Washington had run in and saved Buttsy in his cage, and they had all retired now to the little plateau from the verge of which Washington had made his famous leap to the backs of the two Indians. Phineas Roebach had released the dogs from the shed where they had been confined. There were twenty of the animals--three or four teams--fierce and intractable brutes as a usual thing, unless under the sharp control of their Indian drivers. But now they came whining and crouching to the feet of the human beings grouped together on the plateau. The evening was growing clear; but the geyser continued to roar like the exhaust of some mighty engine and to throw off filth and evil-smelling gas. Professor Henderson stood there, wrapped in his furs, and penciled notes in his book with a grave enjoyment of the scene that made his companions wonder. But Andy Sudds read signs other than those of which the professor made notes. Jack saw the old hunter watching the sledge dogs with a puzzled frown wrinkling his brow. "What's the matter with you, Andy?" queried the youth. "Them dogs," declaimed the hunter. "What about them?" "They're plumb scart. All this disturbance and mystery has got in on them. They act just like they were seeing spooks." "Spooks!" repeated Jack in surprise. "Do you mean to say dogs can see ghosts?" "All dogs can smell out when things is going to happen," declared Andy Sudds. "They're better prophets than old women, you bet you! And these dogs act to me as though we hadn't come by the worst of our trouble yet." Oddly enough it was Professor Henderson himself who took up the suggestion that more trouble was in the offing. "It is my opinion, Mr. Roebach," he said, to the oil man, "that you had better remove such possessions as you can from this valley at once. And put your dogs somewhere so that they cannot run away like your Indians. If we are balked in attempting to repair the flying machine, these dogs and sleds are what we must depend upon." "To escape from this country, you mean, sir?" asked Mark. "To reach Aleukan and the valley where the _Chrysothele-Byzantium_ is to be found," replied the professor, promptly. But it was to run the chance of a rain of death to go down into the basin where the shop and cabin were situated. Further up the hillside the dogs' quarters had been built, and the sleds were there, too. The oil man and Andy Sudds looked at one another. "All the stores are in the far end of the cabin," grunted Roebach. "And you can see what that geyser is doing to the shed where the tools are. There goes another stone through the roof!" "If we could only get hold of that portable forge," said Mark. "And that is what we _must_ get," exclaimed Jack. "Is the door of that shanty locked, Mr. Roebach?" "It's nothing but a skin door," replied the oil man. "But it's at the far side--fronting that old mud-slinger. Did you ever see the beat of that? _That_ stone must have weighed fifty pounds."