"In there," answered Mr. Petrofsky. He and the guard murmured their good-byes, and then, with a lighted candle the faithful Nihilist had provided, and with several others in reserve, our friends stepped into the blackness. They could hear the board being pulled back into place behind them.

"Forward!" cried the exile, and forward they went.

It was not a pleasant journey, being through an uneven tunnel in the darkness. Half a mile later they emerged into a large salt mine, that seemed to be directly beneath the town. Work in this part had been abandoned long ago, all the salt there was left being in the shape of large pillars, that supported the roof. It sparkled dully in the candle light.

"Now let me see if I remember the turnings," murmured Mr. Petrofsky.

"He said to keep on for half an hour, and we would come out in a little woods not far from where our airship was anch.o.r.ed."

Twisting and turning, here and there in the semi-darkness, stumbling, and sometimes falling over the uneven floor, the little party went on.

"Did you say half an hour?" asked Tom, after a while.

"Yes," replied the Russian.

"We've been longer than that," announced the young inventor, after a look at his watch. "It's over an hour."

"Bless my timetable!" cried Mr. Damon.

"Are you sure?" asked Mr. Petrofsky.

"Yes," answered Tom in a low voice.

The Russian looked about him, flashing the candle on several turnings and tunnels. Suddenly Ned uttered a cry.

"Why, we pa.s.sed this place a little while before!" he said. "I remember this pillar that looks like two men wrestling!"

It was true. They all remembered it when they saw it again.

"Back in the same place!" mused the Russian. "Then we have doubled on our tracks. I'm afraid we're lost!"

"Lost in a Russian salt mine!" gasped Tom, and his words sounded ominous in that gloomy place.

CHAPTER XX

THE ESCAPE

For a s.p.a.ce of several seconds no one moved or spoke. In the flickering light of the candle they looked at one another, and then at the fantastic pillars of salt all about them. Then Mr. Damon started forward.

"Bless my trolley car!" he exclaimed. "It isn't possible! There must be some mistake. If we'll keep on we'll come out all right. You know your way about, don't you, Mr. Petrofsky?"

"I thought I did, from what the guard told us, but it seems I must have taken a wrong turning."

"Then it's easily remedied," suggested Tom "All we'll have to do will be to go to the place where we started, and begin over again."

"Of course," agreed Ned, and they all seemed more cheerful.

"And if we start out once more, and get lost again, then what?" asked Mr. Damon.

"Well, if worst comes to worst, we can go, back in the tunnel, go to our cells and ask the guard to come with us and show us the way went on Tom.

"Never!" cried the exile. "It would be the most dangerous thing in the world to go back to the prison. Our escape has probably been discovered by this time, and to return would only be to put our heads in the noose. We must keep on at any cost!"

"But if we can't get out," suggested Tom, "and if we haven't anything to eat or drink, we--"

He did not finish, but they all knew what he meant.

"Oh, we'll get out!" declared Ned, who was something of an optimist.

"You've been in salt mines before, haven't you, Mr. Petrofsky?"

"Yes, I was condemned to one once, but it was not in this part of the country, and it was not an abandoned one. I imagine this was only an isolated mine, and that there are no others near it, so when they abandoned it, after all the salt was taken out, most people forgot about it. I remember once a party of prisoners were lost in a large salt mine, and were missed for several days."

"What happened to them?" asked Tom.

"I don't like to talk about it," replied the Russian with a shudder.

"Bless my soul! Was it as bad as that?" asked Mr. Damon.

"It was," replied the exile. "But now let's see if we can find our way back, and start afresh. I'll be more careful next time, and watch the turns more closely."

But he did not get the chance. They could not find the tunnel whence they had started. Turn after turn they took, down pa.s.sage after pa.s.sage sometimes in such small ones that they almost had to crawl.

But it was of no use. They could not find their way back to the starting place, and they could not find the opening of the mine. They had used two of the slow burning candles and they had only half a dozen or so left. When these were gone--

But they did not like to think of that, and stumbled on and on. They did not talk much, for they were too worried. Finally Ned gasped:

"I'd give a good deal for a drink of water."

"So would I," added his chum. "But what's the use of wishing? If there was a spring down here it would be salt water. But I know what I would do--if I could."

"What?" asked Mr. Damon.

"Go back to the prison. At least we wouldn't starve there, and we'd have something to drink. If they kept us we know we could get free--sometime."

"Perhaps never!" exclaimed Ivan Petrofsky. "It is better to keep on here, and, as for me, I would rather die here than go back to a Russian prison. We must--we shall get out!"

But it was idle talk. Gradually they lost track of time as they staggered on, and they hardly knew whether a day had pa.s.sed or whether it was but a few hours since they had been lost.

Of their sufferings in that salt mine I shall not go into details.

There are enough unpleasant things in this world without telling about that. They must have wandered around for at least a day and a half, and in all that while they had not a drop of water, and not a thing to eat. Wait, though, at last in their desperation they did gnaw the tallow candles, and that served to keep them alive, and, in a measure, alleviate their awful sufferings from thirst.

Back and forth they wandered, up and down in the galleries of the old salt mine. They were merely hoping against hope.

"It's worse than the underground city of gold," said Ned in hollow tones, as he staggered on. "Worse--much worse." His head was feeling light. No one answered him.

It was, as they learned later, just about two days after the time when they entered the mine that they managed to get out. Forty-eight hours, most of them of intense suffering. They were burning their last candle, and when that was out they knew they would have the horrors of darkness to fight against, as well as those of hunger and thirst.