“UNDERGROUND!”
Harry Ware struck another match. This time the two imprisoned lads did
not bother to look above them. They knew that escape in that direction
was an impossibility. Instead, they turned their attention to their
immediate surroundings.
Suddenly Percy Simmons gave a cry of triumph.
“Look! See there, Hardware, old boy, isn’t that a crack or fissure in
the rock?”
“Sure enough,” responded his companion, who had just time to notice the
crack in the rock wall of their prison before the light of the match
died out.
“Maybe we can get out that way,” sputtered Persimmons, all agog at the
thought that a means of escape had been opened to them.
“Perhaps we can, but it looks pretty narrow,” responded Hardware
dubiously. “Anyhow, it’s worth trying. Strike another match and we’ll
have a good look at it.”
A second inspection showed the boys that the fissure, though narrow,
was sufficiently wide for them to squeeze into in all probability.
Although in the event that it grew smaller further on, they would be
as badly off as before. Still, as Harry Ware had said, it was worth
trying, and the two boys clambered off the body of the unfortunate pony
and began forcing their way into the fissure. Harry Ware went first and
Percy Simmons, who was stouter, followed close behind.
For a distance of some five feet they managed to forge ahead. But
suddenly Persimmons gave a grunt.
“I’m stuck, Harry, I can’t get any further.”
“Too bad; I guess we’ll have to turn back,” Hardware started to say,
when he gave a cry of delight.
“It’s all right. It broadens out beyond here. Come on, Percy, you can
squeeze through alright.”
“I’ll try,” declared the stouter of the two youths valiantly, and, with
a violent effort, he forced himself forward. It cost him almost all
the breath in his body, but he succeeded in passing the narrow place
and then found himself beside his companion in what appeared to be a
much larger space beyond. Another match was struck which revealed the
place into which they had forced their way as a circular cave with a
dome-like roof from which water dripped in a constant shower.
It was cold and damp and the boys shuddered as the water, which was icy
cold, pattered about them as if a violent rainstorm was in progress.
“Ugh! What sort of a place have we landed in now, I’d like to know,”
muttered Percy Simmons. “Shivering snakes, it’s like a Cave of the
Rains, or something of that kind.”
“That’s so. We can’t stay here; it’s like being in a damp ice box. We
must find some way out.”
“Where do you suppose we are, anyhow?”
“Evidently in some subterranean cavern or passage that runs under the
hillside.”
“The question is, where does it come out?”
“That’s what we’ll have to see. There must be a way out.”
“Oh, of course,” assented Persimmons with suspicious eagerness.
Neither boy dared to admit, even to himself, that it was altogether a
possibility that there might not be any way out; in which case they
would be in as bad a fix as before. As for waiting at the bottom of the
hole down which White-eye had pulled them, it was beginning to grow
painfully apparent that they might stand a good chance of remaining
there till Doomsday without anyone discovering their whereabouts.
Once more matches were struck and they gazed eagerly about them. They
fully realized now that it was becoming a matter of life and death to
them to find some means of escape from this underground prison into
which, through no fault of their own, they had blundered.
But rigidly as they inspected their prison, it was some time before
they found that on one side of the cavern a low archway in the rock led
into what appeared to be another rift in the rocky formation underlying
the mountain side.
“Shall we try it?” asked Hardware as his sixth match fluttered out.
“Unanimous unicorns, yes!” was the energetic reply. “We can’t stay
here, and it’s no use going back.”
“Good, the word is forward, then.”
Hardware, as he spoke, bent low to get under the archway of living
rock, which, centuries before, had been tunneled out during some
disturbance of the earth, and once more the boys found themselves in a
narrow rift through which they could barely squeeze.
“Gracious, if this gets any narrower we are stuck for fair,” gasped
Persimmons, as they shoved and panted through the darkness.
“Don’t think of that; just say to yourself, ‘We’ve got to get out of
this,’” urged young Simmons’ companion.
In this way they went forward for some distance further when the rift
began to widen once more. Suddenly they collided with a solid wall of
rock. It appeared that the rift had come to an end.
“Shivering centipedes, we’re stuck!” groaned Persimmons abjectly.
“Hold on a minute,” counseled his companion, “wait till I strike
another match. Thank goodness, we brought a good supply of them.”
“Yes, it’s a lucky thing that Mountain Jim insisted on our filling the
match safes. We’d be in an awful fix without them.”
To the huge delight of the boys, the light showed them that the rift
branched off in two directions at the point they had reached. They had
bumped into the rocky wall that formed the apex of the triangle at
which the two new passages met the old one.
But now they faced a fresh problem. Which passage would they take?
They tossed a coin. Heads would be the right-hand one, tails the left.
The coin indicated the right-hand rift and into it, accordingly, they
struck off. The floor of the passage appeared to rise abruptly and they
soon found their further progress blocked by a rocky wall.
“Perishing panhandles, what’ll we do now?” gasped young Simmons.
“Try the other one,” was his companion’s brief response.