“Then the thing for us to do now is to keep plugging along until we get out into God’s free air again. If we can get out ourselves, we can go back to camp and get a coil of rope and boost Harry out over the edge of the pit. We never could get him through this tunnel anyway.”
“That’s the ticket!” Jack answered.
A narrow opening led from the chamber in which the boys had discovered the gold, and they followed this for a short distance only to find themselves confronted by a solid wall of rock. The tunnel seemed to end there!
“Now,” questioned Frank, “how did the water find its way out of this contraption? There must be a channel somewhere.”
Jack lowered his electric to the floor of the passage and then looked up to his chum with positive fright showing in his face.
“It went plumb down into a hole in the rock!” he said. “Here’s the hole and it isn’t large enough for a good sized terrier to crawl through.”
“Talk about getting up against the real thing!” grumbled Frank.
“Now you just wait a minute,” Jack suggested. “There’s a current of air here that doesn’t come through the passage by which we entered. It blows directly from the north.”
Eagerly the boys turned their lights toward the north wall.
“Here you are!” Frank shouted in a moment. “There’s another passage here and it’s been blocked up with stones! The cement with which the stones were sealed has dropped away, and the wind is coming through the cracks. This mine has been worked, all right!”