“Frankly, it’s this question of time that’s worrying me,” admitted Ned. “We could stand it several days without food, but there’s only a limited amount of air in this mine. Five of us use it up pretty fast. It’s getting stuffy up at this end of the tunnel even now and in another twenty-four hours it may become positively dangerous.”
“But what can we do?” demanded Beals. “The only way out is through that door!”
“Here’s what I was thinking,” replied Ned. “That whisky came down from the surface of the lake and up through the tunnel. I’m wondering if we can’t manage to reverse the process.”
“Are you talking about swimming under water to the end of the tunnel and then up to the surface?” cried Rogers. “Why, man, you’re crazy!”
“Don’t think of trying such a thing, Ned,” urged Dick, earnestly. “It’s a big hundred yards from where the water begins out to the end and it must be ten yards more to the surface!”
“Sure, it is,” asserted Wilbur. “Nobody but a South Sea Islander could stand a chance of getting through.”
“I’ll admit that under ordinary circumstances it would be a difficult and maybe an impossible stunt,” agreed Ned, “but I had no idea of attempting to swim any such distance. Let me ask you a question, Dick,” he continued. “After we jumped off the dump-car down there in the tunnel, how long did it take the car to get to the end of the mine?”
“Well, I would say about a minute and a half or maybe two minutes,” guessed Dick. “The cable kept running out about that long after the car disappeared below the water—if that’s what you mean.”
“Not over two minutes at the most,” was Ned’s comment. “Now that was when the car was empty; if it were loaded, it would run quite a lot faster.”
“And you’re talking about letting that dump-car carry us to the submerged end of the tunnel where we can then swim up to the surface?” demanded Rogers. “Not for mine! I haven’t the nerve!”