"Gollyation!" quoth Washington White. "Has dem rapscallawags done harmed de ole perfesser?"
"I am perfectly safe, Washington," said Professor Henderson, appearing at the door of the cabin. "And here are the boys and Andy. I am relieved to see you all alive again--I really am."
"Ain"t this been a gee-whizzer of a storm?" queried the oil man, holding the two Aleuts at arm"s length.
Already the boys and Andy were tearing down the steep path. They traveled like goats--as surefooted and as light upon their feet.
Professor Henderson watched their career in evident interest. Then, gingerly, trying the feat curiously, the old gentleman sprang for a small boulder beside the cabin. He leaped entirely over it.
"Light! Light as air!" he murmured. "This is a most puzzling circ.u.mstance."
"Now, you fellows," growled Phineas, urging the two Indians along to the boring machine. "You"ll get to work. I don"t care if your friends have run off and left you to do it all alone. I tell you we"ve near struck oil. I know the signs." Then he gabbled at them a bit in their own language and the Aleuts took hold of the heavy bar by which the earth-auger was turned. "They left the job--the whole of them--when that last clap came," he explained to the boys.
But Jack and Mark were not much interested in the oil hunter"s affairs.
Only Jack remarked that he thought the fat man had been foolish to arm the Aleuts, or allow them to be armed. The Indians had evidently quite gone off their heads.
"They believe that we are spirits of the air," Professor Henderson told his friends. "That we are evil spirits. And I guess that Washington flying down upon them as he did will clinch that belief in their minds."
"Did you ever hear of anything like it before in all your days, Professor?" cried Jack. "Why, we can all jump like deer. I never saw anything like it."
Before the professor could reply there came a shout from the direction of the oil man"s derrick. The two Aleuts, with their driver, had been working only a few moments at the auger. But perhaps the tool, so far down in the earth, had been ready to bite into the gas-chamber. There was a rumble from beneath that suggested to all that another "quake was at hand. Then the Indians and the fat man started away from the derrick on the run.
The auger and piping shot out of the hole like stones driven by a catapult. Following the broken tools was a column of gas, gravel, water and mud that rose two hundred feet in the air. The earth trembled, and squawking like frightened geese, the Aleuts took to the tall timber, following the trail of their more fortunate comrades who had gotten away before. And they were not alone in their fright. The white men were likewise amazed and troubled by the marvelous geyser. It was as though the oil man had bored down to the regions infernal.
CHAPTER XIII
NATURE GONE MAD
The fat man came panting to the group surrounding Professor Henderson, just as fast as he could move his feet. And never before had the boys, or the professor, or Andy, or the black man beheld such an apparently heavy man get over the ground at such speed.
"A very mysterious thing," the professor was saying again--and he did not mean the roaring, spouting geyser that was shooting gas and debris a couple of hundred feet into the air.
Nor did he have time then to explain what seemed so mysterious to him.
The descending debris threatened them all, and although they retired in a more dignified way than had the Indians from the vicinity of the spouting monster, they were all more or less disturbed by this new phenomenon.
Stones weighing from ten to twenty pounds were projected into the air, some of them crashing through the roof of the cabin when they descended.
The mud and water grew into a pool, then a lake, completely surrounding the spot where the derrick had stood and where the geyser continued to spout.
"We surely must move out," the oil man said, in much perturbation. "My shop yonder seems to be a target for those rocks. There goes another!"
"And we have got to use a forge to weld and straighten these damaged rods!" Mark cried, worriedly.
"Sorry, boy. I don"t believe any of us will be able to get at my forge till this shower of missiles stops," said Phineas Roebach.
"What needs to be done to the flying machine?" asked the professor, briskly. "Are you sure it can be repaired, Mark?"
"Very sure, sir," replied the boy.
"And you, Jack?" repeated Professor Henderson.
"We could fix it up all right before midnight," declared the other.
"But we must have a forge."
"This geyser will stop playing after a bit, we will hope," said the professor, encouragingly. "If the flying machine is not past repair we need not worry. Nor need you, Mr. Roebach. We can all get away from this region if it becomes necessary."
"Ma goodness!" gasped Washington White, who had listened to this speech with his mouth ajar. "Don"t you consider, Perfesser, dat dere has erbout "nuff happened yere fo" ter make it seem quite necessarious dat we evacuate de premises sorter promscuous an" soon like? Why, I done was sure de end ob He finish was at hand when dat las" big eart"quake hit us--I suah did!"
"I must say I don"t care to linger around here myself," muttered Andy.
"We must not lose our courage," said the professor. "Never before have I been in a position to study seismic disturbances so closely. I only regret I have not with me here the instruments I brought in the _s...o...b..rd_. And we must somehow learn the location of that volcano which is in eruption."
"It"s all right to learn the location of it," whispered Mark to Jack.
"But if we learn that we"ll be pretty sure to fly in the opposite direction--what do you think?"
"Believe me," said Jack, "I"ve got enough. The old professor is all right, but he doesn"t think about danger when his interest in any natural phenomena is aroused."
The roaring of the geyser was a most unpleasant sound and the upheaval of the stones was more than unpleasant--it threatened danger to them.
The vicinity of the oil-boring had been exceptionally free from small stones; but in half an hour one might have picked up a two-horse cartload weighing from ten to twenty pounds each.
Washington had run in and saved b.u.t.tsy in his cage, and they had all retired now to the little plateau from the verge of which Washington had made his famous leap to the backs of the two Indians. Phineas Roebach had released the dogs from the shed where they had been confined. There were twenty of the animals--three or four teams--fierce and intractable brutes as a usual thing, unless under the sharp control of their Indian drivers. But now they came whining and crouching to the feet of the human beings grouped together on the plateau.
The evening was growing clear; but the geyser continued to roar like the exhaust of some mighty engine and to throw off filth and evil-smelling gas. Professor Henderson stood there, wrapped in his furs, and penciled notes in his book with a grave enjoyment of the scene that made his companions wonder.
But Andy Sudds read signs other than those of which the professor made notes. Jack saw the old hunter watching the sledge dogs with a puzzled frown wrinkling his brow.
"What"s the matter with you, Andy?" queried the youth.
"Them dogs," declaimed the hunter.
"What about them?" "They"re plumb scart. All this disturbance and mystery has got in on them. They act just like they were seeing spooks."
"Spooks!" repeated Jack in surprise. "Do you mean to say dogs can see ghosts?"
"All dogs can smell out when things is going to happen," declared Andy Sudds. "They"re better prophets than old women, you bet you! And these dogs act to me as though we hadn"t come by the worst of our trouble yet."
Oddly enough it was Professor Henderson himself who took up the suggestion that more trouble was in the offing.
"It is my opinion, Mr. Roebach," he said, to the oil man, "that you had better remove such possessions as you can from this valley at once.
And put your dogs somewhere so that they cannot run away like your Indians. If we are balked in attempting to repair the flying machine, these dogs and sleds are what we must depend upon."
"To escape from this country, you mean, sir?" asked Mark.
"To reach Aleukan and the valley where the _Chrysothele-Byzantium_ is to be found," replied the professor, promptly.
But it was to run the chance of a rain of death to go down into the basin where the shop and cabin were situated. Further up the hillside the dogs" quarters had been built, and the sleds were there, too. The oil man and Andy Sudds looked at one another.