“There doesn’t seem to be much left to say—only more of the same. We’re in here, and we’ve got to dig our way out, if it takes a month of Sundays.”
“Huh!” Dick grunted. “The grub won’t last for more than two Sundays, if it does that; and we can’t feed the jacks on bacon and canned stuff.”
“Well,” said Larry, “you tell it. What else is there to do?”
Dick didn’t tell it, but Purdick did.
“There was a warm current of air blowing through here before that stuff fell down and stopped the hole; we all noticed it. Maybe there is another way out, at the farther end of this thing.”
“Say, that sounds like a piece of sure-enough common sense,” said Larry, jumping up. “Why didn’t we think of that before? Let’s try for it, anyhow, before we wear ourselves out with any more of the digging.”
Suiting the action to the word, they clambered back over the pile of detritus they had heaped up and got the caravan in trail again. Whatever the cavern lacked in width—though now they found it wide enough in most places—it made up in length. For hours, as it seemed to them, they wandered on and on, sometimes along level passages, but oftener going down-hill.
It was far past noon when they stopped to eat a bite of cold meat and bread left over from the breakfast cooking, and still there appeared to be no end to the crevice.
“Good goodness! we must have come miles through this thing,” Dick exclaimed, munching a mouthful of the corn-bread sandwich. “If we have to go back and dig out the way we came in——”
“Here’s hoping mighty hard that we won’t have to do that,” Larry interrupted. “How’s your hope, Purdy?”