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.

But fate was kind to them. How they managed to hit on the right gallery
they did not know, but, as they made a turn around an immense pillar of
salt Tom, who was walking weakly in advance, suddenly stopped.

"Look! Look!" he whispered. "Another candle! Someone--someone is
searching for us! We are saved!"

"It may be the police!" said Ned.

"That is not a candle," spoke the Russian in hollow tones as he looked
to where Tom pointed, to a little glimmer of light. "It is a star.
Friends, we are saved, and by Providence! That is a star, shining
through the opening of the mine. We are saved!"

Eagerly they pressed forward, and they had not gone far before they
knew that the exile was right. They felt the cool night wind on their
hot cheeks.

"Thank heaven!" gasped Tom, as he pushed on.

A moment later, climbing over the rusted rails on which the mine cars
had run with their loads of salt, they staggered into the open. They
were free--under the silent stars!

"And now, if we can only find the airship," said Tom faintly, "we can--"

"Look there!" whispered Ned, pointing to a patch of deeper blackness
that the surrounding night. "What's that."

"The Falcon!" gasped Tom. He started toward her, for she was but a
short distance from a little clump of trees into which they had emerged
from the opening of the salt mine. There, on the same little plane
where they had landed in her was the airship. She had not been moved.

"Wait!" cautioned Ivan Petrofsky. "She may be guarded."

Hardly had he spoken than there walked into the faint starlight on the
side of the ship nearest them, a Cossack soldier with his rifle over
his shoulder.

"We can't get her!" gasped Ned.

"We've got to get her!" declared Tom. "We'll die if we don't!"

"But the guards! They'll arrest us!" said the exile.

An instant later a second soldier joined the first, and they could be
seen conversing. They then resumed their pacing around the anchored
craft. Evidently they were waiting for the escaped prisoners to come up
when they would give the alarm and apprehend them.

"What can we do?" asked Mr. Damon.

"I have a plan," said Tom weakly. "It's the only chance, for we're not