CHAPTER XXII

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.