There were four or five boys at work, but as Harry had remarked, there was a lot of the earth and stones to remove, and they were more or less in each other’s way.
“We might call to them,” suggested Jasper Sawyer at length. “If they are not too far off they will hear us.”
“That’s all right,” agreed Blaisdell, and he and the rest of the boys shouted at the top of their voices.
There was no reply, and, indeed, Jack and Dick did not hear them, being at some distance from the mouth of the cave at this moment.
The boys presently shouted again, but still there was no response, and Harry said in great disgust:
“We are only wasting our breath. They can’t hear through all this rubbish, and they may be a good way off. I should not wonder if the cave was a big one. There are some such in the mountains along the Hudson valley, especially in these counties. Nobody bothers with them very much, but they’re here all the same.”
The boys kept hard at work removing the debris that had fallen into the entrance of the cave, but some of this consisted of great rocks, which were impossible to get rid of with the means at their disposal, and Harry presently growled, as he wiped his perspiring forehead with one hand while he leaned against the ledge with the other:
“We’ll have to blow this stuff up. If it were only earth and gravel we could do something, but there are rocks as big as a house in the hole, and we can never get rid of them.”
Several of these boulders had been uncovered by throwing aside the earth, so that Harry’s statement was seen not to be an exaggerated one, and Arthur replied:
“We have nothing to blow it up with. Would prying do any good, do you think? We have no bars, but we can get plenty of stout poles from the trees, and they will help us.”