"That was my last match!" announced Bobolink, after a while.
"I've got just one more," said Jack, dolefully.
Paul had another, and Joe was completely out. Still there did not seem to be any end to the passage; and Paul, for the first time, began to suspect that they had made a serious mistake in deciding to go ahead, instead of retreating.
"I'm just getting played out, and that's no yarn," announced Bobolink, who had been limping for some little time, and grunting, as he would himself have said, "to beat the band."
"Suppose then, you three wait here for me,"
proposed Paul; "I'll make my way along further, and try to find out if there is any hope of finding an opening. I promise to keep one hand on the wall here, so I can get back again."
They were loth to have him go; but Joe was almost "all in" too, and Jack thought he ought to stay with the cripples. So Paul crawled away, with but one match in his possession, and feeling in anything but a cheerful mood, although he would not discourage his chums by saying a word that would add to the gloom.
He moved cautiously as he advanced, remembering how ugly that pit had looked when Bobolink struck his match; and not wishing to find himself tumbling into such a sink. Just how long he was creeping along in this way after leaving his chums Paul hardly knew, but he must have covered quite some distance. And thus far the current of air did not seem to warrant a belief that an opening was very close by.
He was feeling discouraged, and on the point of giving it up as a bad job when he tripped over some object that, of course, he had not seen in the pitch dark. In trying to save himself from falling he upset something that made quite a clatter as it struck the rocks; when to Paul's amazement he heard a voice call out:
"Who's that?" and accompanying the words came the scratching of a match.