A Prison House.
IN their eagerness they forgot to look around before entering the
cave. They forgot to look at the tide, which had already turned and was
creeping swiftly over the treacherous levels. They forgot everything
except that they were in the cave where once undoubtedly had been
Acadian treasures, and where, as each dreamed in his heart and denied on
his lips, some remnant of such treasures might yet lie hidden.
Will marched ahead carrying the torch and peering with eager enthusiasm
into every crevice. The cave was full of crevices, but they were shallow
and contained nothing of interest but some fair crystals of selenite,
which gleamed like diamonds in the torchlight. A few of these Reube
broke off and pocketed as specimens. The cave widened slowly as it
ascended, and the slope of its floor kept it well drained in spite of
the water ceaselessly dripping from roof and walls. Its shape was
roughly triangular, and our explorers sometimes bumped their heads
smartly in their haste.
Presently they reached a point where a narrow gallery ran off from the
main passage. Which to take was the problem.
“It seems to me,” said Reube, “that if there was any of the old
Acadians’ stuff here it would be most likely to be hidden in the smaller
passage.”
“Acadians’ stuff!” sniffed Will, sarcastically. “A lot of that we’ll
find!”
But, none the less, he acted on Reube’s suggestion, and led the way up
the side gallery. After running some twenty-five feet the gallery turned
a corner and ended in a smooth, sloping face of rock. There was no sign
of crevice or hiding place here. Across the sloping face of the rock
there ran a ledge about a foot wide some five or six feet above the
floor, and the roof of the gallery at this point ascended steeply to a
narrow and longish peak.
“No risk of bumping our heads here,” said Will, as he flung the
torchlight along the ledge and showed its emptiness.
“Better hurry back and try if we can’t finish the main cave before the
light goes out,” said Reube, pointing to the pine sliver, already more
than half consumed. Shielding the flame with his hand to make it burn
more slowly, Will led the way with quick steps back to the larger
gallery. This now became more interesting. Its walls were strewn with
most suggestive-looking pockets, so to speak, full of silt and oozy
_debris_, into which Will and Reube plunged their hands hastily,
expecting to find a coin or a silver candlestick in every one. So
fascinated were they by this task that they paid no heed to the torch
till it burned down and scorched Will’s fingers. He gave a startled cry,
but had presence of mind enough not to drop it. To make it last a little
longer he stuck it on the point of his knife and then exclaimed, in a
tone of disappointment:
“Reube, we must get out of this while the light lasts—and that’ll have
to be pretty quick!”
“Rather!” assented Reube. “Hark!”
The word was barely out of his mouth before the two lads were running
for the cave mouth, their heads bent low, their hearts beating wildly.
The sound which they had caught was a hollow wash of waves. In a few
seconds the torch went out, but there was a pale, glimmering light
before them, enough to guide their feet. This puzzled them by its
peculiar tone, but in half a minute more they understood. It came
filtering through the tawny tide which they found seething into the
cave’s mouth and filling it to the very top. Will gave a gasp of horror,
and Reube leaned in silent despair against the wall of the passage.
“The tide will fill this cave to the very top, I believe,” said he.
“Yes,” answered Will, in a voice of fixed resolve; “there’s nothing for
it but to try a long dive right out through the mouth and into the
rocks. We may get through, and it’s our only chance!”
“Go on, then, Will. Hurry, before it’s too late! And—have an eye to
mother, won’t you?” Here a sob came into Reube’s voice. “You know I’m a
poor swimmer and no diver. Good-bye!” and he held out his hand.
But Will was coolly putting on his coat again.
“I forgot that,” said he, simply. “Well, we’ll find some other way, dear
old man. Bring along your matches;” and he turned back toward the depths
of the cave.
For answer Reube merely gripped his arm with a strong pressure and
stepped ahead with a lighted match. He could not urge Will to carry out
the plan just proposed because in his heart, for all his confidence in
Will’s powers as a swimmer, he could not believe it feasible. He saw, in
imagination, his comrade’s battered body washing helplessly among the
weedy and foaming rocks; while in the cave, for all the horror of it,
there would certainly be some hours of respite—and who could say what
they might not devise in all that time? He had a marvelous faith in
Will’s resources.
In grim silence, and husbanding every match with jealous care, they
explored the main cave to its end. Its end was a horrid, round, wet
hole, a few feet deep, and not large enough to admit them side by side.
They looked each other fairly in the eyes for the first time since that
one glance when they had learned that they were entrapped. Reube’s eyes
were stern, enduring—the eyes of one who had known life long. The boy
had all gone out of them. Will’s eyes looked simply quiet and kind, but
his mouth was set and his lips were white.
“This is just a rat hole, Reube,” said he. “We won’t stay here anyway.
Seems to me it would be better to have room to stand up and meet it like
a man.”
“Yes,” replied Reube, his voice choking with a sort of exaltation at his
comrade’s courage; “we’ll go back to the little gallery with the high
roof. We’ll get up on that ledge and we’ll fight it out with the water
to the last gasp, eh? It’s pretty tough—especially for mother!”
“Well,” said Will, with a queer, low tone of cheerfulness which seemed
to his friend to mean more than cries and tears, “when I think of mother
and Ted it sort of comes over me that I’d like to say my prayers—eh?”
and for a minute or two, standing shoulder to shoulder, he and Reube
leaned their faces silently against the oozy rock in the darkness. Then,
lighting another match, they made all haste possible back to the side
gallery, ascended it, and climbed upon the ledge. Hardly had they got
there when they heard the tide whispering stealthily about the entrance
of the passage. They felt that it was marking them down in their new
retreat.
When the next match blazed up—for they could not long stand the
darkness with that creeping whisper in their ears—Will gazed steadily
at the peak of the roof above his head. The match went out.
“Another!” he cried, in a voice that trembled with hope.
“What is it?” asked Reube, eagerly.
“Roots!” shouted Will, leaping to his feet. “Tree roots coming through
the roof up there! We must be near the surface, and there is evidently a
fissure in the rock filled up with earth. We’ll dig our way out with our
knives and our fingers yet!”
“But there are no trees on the Point,” urged Reube, doubtfully.
“Thunder, Reube! but can’t there be old roots in the soil?” cried Will,
impatiently. “Dig, man, dig!” And he began clawing fiercely at the earth
above his head. Reube aided him with fervent energy, and the earth,
though hard and clayey, came down about them in a shower. Presently they
could reach no farther up.
“We must cut footholds in this rock,” said Will.
The rock was plaster, but hard, and this took time. When it was
accomplished they again burrowed rapidly toward the surface and air and
light. They were working in the dark now, because with the rise of tide
in the cave the air was growing close and suffocating. Three times they
had to cut new footholds in the rock. They toiled in silence, hearing
only each other’s labored breath and the falling of earth into the water
beneath them. The tide was now crawling over the ledge where they had
first taken refuge. There it stopped; but this they did not heed. The
fear of suffocation was now upon them, blotting out the fear of
drowning. Their eyes and ears and nostrils were full of earth. They
worked with but a blind half-knowledge of what they were doing. All at
once there came a gleam of light, and Reube’s hand went through the
turf. He clawed at the sod desperately, and a mass of it came down about
their heads. It troubled them not. There was the clear, blue sky above
them. A sweet wind caressed their faces. They dragged themselves forth
and lay at full length on the turf with shut eyes and swelling hearts.