He gave a shiver. The top of the vat was fully three feet above his reach. What if he could not get out? He would soon perish from the extreme cold.
The vat was some ten or twelve feet in diameter, and Hal walked around the bottom in hopes of finding some spot higher than that upon which he was standing.
In this he was disappointed. The bottom of the vat was perfectly level. By the time he had discovered this fact, he was shivering so he could hardly stand upright.
He jumped up several times in hopes of getting out by that means. But though his hands once touched the upper edge of the vat, he could gain no hold, and immediately slipped back again.
"Help! help!" he cried.
Then he listened. There was no reply. Macklin and Ferris had returned to the tenement.
"I'm all alone," he muttered to himself. "I will die here, and no one will ever know what became of me."
This thought filled Hal with despair, and he again cried out, louder than before.
The cry went echoing through the vast and gloomy building, but there was no response.
"This will never do," thought the youth. "Must I die like a rat in a trap?"