Rubbing his legs, Steve breathed deeply and wondered that the air was still so fresh and clean. There must be many ventilation shafts up the other tunnels, he decided, yet he and Pitch had not come across any on their way down. They must be hundreds of feet below the surface of the ground and far into the interior of Azul Island. Well, he asked himself, wasn’t that what he wanted? No, not quite—because when he started he was looking for a horse. Now he found himself in a catacomb, almost a lost world! Yes, but they go together, his mind insisted. If, as Pitch figured, the Spanish Conquistadores were responsible for the building of these tunnels, they also were responsible for the stallion on the cliff. Only those who knew the secrets of this underground world could have gotten a horse into the interior of Azul Island!

Steve continued thinking about the horse on the cliff as he rose and followed Pitch down the tunnel. A horse needed grazing land, so surely these tunnels had to lead to the surface. Surely there had to be more than just these passages running through the yellow rock. A horse couldn’t live underground. But this tunnel through which they were traveling continued to go ever downward. Was it the wrong tunnel? Should they have taken one of the others? Of all the many tunnels was there only one that led to the surface? Were they to spend days groping around behind the beam of their flashlight, as they were doing now? Were they—

Pitch came to a sudden stop and Steve bumped into him. “What is it, Pitch?” And although Steve’s voice was little more than an anxious whisper, it echoed loudly through the tunnel.

Without saying a word, Pitch turned the beam of light to the right. Steve fully expected to see another tunnel, but instead he saw a high natural cleavage in the stone. Then Pitch flashed the light inside over a long rectangular room with a jagged ceiling all of six feet high. They entered, straightening their backs and glorying in the feeling of being able to stand upright again.

Pitch slowly turned the flashlight over the walls and ceiling. They saw a ventilation shaft in the middle of the chamber. Then Pitch brought the light down a little lower. There, in front of their eyes, was a long table of heavy wood!

Running forward, Pitch stood before the table. The flashlight’s beam moved over a surface heavily laden with a fine gray dust.

“What’s that behind the table?” Steve asked suddenly.

Pitch turned the flashlight on the object on the floor, and they both saw the overturned chair. But their eyes left it for the carved crest and the lettering upon the wall behind it.