“Can you hear that noise?” said Ranni. “I think the river makes a fall somewhere ahead — maybe a big waterfall. We don’t want to be caught in it. I can’t get this raft out of the current.
Pilescu suddenly slipped overboard, and, taking the raft with one hand, tried to swim to the shore with it. But he could not move it from the swift current.
“Jump!” he cried to the others. “Jump, and swim. It is our only hope. We are getting near the fall.”
Everyone jumped into the water. Paul was the weakest swimmer and big Ranni took him on his back. The raft went bobbing off by itself.
Pilescu helped Mike and Jack, but it was a stiff struggle to get to the bank of the swiftly-running river. They sat there, exhausted, hoping that no robber would come by, for they had no strength to resist anyone!
They recovered after a while. The hot sun dried their clothes, and steam began to rise from them.
“I wonder what happened to the raft,” said Jack.
“We’ll go and see!” said Ranni. “The noise is so tremendous here that the waterfall, or whatever it is, can’t be very far ahead. I think it must be where that fine mist hangs in the air over there, like smoke.”
They walked on beside the river, over rough ground. The noise became louder and louder. Then they suddenly saw what happened to the mountain river!
They rounded a big rock and came to the place where fine spray flew. The great silver river rushed by them — and then disappeared completely!
No river lowed ahead. The whole of the water vanished somewhere in that little place. Ranni went forward cautiously. He called to the others:
“It’s a good thing we got off the raft when we did! The river goes right down into the earth here!”
All the others joined Ranni. The spray soaked them as they stood there, trying to see where the volume of water went to.
It really was most extraordinary. There appeared to be a great cavern or chasm in the ground into which the river emptied itself with a terrific roar. The water fell into the enormous hole and completely disappeared.
“So that’s what the robber meant when he shouted that we should soon be in the middle of the earth,” said Jack. “That water must go deep down into enormous holes and crevices among the rocks. I suppose it goes right under the surrounding mountains and comes out somewhere else as a river again. How amazing!
“What a mercy we leapt off the raft!” said Mike, feeling scared at the thought of what might have happened if they and the raft together had plunged down into the heart of the earth. “Golly! This river has an exciting course! Through the mountain, down the slope, into the Secret Forest, out again, and down this chasm. Well — there’s no way out for us here, that’s certain.”
The five travellers left the curious place, and went to sit by a sun-warmed rock to dry their spray-wet clothes once more.
“The robbers must think we are all lost in the depths of the earth now,” said Pilescu. “They will not be on the watch for us any more. That is something to the good, at any rate.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Paul
“There is only one thing to do, my little lord,” said Pilescu. “We must go back the way we came!”
“What! Up into the mountain, beside the river all the way, and back to the temple-cave?” cried Paul. “Oh, we shall never do that!”
“We must,” said Ranni. “It is the only way out. I am going to climb a high tree so that I may see where the river flows out of the mountain.”
He climbed up the biggest tree nearby, and shaded his eyes for a long time. Then he came down.
“I cannot see where the river comes forth from Killimooin,” he said. “It is too far away. But I can see where the water enters the Secret Forest — or I think I can. We must go to the east, and walk until we come to the river. We cannot miss it, for it will lie right across our path!”
“Let us have something to eat first,” said Paul. “Where is the bread? There is plenty left, isn’t there?”
There was not plenty, but there was enough. They sat and ate hungrily. Then Ranni rose, and everyone got up too.
“Now to find the river again,” said Ranni. “We will skirt the Secret Forest until we come to the rushing water. Then we will follow it upwards to the mountain!”
The Terrible Storm
Meanwhile, what had happened to the two girls? They had done as the boys had suggested, and had awakened Tooku and Yamen at once. The couple sat up in their bed, bewildered at the children’s extraordinary story. Ranni and Pilescu captured by the robbers! The statue that split into two! All the boys gone! It seemed like an unbelievable nightmare to Yamen and Tooku.
“We can do nothing tonight,” said Tooku, nursing his injured arm. “The servants would be of no use to hunt for the boys and the others. They would be too afraid. Tomorrow, early, we must send the servants to gather together the villagers of the mountain-side.”
The girls did not want to wait so long, but there was nothing else to be done. They went back to bed, but not to sleep. They cuddled together on a small couch, covered with a warm fur rug, and talked together, worried about the boys. At last, just before dawn, they dozed off, and were awakened by Yamen.
Soon everyone in the castle knew what had happened the night before. The servants went about with scared faces. Paul’s mother heard the girls’ story again and again, tears in her eyes as she thought of how Paul had marched off to rescue his men.
“He is a true little Baronian!” she said. “How glad I am that Mike and Jack are with him! Oh, why didn’t they wait until we could send soldiers or armed villagers to find Ranni and Pilescu?”
A band of people came climbing up on mountain ponies, fetched by servants of the castle and by the goatherd, Beowald. They had been amazed at the tale told to them, but all of them were determined to rescue their “little lord” as they called Paul.
Beowald was with them. He led them up the hill to the old temple-cave. The villagers shrank back in fear when they saw the queer stone images. The statue of the sitting man, at the back, was now whole again. The robbers that the boys had seen the night before had come up to the cave, found the statue in half, and, fearing that their secret had been discovered, had closed the two halves together once more and gone back into the cave below.
Peggy and Nora watched Blind Beowald put his finger into the right ear of the statue. The villagers cried out in wonder when they saw the stone man split in half, and divide slowly. Beowald pointed down to the hole that the statue hid so well.
“That is the way,” he said.
The villagers went to the hole and looked down. They shivered. They did not want to go down at all. Thoughts of mysterious magic, of mountain-spirits, filled their heads.
But one bolder than the rest slid down the rope, calling to the others to follow. One by one they went down. The girls wanted to go too, but Tooku and Yamen forbade them sternly. “This is men’s work,” they said. “You would only get in the way.” So the girls had to go back to the castle, where Paul’s mother sat waiting for news, white and anxious.
Nora and Peggy tried to comfort her by telling her of the adventures they and the boys had had before, and how they had always won through in the end. The Queen smiled at them, and sighed.
“You are adventurous children!” she said. “Wherever you go, you have adventures. I shall be glad when this adventure is over!”
There was no news at all that day. The search party did not return. Beowald came down from the temple to say that although he had listened well by the hole, he had heard nothing. For the first time he was angry with his blindness, for he badly wanted to follow his friends into the mountain. But he did not dare to, because he would be completely lost in a place he did not know.