“It might be thunder,” said Jack. “It sounds somewhere behind us. That’s all right. This place begins to look interesting, Dick. Suppose we go on.”
The floor of the cave was quite level here, and the place wider and higher than before, so that it was really much more a cave than a mere hole in the ground, and the boys pushed on, having plenty of light from Jack’s torch, and being in no danger of stumbling or falling.
They pushed on for a few hundred feet, and then came upon a narrow passage where they at first thought the cave ended.
Jack flashed his light ahead of him, and saw that there was evidently a chamber beyond the passage, and in a few moments they came out in it, and, to the amazement of both, saw a rude table and a bench, and on the floor some old clothes, a black mask or two, some burglars’ tools and a coarse sack.
“Hello! here’s a discovery, Jack,” cried Percival. “I shouldn’t wonder if this was some more of the plunder taken by the man with the white mustache and his accomplices.”
“It certainly looks like it,” said Jack, examining the sack and finding nothing in it; “but it strikes me that I can see a light ahead of us. Suppose we go on.”
“All right,” agreed Dick, and Jack led the way forward.