Forthwith the boy was unceremoniously dragged on his back up the steps of the dais and dumped feet foremost down the steps of the Passage of the Toad. Then the door was closed, and he was left in utter darkness.
He lay quietly at the bottom of the stairway for a few minutes, trying to study out why he had been put in that place. Finally he laughed softly.
“Either they think I am afraid of the toad,” he said to himself, “or else they believe I am bound too securely to get free myself, and that the Pin Elves will not dare to rescue me from this terrible passage.”
After a hard struggle he succeeded in freeing himself from his bonds. Then he searched carefully in all of his pockets and found three matches. One of these he lighted, and made his way along the passage until he reached the spot where the smaller passages branched off, when his match went out.
“I’ll save the other matches to find the pin-hole in the door,” said he.
His object was to get out through the trap-door where he had first come down when he found Kitey. He believed that it would be easy to find the prison, and from there go down to the mines, where he could cheer up Wamby and the others and perhaps rescue them once more.
“Now, which of these passages is the right one?” he thought to himself. “Let me see. It was the third,—no, it was the second from this end; yes, I’m sure that is the one.”
He felt his way along the wall, entered the second opening, and slowly went along the passage in the dark until he came to the end. There he found the stairs, but instead of going up as he expected, they went down; consequently he missed his footing and also went down,—on his back,—for some little distance.
“I took the wrong passage after all,” he muttered, as he recovered his footing. “This is the one that leads to the river. I may as well go on to the end of it and take a look.”
Cautiously he felt his way down the remainder of the steps and along the passage to the door at the end. There he lighted one of the remaining matches, found the pin-hole, and opened the door. Holding the lighted match above his head, he stepped out upon the little stone platform or landing-place, and carefully examined the wall of the tunnel. “Even if I could find a boat,” he said, half aloud, “I don’t believe I’d risk going down the rapids in the dark.” Consequently he decided to make the rest of the journey to the lake on foot. On the other side of the lake was the kingdom of the Gnomes. The journey in the dark was a long and severe one, but after several hours he arrived footsore and weary at the lake, and found the boat in which he and Wamby had before sailed across moored among a large fleet on the shore. To his surprise he discovered also that the wind was already turned on, but jumping on board the boat, he arrived safely on the Gnoman shore.