days that followed they could never
tell clearly afterward. It was like some horrible nightmare,
composed of hours of hacking away at the stone, and then of eating
sparingly, drinking more sparingly, and resting, to get up, and do
it all over again.

Their water was the first to give out, for it made them thirsty to
cut at the stone, and parched mouths and swollen tongues demanded
moisture. They did manage to find a place where a few drops of water
trickled through the rocky roof, and without this they would have
died before five days had passed.

They even searched, at times for another way out of the city of
gold, for Tom had insisted there must be a way, as the air in the
underground cave remained so fresh. But there must have been a
secret way of ventilating the place, as no opening was found, and
they went back to hacking at the stone.

Just how many days they spent in their horrible golden prison they
never really knew. Tom said it was over a week, Ned insisted it was
a month, Mr. Damon two months, and Eradicate pitifully said "it seem
mos' laik a yeah, suah!"

It must have been about eight days, and at the end of that time
there was not a scrap of food left, and only a little water. They
were barely alive, and could hardly wield the knives against the
stone slab. They had dug a hole about a foot deep in it, but it
would have to be made much larger before any one could crawl
through, even when it penetrated to the other side. And how soon
this would be they did not know.

It was about the end of the eighth day, and Tom and Ned were hacking
away at the rocky slab, for Mr. Damon and Eradicate were too weary.

Tom paused for a moment to look helplessly at his chum. As he did so
he heard, amid the silence, a noise on the other side of the stone
door.

"What--what's that?" Tom gasped faintly.

"It sounds--sounds like some one--coming," whispered Ned. "Oh, if it
is only a rescue party!"

"A rescue party?" whispered Tom. "Where would a rescue party--"

He stopped suddenly. Unmistakably there were voices on the other
side of the barrier--human voices.

"It IS a rescue party!" cried Ned.

"I--I hope so," spoke Tom slowly.

"Mr. Damon--Eradicate!" yelled Ned with the sudden strength of hope,
"they're coming to save us! Hurry ever here!"

And then, as he and Tom stood, they saw, with staring eyes, the
great stone slab slowly beginning to rise!

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FIGHT

The talk sounded more