they could now see shoals of white-tinted fish swimming near the surface.

“Can it be that the light attracts them?” wondered Jack.

“Not likely,” said the professor, “I guess they are blind. It is not unusual to find fish in these subterranean lakes. Specimens have been found in our own country and in many places in Europe which boast similar bodies of water.”

Walt had been leaning over the edge of the lake intent, apparently, on trying to catch one of the blind fish. Suddenly he gave a sharp outcry, which was immediately followed by a splash.

“He is overboard!” cried Pete, rushing to the spot and throwing himself on his stomach so as to catch Walt when he rose to the surface. But at that instant a startling thing happened.

Simultaneously almost with the splash of the unlucky ranch boy, there came a sound as of some great body rushing through the water from some remote corner of the cave to which their light did not penetrate. The next instant a cry of real horror broke from all their throats as a terrible misshapen head with blind eyes reared itself above the water and darted at Walt as he rose to the surface.

It was apparently a might eel, a creature of undreamed of dimensions. Its slimy, whitish-colored body was thick as a barrel and its lothsome head and sightless slits of eyes gave it a hideously repulsive appearance.

“Pete! Pete! Save me!” shrieked Walt.

But in another instant it would have been too late had it not been for the old plainsman’s coolness. Stretching out one hand to Walt as he struggled in the water, the cow-puncher’s other hand slid to his waist. The next instant a shot rang out sharply, and they saw the monster’s head sink, a stream of red blood crimsoning the water where their torches gleamed upon it.

Trembling in every limb at this narrow escape, Walt was dragged out. The professor had had the foresight to carry with him some stimulating medicine, and a portion of this he poured down the half-fainting lad’s throat. Under its influence the naturally strong lad soon revived, but there was still a scared look in his eyes.

“What could that monster have been?” asked Jack with a shudder in his tones.

“Undoubtedly a creature of the eel or giant conger tribe,” rejoined the scientist, “I have read that some of the ancient races used to keep such creatures, and in some cases worshipped them even to the horror of nourishing them on human lives.”

“Ugh!” exclaimed Jack, “I’m glad that Coyote’s shot killed the beast. But it could hardly have been one of the original ones.”

“Hardly,” said the professor, with a smile, “but there is no reason why such creatures should not multiply, and, as we know, there are plenty of fish in the lake for them to feed upon.”

“Then there may be others in the water?” asked Ralph.

“I see no reason why not. In fact, I—but, good gracious, what is that?”

The water became suddenly violently agitated as the body of the dead eel, fully forty feet in length, arose lazily to the surface. The reason was an onrush of its brethren gathering to a cannibal feast. It was a fearsome sight to see their jaws clamping and tearing, while their long white tentacles waved.

“Let’s get away from here,” said the professor presently. “See there is another passage. Let us find out what that leads to.”

As he spoke there came a startling interruption.

A rumbling sound, somewhat as if a heavy train were passing overhead, filled the cavern. It shook violently and the waters of the lake became wildly agitated. The monsters at once left their feast and sank into the lake, leaving the mangled body of their dead mate floating on the surface.

The rumbling grew louder and the cavern shook till the lake was lashed into little wavelets.

“It is the voice of the Trembling Mountain,” said the professor solemnly; “somewhere the mighty forces of nature’s forges are at work.”