“No; let’s go a little farther, Jem.”
“Why, I’m so hot now, my lad, I feel as if I was being steamed like a tater. Here, let’s get back, and—”
“Hist!”
Don caught his arm, for there was another whistle, and not from the depths of the dark steamy cave, but from outside, evidently below the mouth of the cave, as if some one was climbing up.
The whistle was answered, and the two fugitives crept back a little more into the darkness.
“Ahoy! Come up here, sir!” shouted a familiar voice, and a hail came back.
“Here’s a hole in the rocks up here,” came plainly now.
“Ramsden,” whispered Don in Jem’s ear.
They stole back a little more into the gloom, Jem offering no opposition now, for it seemed to them, so plainly could they see the bright greenish-hued daylight, and the configuration of the cavern’s mouth, that so sure as any one climbed up to the shelf and looked in they would be seen.