“Come, come, Bill!” I called back to him; “for goodness’ sake, run. We’ll never get clear of this gang.”
“I can’t, I’m tuckered,” he gasped; “you fellers had better go on, if you’re in a hurry.”
At that moment I spied what appeared to be a deserted coal mine, only a little distance from the road. Stopping, I pointed it out to my associates and suggested that it was our only chance, since Bill was unable to keep up the pace.
“We’ll get in that, wade or swim through the water, as it may be,” I explained, “and perhaps we can hide from the enemy till night comes; then we can go on again.”
Utley objected to this, in the meantime eying the pool of water, which looked more like liquid mud than anything else, with great concern. I vow it seemed to me that he was fearful of soiling his soft hands or ruffling his collar; and such a time it was, indeed, to have so great an admiration for himself!
“Very well,” I replied to his objections, “I’m going in that hole, and you and Bill can trot as you will.” And leave them I did without another word. They continued on up the ravine, while I picked my way to the opening in the mine. I found it, as I have said, full of water that had the appearance of clay. The light shone back through the opening for thirty feet. An ordinary sized man could not stand erect, reckoning from the surface of the water to the roof. I could see fully fifty feet in this hole as I grew more accustomed to the interior, and I believed I saw a rocky shelf, easily accessible above the water. Immediately beyond it all appeared to be darkness. As I regarded it, there seemed to be only one way to reach that sweet refuge before me, and that was by getting through the mudpool.
Hiding my treasure under some leaves where there seemed to be no danger of it being disturbed, and taking a careful note of the location, I held my pistol in one hand over my head and stepped in the little mud lake, so to speak, expecting that I would have to swim to the rock. I found, much to my relief, in the beginning at least, that the water was not more than shoulder high, and gave promise of being no deeper as I advanced. Again and again, with the utmost difficulty, I kept my feet from fastening into the heavy bottom. Presently I felt myself sinking into a still more dangerous bed of some yielding substance, from which it seemed almost an impossibility to withdraw my feet. I was alarmed. If this continued, I knew what it meant to me—death by drowning at the very least, and perhaps worse: slow starvation, with death longed for at the end, unless some one came to hear my cries, and released me from a horrible imprisonment.
With hope all but gone, I made one more effort, which must have been the strength of madness, and succeeded in getting a half-dozen feet farther on, where there seemed to be firmer bottom. A cold perspiration like that I have heard visits the dying was on my brow and I was trembling like an aspen. It was well for me that I had reached a more secure footing. Looking about, I saw the rock for which I had started, and much nearer than I had believed it to be. How beautiful it looked, covered as it was with clay wash and amid its damp, unsightly surroundings. As I rested for a moment my mind was filled with the old song I had so often, in younger days, heard my father and mother sing; that hymn familiar in every part of the globe:—
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.”
For the first time in my life I caught the real spirit of what they must feel who, fully realizing their helplessness in the depths of sin, suddenly know that in the Saviour, emblemized in the Rock of Ages, they have found their eternal refuge.