This was not so easy as it looked, and before Si knew it, he was slipping down the incline. He clutched at the brushwood, but it came out by the roots, and over and over he rolled, bringing up at last against a mass of dead leaves and brush and in almost total darkness.
The fall had taken the wind out of the youth and it was several minutes before he felt able to stand up and look around him. He had bumped his forehead and likewise one elbow, but, fortunately, none of the hurts was serious.
"Gosh! If this don't beat all creation!" he gasped, peering around. "I must have come a mile a minit down that slide! Wonder how I am ever to get up again?"
The question was not an easy one to answer. In coming down he had rounded several curves, so that he could not get a view of the point from which he had started. The bottom of the pocket—for it was nothing more—was not over ten feet wide and a hundred or more feet in length. He calculated, after he had gotten his wits together, that the top was at least two or three hundred feet above him.
"Suppose I can be thankful I wasn't killed," he murmured, as he gazed up the twisting incline. "Beats all how I came down. Wonder if anybody in the crowd saw me?"
He waited for a few minutes, and then, having regained his breath, set up a shout. No answer came back, and he shouted several times in succession.
"They must have gone on," he mused. "If so, I'll have to do what I can to get out without their help."
He walked from one end of the pocket to the other twice, examining the incline from every possible point of view. Presently he discovered one place where there were numerous cracks in the rocks, and he started to crawl up, slowly and cautiously, digging his fingers into the cracks as firmly as possible.
Si was half-way to the top of the opening when something happened that scared him not a little. From one of the cracks just over his head there darted some small animal—what he could not tell. It made for the top of the incline, but in its haste lost its footing and rolled up against the boy's head. Then, as Si tried to knock it away, it went leaping on, while the poor boy, having lost his hold, rolled and slid once more to the bottom of the pocket.
"Wonder what it was," thought the boy, as he picked himself up ruefully. "Glad it didn't bite me."