“Welcome to our new home, brother,” laughed Jack, but not hilariously; “and now to drop our packs so as to rest up.”
CHAPTER XXV
Squatters’ Rights
“Yeou doan’t reckon as haow anybody kin see a fire, if so be I started a little blaze back in here, do yeou, partner?” queried Perk.
Jack knew how the other was fairly itching just to feel the warmth of a genuine campfire, under such extraordinary conditions, and hence shook his head.
“Not a Chinaman’s chance, buddy—too many crooks in the passage we took getting here. The wood I fetched in lies just back of you; and besides, a fire will save my battery, which means a heap. Go to it then, and get busy.”
Accordingly Perk lost no time in carrying out his cherished plan, for he had always vowed himself to be a “reg’lar cat o’ a fire-worshipper;” so, the match having been applied they were treated to a generous glow that revealed much more plainly the character of the wonderful cavern.
Later on the investigating Perk discovered that another fissure, shaped somewhat like a regular tunnel, led away from the central cavern, and sloped downward.
His mind seemed to still follow up that Mark Twain idea, for he had no sooner taken a good survey at the passage entrance than he gave Jack a shrewd look, and followed this up by saying ingenuously:
“Huh! if I didn’t know we was a heap o’ miles away from the ole Mississip I’d be ’clined to swear this must be the gen-u-ine cave Tom and Huck knocked ’raound in the time they found all that lost treasure. But I wonder—”
“What do you wonder, Perk?”