He had not gone more than a dozen feet, and had just turned a corner, which showed him a straight, long tunnel, that, he believed, led to the foot of the shaft, when, to his consternation, he heard a noise. At the same time a voice called:
“Hey! Where you goin’?”
Fenn resolved to chance all to boldness. Taking the lantern from under his coat, that he might see to run through the cave, he sprang forward, toward what he believed was the shaft down which he had come on the tree-trunk ladder.
“Stop! Stop!” called someone behind him, but Fenn kept on.
CHAPTER XXVII
A TIMELY RESCUE
Fenn’s fear, and his fierce desire to escape from the cave, lent him speed. Forward he went, faster than he had ever run before. Suddenly there loomed up before him a dim, hazy light, but it was the illumination from the sun, and not from an artificial source.
“It must be morning!” the boy thought. “I worked at that hole all night. But how is it that the sun shines down the shaft? I didn’t believe it could. There’s something strange here!”