CHAPTER XV
RESCUE AT HAND
For a moment Tom could be heard muttering rueful exclamations as he caressed his bruises. Jack who was next in line was trying to help him to his feet. His foot, too, struck an obstruction which caused him to lose balance. To avoid falling on Tom, he put out his arms toward the walls. Instead of meeting solid brickwork as before, however, he felt his hands encounter crumbling earth. He lurched forward, and his face was buried in a mass of mould.
Spluttering and blowing, he scrabbled around and his fingers closed over a root. It came away in his clutch. The next moment a slide of earth cascaded downward and Jack found himself leaning against a bank of dirt, an uprooted bush in one hand, and a patch of moonlight and sky overhead.
It was all clear. Where the tunnel approached close to the surface, the roof and walls had caved in. Tom had stumbled over this mound and fallen, and 135 Jack accidentally had torn away the screen of bushes obscuring the hole above.
“Come on, fellows,” he cried, delightedly, scrambling upward, while Tom Barnum, who had regained his feet and observed how the land lay, boosted him; “come on, here’s a place to get out of the tunnel.”
Quickly the others followed. They stood in the midst of a grove of trees. Some distance to the rear twinkled lights which indicated the location of the Brownell house. No sounds of pursuit reached them. But, stay. What was that? Captain Folsom bent down, his ear close to the opening whence they had climbed out and up to the surface.
“They’ve found the tunnel, I’m afraid,” he said. “They are coming.”
“Can’t we keep ’em back here?” said Bob, unexpectedly. “We can kick more dirt down into the tunnel. And we can jump down and heave out a lot of those fallen bricks, and so keep the gang back when they arrive.”