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Stout, Rex, 1886-1975

"Under the Andes"

I've
fed you up till you've finally graduated from the skeleton class,
and you immediately begin to criticize the table. I know now what
it means to run a boarding-house. Why don't you change your
hotel?"
By the time we had finished we were pretty well tired out, but
Harry wouldn't hear of rest. I was eager myself for another look
at the exit of that stream. So, again taking up our spears, we
set out across the cavern, this time with Desiree between us. She
swallowed Harry's ridicule of her fear and refused to stay
behind.
Again we stood at the point where the stream left the cavern
through the broad arch of a tunnel.
"There's a chance there," said Harry, turning to me. "It looks
good."
"Yes, if we had a boat," I agreed. "But that's a ten-mile
current, and probably deep."
I waded out some twenty feet and was nearly swept beneath the
surface as the water circled about my shoulders.
"We couldn't follow that on our feet," I declared, returning to
the shore. "But it does look promising. At ten miles an hour we'd
reach the western slope in four hours. Four hours to
sunshine--but it might as well be four hundred. It's impossible.


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