CHAPTER XVI

SWALLOWED UP BY THE DARKNESS

At first the full measure of the calamity did not come home to the boys. It was irritating, of course, to find themselves in the dark with no possible way of making a light. The blackness was so intense that they could not even see a hand before the face.

Herb turned, stumbled over something and almost lost his balance.

“Confound this dark,” he grumbled. “I could have sworn I had those matches.”

“Feel in your pockets, fellows,” commanded Bob sharply. Perhaps more than any of the other boys he realized the seriousness of their predicament. “Without a light we’re going to have a hard time getting out of here.”

But, feel as they would in every pocket they possessed, the boys were at last obliged to confess that they had not a match among them.

“Oh, we can remember the way back, all right,” said Herb, assuming a confidence he was very far from feeling. “All we have to do is follow this wall till we come to the end of it.”

“Yes,” said Bob with a touch of irony in his voice. “Then what?”

“Then we turn to the right—or was it the left?” faltered Herb, and Bob laughed.

“That’s just what I’d like to know,” he said, then went on, with sudden resolution in his tone: “There’s no use dodging the fact, fellows, that we’re in a pretty tight fix. If we get out of this black hole all right it will be more luck than anything else. However, the sooner we start trying the better.”

“If we go slowly and try to remember the way we came in, we’ll be all right,” said Joe. “I think I know the direction. Come on, follow me, fellows, and we all may be happy yet.”

They turned and slowly felt their way back along the damp earthy walls of the tunnel. They came to the end of it and then, following Joe’s advice, turned to the left.

Along this passageway they carefully felt their way, and, once more coming to the end of it, this time turned to the right. This was the way, Joe was confident, that they had come. All they needed to do was to follow their noses and they could not fail but be all right.

Poor Joe! His confidence was short-lived. For, when they came to the end of this passageway, instead of seeing before them daylight from the mouth of the cave, there was still that maddening pitch blackness.

They stood irresolute, without the slightest idea which way to turn next.

“This is what I call rotten luck!” groaned Jimmy. “Here I am starving to death and we may not be able to get out of this place for another hour.”

“Humph,” put in Bob grimly. “We’ll be mighty lucky if we get out at all. It would be hard enough to find our way around with a light, but now——”

“Say, wouldn’t you think we’d have had more sense?” growled Herb. “I’ve got a good ball of cord in my pocket and we could easily have attached that to something outside the cave. Then finding our way out would have been a cinch.”

“No use crying over spilled milk,” observed Joe. “It won’t help us get out. How about it, Bob? Got any ideas?”

“Not one,” admitted Bob. “As far as I can see we’re lost good and plenty.”

Jimmy groaned again.

“That’s cheerful,” he said. “When all a fellow can think of is a plate of pork and beans with——”

“Say, cut it out, can’t you?” interrupted Herb. “Isn’t it enough to know we’re going to starve to death without your making it worse with your pork and beans?”

“Starve, nothing!” Bob broke in. “Where do you get that stuff, anyway? We’re going to get out of this place if it takes all night to do it. Come on, let’s go.”

“Where to?”

“Nobody knows,” retorted Bob. “But anything’s better than standing still groaning about our luck.”

They started on again, groping their way along, the dank smell of earth and decaying wood in their nostrils and the black curtain of darkness before their eyes. It was no use. Every way they turned they were met with defeat.

“Might as well sit down and accept our awful fate,” said Herb dolefully. “I’ve barked more shins than I knew I had, and all for nothing——”

“Hey, you back there, come and see what I’ve found!”

It was Bob’s voice coming to them from a considerable distance up the tunnel. There was a ring of joyful elation in it that sent them stumbling frantically toward him.

“For the love of Pete, Bob!” yelled Joe, “what have you got?”

“A way out,” returned Bob, and, coming closer, the others could see before them the faint gray of twilight where Bob had pushed aside some intervening branches.

The boys pushed forward, stumbling over one another in their excitement.

“It’s a hole, all right,” said Herb. “But do you think it’s big enough for us to get through?”

“We’ll get through it all right,” said Bob, grimly. “Do you suppose we’re going to get this near to the good old out-of-doors without going the rest of the way? Watch me!”

He began digging with his hands at the earth about the hole and the boys eagerly followed suit. But it did not take them long to realize that any attempt to enlarge the hole was hopeless. Beneath the loose earth was a solid foundation of rock.

They sat back on their heels, gazing at one another helplessly. Suddenly Bob spoke excitedly.

“Do you know what I think?” he said. “I’ll bet just about anything I own that this hole is the entrance to the cave that we’ve been wondering about so much.”

“I bet you’re right!” agreed Joe. “It’s just about the size and everything——”

“Well, all I have to say is,” interrupted Herb, “that if that’s the case, our prospects of getting out of here aren’t very hopeful. We’ve been trying for a long while to get in this hole and couldn’t. So I must say, I don’t see how we’re going to get out.”

“Sounds reasonable enough,” admitted Bob. “Only I have a pretty good idea we’re going to get out some way. You never know what you can do till you’re desperate.”

“Go to it,” remarked Herb pessimistically. “As for me, I think I’ll go back and see if I can’t find some other way out.”

“Better stay where you are,” advised Bob, as he took off his coat and thrust it through the hole. “Now I’ll make myself as small as possible and see what happens.”

He lay down on his side and, with his arms pushed as close to his sides as possible, stuck his head through the hole and then pushed gently with his feet.

You would have said it was impossible for Bob to get through that narrow opening. The boys still thought it was. Yet, in another moment they had to change their minds. As Bob had said, “you never know what you can do till you’re desperate.”

Once it seemed, so tight was he wedged, that Bob would be doomed to spend the rest of his life there, but by a tremendous effort he finally managed to push himself the rest of the way. Then, panting and triumphant, he stood up on the other side of that hole, free.

“Well, what Bob can do, I can too,” said Joe. “Let’s go.”

He managed the feat and Herb after him, each one loosening some dirt and small stones as he wriggled his way through. It was harder for Jimmy, but by strenuous pulling they finally managed to rescue him also.

“Say,” cried Bob, drawing in deep breaths of the cool evening air, “make believe it doesn’t smell good out here!”