“Gosh! I couldn’t hold my breath two minutes—no, nor one minute to save my life!” gasped Tommy Beals breathless already at the bare suggestion.
“Of course, I don’t expect you fellows to try it,” Ned hastened to explain. “I’m certain I can do it. Holding my breath for a full minute or more is easy enough, if I’m not exerting myself during the time, and when I got to the end of the tunnel I’d shoot up to the surface like a cork.”
“It’s too risky! Don’t try it, Ned!” pleaded Dick.
“Well, I’m not anxious to do it,” admitted Ned. “Here’s what I had planned. It’s now four o’clock; I’ll wait one hour more, and if nobody comes to let us out by then, I’ll get out without their help. By five o’clock the sun will be well up and I’ll be able to see the light above me, which will be a big help in locating the opening and reaching the surface.”
“Here’s hoping and praying that Slugger Slade or some of his gang gets here before five o’clock!” muttered Dick Somers.
The other three echoed his sentiment, but the hour passed without a sound to break the deathlike silence and, at length, Ned Blake rose and began to remove his outer clothing.
“Bring out a dozen cases of bottles and load ’em onto the car,” he directed, and the boys obeyed without a word.
After assuring himself that the car was loaded in such a manner as to distribute the weight equally on all four wheels and lessen the chance of it jumping the track, Ned gave his final directions to Tommy Beals, who was to handle the brake on the cable-drum.
“Let her run about as you did before, Fatty, until you feel her hit the water,” Ned explained. “The instant you see by the lessening of the drag on the cable that she’s gone under, why take your foot off the brake and let her run as fast as she will. Don’t look so solemn, you fellows. In about fifteen minutes you’ll hear me opening that door for you.”
Mounting the car, Ned gave the signal, and as Beals released the brake, the heavily loaded car started and rumbled away down into the blackness with Ned Blake clinging tightly to its forward end.