“If I only had matches with me,” she muttered beneath her breath. “As it is, I can’t see a foot before my face!”
She groped forward again, and after feeling about cautiously for what seemed to her an endless time finally felt her hand slip forward into emptiness.
“A hole!” she thought, with transient triumph.
“Then there is some sort of passage leading from this place!”
However, it takes the highest form of courage to go forward, accompanied by pitch darkness, into an unexplored place. Even Ruth, valiant as she always was in the face of emergency, hesitated for a moment before this test of courage. Then——
“Carry on, Ruth,” she said. “Better any known thing than this uncertainty!”
She did not really mean that. The cautious half of her begged that she stay where she was, for hours, if necessary, until the inevitable rescue party came to her aid, rather than venture into that black hole of mystery into which her hand had slid. But—would they be able to pick up her trail?
“I don’t even know that I can get all of myself into that hole,” she murmured, turning her thoughts resolutely to the present situation. She forced herself forward again and found that the aperture was large enough to admit her if she entered in a stooping posture.
There was one more moment of indecision. Then, like a swimmer prepared to plunge head-first into icy water, she gave a little gasp and entered the opening.
It was so narrow that her body grazed both sides of it as she groped slowly and painfully forward. She was now in complete darkness. The air was heavy and devitalized, and Ruth found herself breathing with difficulty.