FENN'S MISHAP
Fenn had not gone very far, in pursuit of the two Chinamen and their
white companion, before he became aware that he was not as strong as he
thought he was. In his legs there was strange trembling, and his head
felt dizzy.
"I guess I was sicker than I imagined," he said to himself, as he kept
doggedly on. "But I'll trail 'em. I'm going to find out where they are
staying, how they get to the cliff, and what it's all about."
Ahead of him Fenn could hear the trio making their way through the
underbrush. They seemed to be following some trail, as there was a
faintly-defined path through the woods at this point.
"They must be preparing to smuggle in a shipload of Chinese," thought
Fenn. "Probably it's the same gang we scared off farther down the lake.
They've come up here. Oh, if I had some way of sending word to a
government detective, I could catch 'em in the very act! But, if I can
find out where the landing place is I can show the officers how to get
to it. That is, if they don't take the alarm and skip out. They must
know me by this time."
The trail was becoming more difficult to follow. It still led toward the
lake and Fenn was sure he was on the right track. Already he had visions
of what he would do with the reward money, after he had given his chums
their shares.
"Whew! But I'm getting tired!" exclaimed the lad, after making his way
through a particularly thick bit of underbrush. "I wish some of the
fellows were along to take up the chase. I wonder if they're going much
farther?"
He paused a moment to rest, and listened intently for a sound of the
retreating footsteps of those ahead of him.
"Why," he exclaimed, after a second or two. "I can't hear them!"
There were no sounds save those made by the birds and small beasts of
the forest.
"They've distanced me!" Fern exclaimed. "I couldn't keep up with them!
Now I've lost track of them! What shall I do?"
He was trembling, partly from excitement, and partly from nervousness
and weakness. A mist seemed to come before his eyes. He looked about
him and saw, off to the left, a little hill.
"I'll climb that, and see if I can catch a glimpse of them," he said,
speaking aloud. The sound of his own voice seemed to bring his
confidence back to him. His legs lost their trembling and he felt
stronger.
Up to the summit of the hill he made his way, finding it a more toilsome
climb than he had imagined. He reached the top. Below him, stretched out
like a narrow ribbon of gray on a background of green, was the little
trail he had been following, and which had been taken by the three men.
It wound in and out among the woods, extending toward the lake, a
glimpse of the shining water of which Fenn could just catch.
Something moving on the trail caught his eye. He looked intently at it,
and, the next moment he exclaimed:
"There they are! They're hurrying along as if a whole band of detectives
was after them, instead of me alone. Now to see if I can't catch up to
them."
He gave one more look at the two Celestials and the white man, who,
every moment were nearing their goal, and then, hurried down the other
side of the hill, to cut across through the woods at the foot, and so
reach the trail.
Fenn had not gone more than a dozen steps when suddenly, having made a
jump over a large boulder in his path, he came down rather heavily on
the other side, in the midst of a clump of ferns.
There was a curious sinking of the ground, as though it had caved in.
Fenn felt himself falling, down, down, down! He threw out his hands, and
tried to grab something. He grasped a bunch of fern, but this went down
with him.
"Help! Help!" he instinctively called, though he knew no one was within
hearing, save, perhaps, those three strange men, and he did not believe
they would help him if they did hear his calls for aid.
Fenn was slipping and sliding down some inclined chute that seemed to
lead from the summit of the hill, into the interior of the earth. It was
so dark he could see absolutely nothing and all he could feel around him
were walls of dirt.
They seemed strangely smooth, and he wondered how he could slide over
them and not feel bumps from rough stones which must surely be jutting
out here and there from the sides of the shaft down which he had
tumbled.
He put out his hands, endeavoring to find something to grasp to stay his
progress, and then he discovered the reason for his smooth passage.
The walls of the curious slanting tunnel, in which he had been made an
involuntary prisoner, were composed of smooth clay. Down them water was
slowly dripping, from some subterranean spring, making the sides as
smooth and slippery as glass.
Fenn tried in vain to dig his fingers into the walls, in order to stay
his progress, but he only ran the risk of tearing his nails off, and he
soon desisted. All he could do was to allow himself to be carried along
by the force of gravity, and the incline of the tunnel was not so great
as to make his progress dangerous.
"It's the stopping part I've got to worry about," thought poor Fenn. "I
wonder what's at the end of all this?"
Suddenly, as he was sliding along, feet foremost, in the darkness, his
outstretched right hand came in contact with something that caused him
to start in terror. It was a round, thin slimy object, that seemed
stretched out beside him.
"A snake!" he exclaimed. "I've fallen into a den of serpents!"
He drew his hand quickly away, fear and disgust overpowering him for a
moment. Then the thing seemed to be at his left hand. This time, in
spite of himself, his fingers closed around it.
"A rope! It's a rope!" he cried aloud, as he vainly tried to catch hold
of it and stay his sliding downward. But the rope slipped from his
fingers, and his journey down the curious shaft was unstayed.
"This must have been dug by men," thought Fenn. "I'll wager the smugglers
had something to do with it. Why, maybe it's one of the ways they land
their men. That's it! I must be sliding right down into the lake. They
use the rope with which to pull themselves up the slippery tunnel."
This idea seemed feasible to him, and he made further efforts to grasp
the rope, in order that he might stop and pull himself up, instead of
being carried on into Lake Superior.
For that this was to be his fate he now feared, since, as near as he
could tell, the tunnel sloped in that direction. But though he
occasionally felt the rope, first on one side of him, and then on the
other, he could not get a sufficient grasp on the slippery strands,
covered as they were with clay, to check his progress.
"I guess I'm doomed to go to the bottom," he thought. "If I only fall
into deep water it won't be so bad. I can swim out. But if I land on the
rocks--"
Fenn did not like to think about it. In fact his heart was full of terror
at his strange situation, and only his natural courage kept him from
giving way to despair. But he was filled with a dogged determination to
save himself if he could, even at the end.
Though it has taken quite a while to describe Fenn's queer mishap, it did
not take him long to accomplish it. He was slipping along at considerable
speed, being shunted from side to side as the tunnel widened or narrowed,
but, on the whole, being carried onward and downward in a fairly straight
line.
Suddenly the blackness was illuminated the least bit by a tiny point of
light below and in front of him. It looked like an opening.
"There's daylight ahead," thought the boy. "That must be where the fresh
air comes from," for he had noticed that the tunnel was not close, but
that a current of air was circulating through it. Fenn was wrong as to
the source of this supply, as he learned later, but he had little time
to speculate on this matter, for, much sooner than he expected, he had
reached the spot of the light.
He saw, suddenly looming before him, an opening that marked the end of
the tunnel. The shaft gave a sharp upward turn and Fenn was shot up and
out, just as are packages that are sent down those iron chutes from the
sidewalk into store basements.
A moment later the boy, covered with mud from head to foot, found
himself on a narrow ledge on the face of a cliff overlooking Lake
Superior. He lay, partly stunned for a moment, and blinking at the
strong light into which he had come from the darkness of the shaft.
Below him rolled the great lake, on which he and his chums had so
recently been sailing in the _Modoc_. Fenn arose to his feet, and
gave a glance about him.
"It's the same place!" he murmured. "The same place where we saw the men
who so mysteriously disappeared! I'm on the track of their secret!"
He looked at the ledge on which he stood. It was long and narrow, and,
not far from where he was, he saw a partly-round opening, that seemed to
be the mouth of another shaft, leading straight down.
"Well, more wonders!" exclaimed Fenn, walking toward it. As he did so,
he was startled to see the head of a man emerge from the second shaft.
The fellow gave one look at Fenn and then, with a cry of warning to some
one below, he disappeared.
Fenn, startled and somewhat alarmed, hesitated. He was on the brink of
an odd discovery.