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.