“We must take turns chipping away at the stone door,” decided Tom.  “Some of us will work and some will sleep—­two and two, I guess.”

This plan was also carried out, and Tom and Eradicate took the first trick of hacking away at the door.

How they managed to live in the 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 plainly now—­a confused murmur of voices—­many of them—­the sound coming under the slowly raising stone doorway.