“Well, I’m dying of thirst right now,” Phil said. He panted like a dog to illustrate to Ronnie how much he needed a drink. “Think I’ll go down and get one.”
“Try to hold off for a while, huh, Phil?” Ronnie asked him. “Maybe we can boil some water over this fire.”
“Sure!” Phil growled. “I’ll hold it in my cupped hands while it heats up! Be sensible, Ronnie. You know we’ve got nothing to heat it in.”
But despite his arguing, Phil apparently decided to follow Ronnie’s advice. He made no move to go below. Instead he switched the flashlight on again, and picking up Bill’s penknife, began to jab at the floor boards over his head. “Who knows,” he said, “maybe I can cut a hole through and we can climb out.”
But after five minutes of jabbing and poking and scraping Phil had made a hole no bigger than a fifty-cent piece, and hardly as deep. “Darnedest wood I ever cut into,” he complained.
“Oak maybe—or chestnut,” Ronnie answered. He opened the door to the ash box and threw in another piece of rubber. “Lumber was cheap in those days, Phil. They didn’t skimp on buildings the way Dad says they do today. I’ll bet those boards are an inch and a half thick. And you’d need a hole a foot across before we could slip through.”
“I’d need one a foot and a half!” Phil grinned. He went on working with the knife, doubling his efforts by jabbing at the wood from a greater distance and with more speed.
“Now I went and did it!” he said disgustedly. The knife blade had snapped near the hinge. He threw the broken piece of blade on the hard, dry earth and stomped on it in anger. “Why the heck did I have to try so hard?” he asked. “I’m always messing things up.”
Ronnie wanted to scold his brother for being so careless with the knife, but he bit his lip and kept quiet. They still had the small blade, if as a last resort they needed a knife. And the way things were going, it looked as if they were going to have to think of some other way to free themselves. At least an hour had passed since Ronnie had thrown on the first piece of rubber and the black smoke had rolled up the chimney. Why hadn’t someone come? Was the smoke finding a way to the top of the flues, or was it rolling out into the room overhead?
They decided then that they’d take turns at keeping the fire fed. They drew splinters of wood to see which of them would go first. Phil drew the short one. “You’ll need more kindling from time to time,” Ronnie told Phil as he prepared to go below and stretch out a bit on the shelf and maybe talk to Bill or get some sleep. “Want me to bring some up?”