I stood firm, while Tom was busy for a few moments, during which I heard the click of his flask. Then there were sparks as he snapped off his flint-lock pistol, but for a few times without effect; but at last he started a train of powder which burned brightly, showing us that we stood on a ledge some fifty feet above where there was the flash of water and many a grotesque rock.
“Why, Tom?”
“Why, Mas’r Harry?”
“Down on your knees!” I cried joyfully as I set the example.
For we were in the first extensive widening out of the cave, at about five hundred yards from its mouth, having emerged through an opening hitherto unknown to us from its being upon a ledge forty or fifty feet above the floor, where in that part it ran on a level with the little river.
We rose from our knees, weak as two children, and contrived to scramble down to the bottom, along which we stumbled slowly and without energy towards the cave’s mouth, going back first to where we had left our guns. Turn after turn, winding after winding, we traversed, and there was the faint dawning of light in the distance—light which grew more and more bright and glorious as we advanced, shading our eyes with our hands, till, utterly worn out, we sank down close to the entrance amongst the soft, warm, luxurious sand, when I gazed at the pale, haggard, blood-smeared face beside me, to exclaim:
“Tom, is that you?”
“Mas’r Harry,” he replied hoarsely, “poor Missus wouldn’t know you if she was here.”
It was the noon of the third day, we afterwards learned, that we had spent in these realms of darkness, and never did the bright face of nature look more glorious than it did to our aching eyes. But in spite of the intense sensation of gnawing hunger we could not proceed till we had rested. Then after bathing our faces, hands, and feet in the cold stream, we slowly journeyed to the hacienda.
“Don’t say a word about the cave, Tom,” I said, as we neared home.