Part 23 (1/2)

His eyes slowly closed and his head dropped forward upon his breast and he slept.

Quickly the hours slipped away and the sun was getting low in the west, when Charley awoke. One glance at the declining sun brought him to his feet, anxiety and dread in his heart. What could have become of Walter? It took the thoroughly alarmed lad but a moment to reach the wall where his chum had disappeared. He swarmed up it like a monkey and dropped down on the other side. But no solid ground met his descending feet. Instead, he crashed through leafy boughs and landed in a tangled ma.s.s of vines. In the second before the vines gave way under his weight, Charley succeeded in grasping a limb and swinging himself in to the trunk of the tree where he found a safe resting-place between two branches. Below him yawned a gigantic pit, its edge hidden from view by the cl.u.s.tering trees.

”Walter,” he called anxiously, ”are you down there?”

”Yes,” growled his chum's voice, ”and I have been here for hours.

You're a nice companion for a man when he gets in trouble.”

”I fell asleep,” confessed Charley, sheepishly.

”Well, don't sleep any longer,” said his chum sharply. ”Help me out of this, quick. It is awful down here.”

”All right, be patient a minute and I will have you out,” Charley answered as he climbed nimbly up his tree and reached the edge of the pit. A moment's search and he found what he wanted, a long, stout grape vine strong as a rope. He cut off a piece some forty feet in length, fastened one end to the tree, and dropped the other down into the pit. ”You'll have to pull yourself out, Walt,” he called.

With the help of the grape vine and the aid of foot holds on the trees growing up from the sides of the pit, Walter succeeded in scrambling out. His face was pale and there was a look of horror in his eyes.

”I believe I would have died if I had been compelled to stay down there all night,” he declared in a voice that trembled.

”What is there down there?” asked Charley regarding his chum curiously.

”The demon work of the fiends who built this wall,” said Walter fiercely, ”It's their old stone quarry. They didn't bring rock from the coast, they just dug down till they found the kind they wanted.

And Charley, all around the sides, chained to the solid rock, are the skeletons of the workers.”

”I am right about the Spaniards building this place then,” Charley observed. ”That's the way that most Christian nation always used to treat its captives.”

”Let's go,” his chum urged, ”I guess my nerve is shaken from being down there with those skeletons so long. The sun is getting low, anyway.

We will not have time to more than get back home before dark.”

”You're right, we must go, but I wish we had time to go through the balance of those buildings,” said Charley, regretfully.

The two boys soon regained the canoe and paddled safely past the floating crocodiles.

”We haven't solved the mystery, after all,” remarked Walter, as he urged the canoe forward.

”No, but we have done far better,” declared Charley, enthusiastically, ”we have found a place where we will have ample protection in case we are attacked by the outlaws. I am in favor of moving our camp there to-morrow morning.”

”Of course that is the wisest plan,” Walter agreed, ”but since my experience in that pit I have a dread of the place.”

”That will wear off in time. Hallo, there's our island and there's the captain and Chris on the bank waiting for us.”

”I expect we will get a good lecture,” grinned Walter, ”I guess we deserve it, too.”

But the captain was so delighted over their safe return, that he let both off with a light scolding.

Over the supper, the boys related the story of their discoveries amid exclamations from the captain and Chris.

The captain readily agreed to their proposal to move camp to the larger island. ”The young chief showed me how to fix signs that would tell him which way we had gone in case we left the island before he returned,” the captain observed.