Two Thousand Miles Below Part 31

The air of the tunnel had been blowing gently, but now it came in sharp gusts that whipped in through the mouth of the cave, while it brought an unending growl and roar like distant gunfire from deep within the earth. The breeze had swelled to a steady blast when the rock crashed down.

"But that's no use," Culver had shouted, when the deafening sound of its fall had ceased. "They'll melt it in a second with their ray."

Even as he spoke the great ma.s.s of granite softened and rolled downward as the enemy shot their ray on its lower side. The heat of it struck blastingly into the entrance to their retreat, yet still Rawson kept on, sawing doggedly with the weapon of flame at other great blocks above.

Now that distant thunder grew hugely in volume, and again the rocks trembled beneath them. The wind in the tunnel grew suddenly to a wild blast. It brought to them from a thousand other pa.s.sages, the shrill, demoniac shrieking of air that was torn and ripped on projecting ledges of rock. Mingled with it was the sound of voices that screamed in terror, and the echo of feet running in mad flight down the tunnel.

The ma.s.s of stone, that had been melting under the invisible ray, cooled to red, then to black. Outside, the tunnel, now a place of roaring winds, was lighted only by the single flame of Dean's weapon.

"They've gone!" Culver shouted. "The ray's off. Get outside! Now we'll run for it!" And, with the others, Rawson sprang to his feet and leaped out into the tunnel which was no longer a place of death.

He heard the sound of their hurrying feet and a voice that cried: "Look out for the turn--the rock's hot," but he did not look after them. He was standing squarely, bracing himself in the blast of air, still directing the flame upon a block that hung stubbornly and would not let go.

He knew that Loah alone stood near. He heard other feet; someone was returning. Then Smithy was upon him, almost jarring him from his careful pose. Smithy was shouting.

"Come back, Dean!" he cried. "Are you crazy? Don't you know they'll be after us again?"

Rawson sprang as the big rock let go. It, too, crashed deafeningly upon the floor and rolled sluggishly downward beside the high hummock of gla.s.s that the first rock had become. They bulked hugely in the pa.s.sage. They were eight or ten feet high, reaching across from one wall to the other.

Above them was still a s.p.a.ce of four feet; Rawson estimated it carefully while he looked at the ceiling above. Then he shook off Smithy's hand that was dragging at him and returned to the attack; for now, above the top of the barricade he had built, white ribbons of vapor were streaming. He had to shout to his utmost to make Smith hear above the shrill shriek of the blast.

"Steam!" he screamed into Smithy's ear. "Live steam! We could never make it--before we got to the top we'd be cooked to a pulp. I've got to block it, got to seal it off." A whole section of the ceiling tore loose as he spoke, and the wind raised its voice like the scream of a wounded animal--or the cry of an overwhelmed and stricken people--as it tore through the s.p.a.ce that remained.

It whipped the molten drops as they fell and made of them a deadly rain. Rawson, staring through the clouds of hot steam that now wrapped him about, called to Smithy to take Loah to safety, and kept the flame where it should be--until at length the last aperture was closed, the last gap in the wall filled in. And even after that Rawson kept the flame still playing above that wall till he had melted rock and more rock that flowed down to make the barrier a single heavy, solid ma.s.s.

Steam was coming now from the narrow cleft where the green light had flashed out to bar their way. But that was simple, and he sealed the gap shut with his flame.

He was gasping. The radiant heat from that molten ma.s.s had been torture that his naked body could never have borne but for the desperate necessity that drove him.

Smithy and Loah were again beside him. "Now," he choked, "we can go, but if there are any cross pa.s.sages I'll have to block them too."

"There aren't," said Smithy, and added: "I thought you were crazy.

You've saved us all, Dean; we never could have made it to the top.

That steam was getting hot--hot as if it had come right out of h.e.l.l."

"It did," said Rawson. Then the flame-thrower fell from his nerveless hand. He was swaying; his knees were trembling with weakness when Smithy and Loah, on either side, took his burned arms tenderly and helped him on where the others had gone.

Colonel Culver and a rescue party met them halfway. The Colonel had seen his men safely to the bottom of the volcanic pit. Others had run from their station beside a field gun to meet them; then Culver had called for volunteers and had gone back. And now there were plenty of willing arms to help.

The big lift, with its platforms of metal plates, awaited them at the tunnel's end. There was room on it now for all who were left; there was no crowding of men's bodies as there had been on the downward pa.s.sage. Rawson was stretched on the floor-plates, whose touch was cool to his tortured body. Loah was seated that his head might rest in her lap on that absurd little fragment of skirt. She bent above him, whispering brokenly: "Dean-San--my dear--my own Dean-San! We live, Dean-San. I can scarcely believe it, but I know that we live, for I still have you."

But Dean was able to stand when that journey was done. First, though, there were men who placed him carefully on a stretcher and carried him, when he commanded, to the crater's outer rim. On the ashy floor of the crater a big transport was waiting with idling motors, but Dean would not let them put him inside. He wanted to look out across the world, to see it in reality as he had seen it in his own mind when all hope was gone. He wanted to look out once more across Tonah Basin and let his eyes rest upon country he had known.

Loah and Smithy walked beside him, as the first-aid men carried him toward that distant rim. The rocks there were cleft--it was the place where he first had seen the inside of the crater's cup. There he had them put him down; and, with the help of Loah and Smithy, he got slowly to his feet. While they lifted him, he wondered at the sound in this desert world where no sound should be. A terrific rus.h.i.+ng, an endless roar--and then his eyes found the clouds of steam.

Below him was the Basin, the tangled wreckage of his camp. And there, where the derrick had stood, was a tall plume of white. It did not begin close to the ground--superheated steam, until it cools and condenses to water vapor, is invisible--but a hundred feet above the sand. And, from there on up, two thousand feet sheer into the air, was a straight shaft of vapor, rolling up for another thousand feet into billowing clouds that the afternoon sun turned to glorious white.

"Power!" gasped Rawson. "Power--and it will be like that indefinitely!" Then he laughed weakly. "I had to go down there to do it, to make Erickson richer, but it was worth it. In there the ocean will slowly subside. Gor and his people will find their lost lands; the column of water in the shaft will hold the back-pressure of steam.

And here, I have Loah, and that's all--but that's enough!"

He put one arm, still with the bandages of the first-aid men, about the girl. "I hope you'll be happy, dear," he said softly, and turned back. But Smithy barred the way.

"That isn't all," said Smithy jubilantly. "You see, Dean, Erickson fired you--Erickson thought you had run out on him. Instead of backing you up, he quit. So I bought them all out. Whatever is there, Dean--and it's worth more millions than I dare to think about--you own half of! Now get back on that stretcher. Just because you've saved all our necks up here on top of the earth, you mustn't think you can keep an Army s.h.i.+p waiting all day!"

(_The End._)