As, even by standing on tiptoe, his fingers encountered nothing but air, he decided that they must have dropped further than he had thought at the time.
A hand reached out and took hold of him and he realized that Joe was standing beside him.
“Must have been some sort of trap door opening inward, I guess,” said the latter. “You didn’t see anything, did you, Bob?”
“No. It happened too suddenly. One minute I was reaching forward to grab hold of Cassey and the next moment I found myself flying through space.”
“Humph,” grunted Joe. “It was lucky for Cassey that we all happened to be in a bunch,” he said. “He couldn’t have gotten rid of us so quickly if we’d been scattered about——”
“As we should have been,” added Bob. “Just the same,” he added, after a minute, “I don’t suppose it would have done any good if one of us had been left up there. It must have been the men who were with Cassey who sprang the trap on us; and if that’s so, the fight would have been three to one.”
“I’d like to have tried it just the same,” said Joe belligerently. “I bet Cassey would have got a black eye out of it, anyway.”
For some time they groped around the black hole of their prison, hoping to find some way of escape, but without success. They were beginning to get tired and discouraged, and they sat down on the floor to talk the situation over.
The queer thing about this hole in the ground was that it possessed a flooring where one would have expected to find merely packed-down dirt. The flooring consisted of rough boards laid side by side, and when the boys moved upon it it sounded like the rattling of some rickety old bridge.
“There’s some mystery about this place,” said Bob. “I bet this is a regular meeting place for Cassey and whoever his confederates may be. In case of pursuit all they would have to do would be to hide in this hole and they’d be practically safe from discovery.”