When Harry was once more able to reason he knew little outside of the fact that he had a severe headache, and that all was pitch-dark around him. He lay in a shallow pool with the swiftly flowing river within an arm’s length. Absolute darkness was on all sides of the youth.
For a long time he lay still, gasping for breath and putting his hand feebly to his forehead. Then he sat up and stared about in bewilderment.
“Joe!” he stammered. “Joe!”
Of course there was no answer, and then Harry slowly realized what had happened—his rapid run through the forest, his coming to the cliff, and his unexpected plunge into the river beneath.
“I’m still in the water,” he thought. “But where?”
This question he could not answer, nor could he explain to himself how it was that he had not been drowned. But with even so much of peril still around him he was thankful that his life had been spared.
Feeling cautiously around the pool, he soon learned which side sloped to the river, and which toward a sandy underground shore, and slowly and painfully he dragged himself up to the higher ground.
“I am not at the cliff, that is certain,” he mused, as he tried to gaze upward. “I can’t see a star.”
The conviction then forced itself upon him that he was underground, and this being so he quickly came to the conclusion that the flow of the river had carried him to this locality. But how far he was from the spot where he had taken the fall he could not imagine.
He was too weak to travel, or even to make an examination of his surroundings, and having moved around a distance of less than a rod along the bank of the underground stream he was glad enough to sink down again to rest.