and let them
through. Rick breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn't been quite as
confident as Ricardo Montoya appeared to be.

Guevara paused. "May I make an announcement?" he asked.

"Certainly, senor."

Guevara called, "_Amigos!_" Montoya translated the Spanish for the boys.
"You know what you have been guarding. Now I must leave. What is left
is yours. Work as fast as you can and find many diamonds. May good
fortune be yours!"

The ring broke as the peons rushed to grab shovels. Guevara led the way
to the truck.

It was all so easy, Rick thought later, if you were an aristocratic
Montoya with a code of honor that permitted no yielding, even unto
death. No one else he had ever met could have carried it off quite so
superbly.

So fast had the Seabees swung into operation that work on the big hole
already was in progress when Montoya dropped the boys off. Pneumatic
drills hammered into the congealed lava, cutting holes in which charges
would be placed. As the boys watched, explosive was thrust into the
holes, a warning was yelled through a portable loud-speaker, and the
charge fired. Tons of rock were loosened.

Even before the dust had begun to settle, huge machines were lifting the
rock out, or dragging big chunks, and dumping them down the
mountainside. Bulldozers kept the rock moving, keeping the entrance
clear. Within minutes the hole was empty of rock and the pneumatic
drills were hammering again. The cycle was repeated.

The Seabees joked as they worked, and warned each other against shoving
a hole right through into hot lava, but the pace never slowed for an
instant.

Hour after hour the big hole deepened until the Seabees ran into noxious
gases. Then they donned gas masks and continued. Deeper and deeper the
hole was driven, until the temperature at the hole's end was over a
hundred degrees. The Seabees merely shortened working time and operated
in relays so efficiently that no time was lost.

Rick and Scotty got back to the hole as often as they could, but there
was much doing elsewhere. The Hot Springs Hotel swarmed with scientists
and observers, and there were heated conferences and late evaluation
sessions. The Spindrift scientists were always in demand, and their
faces grew gaunt as the days passed.

The hole gave its own location because of the shock waves it sent
through the earth to the recorders, and even Rick's untrained eye could
see the traces slowly closing with the magma front.

Ear