“Funny thing for them to go chasing off in that way!” declared Ben.
But no one guessed the future as the aeroplanes started southward!
“You say,” Sam asked, as Pedro crouched in the corner of the temple where the old fountain basin had been, “that the Indians will never actually attack the temple?”
“They never have,” replied Pedro, his teeth chattering in terror. “Since I have been stationed here to feed and care for the wild animals in captivity, I have known them to utter threats, but until to-night, so far as I know, none of them ever placed a foot on the temple steps.”
“They did it to-night, all right!” Jimmie declared.
“Felix could tell us about that if they had left enough of his frame to utter a sound!” Carl put in.
The boys were both weak from loss of blood, but their injuries were not of a character to render them incapable of moving about.
“What I’m afraid of,” Pedro went on, “is that they’ll surround the temple and try to starve us into submission.”
“Jerusalem!” cried Jimmie. “That doesn’t sound good to me. I’m so hungry now I could eat one of those jaguars raw!”
“But they are not fit to eat!” exclaimed Pedro.
“They wanted to eat us, didn’t they?” demanded Jimmie. “I guess turn and turn about is fair play!”
“Is there no secret way out of this place?” asked Sam, as the howls of the savages became more imperative.
Pedro shook his head doubtfully. There were rumors, he said, of secret passages, but he had never been able to discover them. For his own part, he did not believe they existed.
“What sort of a hole is that den the jaguars came out of?” asked Jimmie. “It looks like it might extend a long way into the earth.”
“No,” answered Pedro, “it is only a subterranean room, used a thousand years ago by the priests who performed at the broken altar you see beyond the fountain. When the Gringoes came with their proposition to hold wild animals here until they could be taken out to Caxamarca, and thence down the railroad to the coast, they examined the walls of the chamber closely, but found no opening by which the wild beasts might escape. Therefore, I say, there is no passage leading from that chamber.”
“From the looks of things,” Carl said, glancing out at the Indians, now swarming by the score on the level plateau between the front of the ruined temple and the lake, “we’ll have plenty of time to investigate this old temple before we get out of it.”