“I’ll be there,” replied Jack.
“Very well. We’re about a mile offshore. We should land in fifteen minutes. Good-bye.”
Jack took off the headpiece, threw the rheostat back to zero, and looked about him, as if dazed.
He could hardly believe his luck.
CHAPTER XVI
BOB REDEEMS HIMSELF
After Jack’s departure the group which he left at the tunnel exit worked busily making what preparations were possible to receive their pursuers. Big Bob, who had jumped down into the opening, kept tossing out bricks at a furious rate, and Frank joined him and did likewise. Meanwhile, by the light of his matches, aided by the moonlight, which here in the woods, however, was not direct enough to be of any great help, Tom Barnum investigated the ground about the hole.
“As soon as the boys get out o’ there,” he reported to Captain Folsom, “we can all four of us kick down enough dirt to block up the tunnel pretty well. The earth is loose around here. That must’a been a recent cave-in. By yanking up some o’ these bushes I already loosened the soil some more.”