DUG OUT
The boys realized that they had heavy work before them if they hoped to dig a way down through that mass of snow and reach the cleft in the rocks.
“Just mark out where we have to get busy, Tolly Tip,” called out Bobolink, after they had put aside their packs, and primed themselves for work, “and see how we can dig.”
“I speak for first turn with the snow shovel!” cried Jud. “It’ll bring a new set of muscles into play, for one thing, and that means relief. I own up that my legs feel pretty well tuckered out.”
The woodsman, however, chose to begin the work himself. After taking his bearings carefully, he began to dig the snow shovel deep down, and cast the loosely packed stuff aside.
In order to reach the cleft in the rocks they would have to cut a tunnel through possibly twenty feet or more of snow.
So impatient was Jud to take a hand that he soon 188 begged the guide to let him have a turn at the work. Tolly Tip prowled around, and some of the boys wondered what he could be doing until he came back presently with great news.
“’Tis smoke I do be after smellin’ beyant there!” he told them.
“Smoke!” exclaimed Bobolink, staring up the side of the white hill. “How can that be when there isn’t the first sign of a fire?”
“You don’t catch on to the idea, Bobolink,” explained Paul. “He means that those in the cave must have some sort of fire going, and the smoke finds its way out through some small crevices that lie under a thin blanket of snow. Am I right there, Tolly Tip?”
“Ye sure hit the nail on the head, Paul,” he was told by the guide.
“Well, that’s good news,” admitted Bobolink, with a look of relief on his face. “If they’ve got enough wood to keep even a small fire going, they won’t be found frozen to death anyhow.”
“And,” continued Jud, who had given the shovel over to Jack, “it takes some days to really starve a fellow, I understand. You see I’ve been reading lately about the adventures of the Dr. Kane exploring company up in the frozen Arctic regions. When it got to the worst they staved off starvation by making soup of their boots.” 189
“But you mustn’t forget,” interposed Bobolink, “that their boots were made of skins, and not of the tough leather we use these days. I’d like to see Hank Lawson gnawing on one of his old hide shoes, that’s what! It couldn’t be done, any way you fix it.”
The hole grew by degrees, but very slowly. It seemed as though tons and tons of snow must have been swept over the crest of the hill, to settle down in every cavity it could find.
“We’re getting there, all right!” declared Bobolink, after he had taken his turn, and in turn handed over the shovel to Paul.
“Oh! the Fourth of July is coming too, never fear!” jeered Jud, who was in a grumbling mood.
“Why, Tolly Tip here says we’ve made good progress already,” Tom Betts declared, merely to combat the spirit manifested by Jud, “and that we’ll soon be half-way through the pile. If it were three times as big we’d get there in the end, because this is a never-say-die bunch of scouts, you bet!”
“Oh! I was only fooling,” chuckled Jud, feeling ashamed of his grumbling. “Of course, we’ll manage it, by hook or by crook. Show me the time the Banner Boy Scouts ever failed, will you, when they’d set their minds on doing anything worth while? We’re bound to get there.” 190
The work went on. By turns the members of the relief party applied themselves to the task of cutting a way through the snow heap, and when each had come up for the third time it became apparent that they were near the end of their labor, for signs of the rock began to appear.
Inspired by this fact they took on additional energy, and the way the snow flew under the vigorous attack of Jud was pretty good evidence that he still believed in their ultimate success.
“Now watch my smoke!” remarked Tom Betts, as he took the shovel in his turn and proceeded to show them what he could do. “I’ve made up my mind to keep everlastingly at it till I strike solid rock. And I’ll do it, or burst the boiler.”
He had hardly spoken when they heard the plunging metal shovel strike something that gave out a positive “chink,” and somehow that sound seemed to spell success.
“Guess you’ve gone and done it, Tom!” declared Jud, with something like a touch of chagrin in his voice, for Jud had been hoping he would be the lucky one to show the first results.
There was no slackening of their ardor, and the boys continued to shovel the snow out of the hole at a prodigious rate until every one could easily see the crevice in the rocks.
“Listen!” exclaimed Jud just then. 191
“Oh! what do you think you heard?” asked Bobolink.
“I don’t know whether it was the shovel scraping over the rock or a human groan,” Jud continued, looking unusually serious.
They all listened, but could hear nothing except the cold wind sighing through some of the trees not far away.
“Let me finish the work for you, Tom,” suggested Paul, seeing that Tom Betts was pretty well exhausted from his labors.
“I guess I will, Paul, because I’m nearly tuckered out,” admitted the persistent worker, as he handed the implement over, and pushed back, though still remaining in the hole.
Paul was not very long in clearing away the last of the snow that clogged the entrance to the old bears’ den. They could then mark the line of the gaping hole that cleft the rock, and which served as an antechamber to the cavity that lay beyond.
“That does it, Paul,” said Jack, softly; though just why he spoke half under his breath he could not have explained if he had been asked, except that, somehow, it seemed as though they were very close to some sort of tragedy.
The shovel was put aside. It had done its part of the work, and could rest. And everybody prepared 192 to follow Paul as he pushed after the guide into the crevice leading to the cave.
The smell of wood smoke was now very strong, and all of them could catch it.
So long as the entrapped boys had a fire there was no fear that they would perish from the cold. Moreover, down under the rocks and the snow the atmosphere could hardly be anything as severe as in the open. Indeed Paul had been in many caves where the temperature remained about the same day in and day out, through the whole year.
Coming from the bewildering and dazzling snow fields it was little wonder that none of them could see plainly at the moment they started into the bears’ den. By degrees, as their eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness that held sway below, they would be able to distinguish objects, and make discoveries.
Stronger grew the pungent odor of smoke. It was not unpleasant at all, and to some of the scouts most welcome, bearing as it did a message of hope, and the assurance that things had not yet come to the last stretch.
Half turning as he groped his way onward, the guide pointed to something ahead—at least Paul who came next in line fancied that Tolly Tip was trying to draw his attention to that quarter.
In turn he performed the same office for the 193 next boy, and thus the intelligence was passed along the line, from hand to hand.
They could, by straining their eyes, discover some half huddled figures just beyond. A faint light showed where the dying fire lay; and even as they looked one of the partly seen figures was seen to stir, and after this they noticed that a little flame had started up.
Paul believed that the very last stick of wood was on the fire and nearing the end.
Bobolink could not help giving a low cry of commiseration. The sound must have been heard by those who were huddled around the miserable fire, for they scrambled to their knees. As the tiny blaze sprang up just then, it showed the scouts the four Stanhope boys looking pinched and wan, with their eyes staring the wonder they must have felt at sight of the newcomers.
Hank was seen to jab his knuckles into his eyes as though unable fully to believe what he beheld. Then he held out both hands beseechingly toward the newcomers. They would never be able to forget the genuine pain contained in his voice as he half groaned:
“Oh! have you come to save us? Give us somethin’ to eat, won’t you? We’re starvin’, starvin’, I tell you!”