CHAPTER XVI. “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[150] 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.”

[151]

“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[152] 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[153] 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,[154] 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[155] 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.