“Good! Good! where are you?” we shouted, in terrified distress. To our intense relief an answer came back in a choky voice.
“All right; I’ve got hold of a rock. Strike a light to show me where you are.”
Hastily I lit the last remaining match. Its faint gleam discovered to us a dark mass of water running at our feet. How wide it was we could not see, but there, some way out, was the dark form of our companion hanging on to a projecting rock.
“Stand clear to catch me,” sung out Good. “I must swim for it.”
Then we heard a splash, and a great struggle. Another minute and he had grabbed at and caught Sir Henry’s outstretched hand, and we had pulled him up high and dry into the tunnel.
“My word!” he said, between his gasps, “that was touch and go. If I hadn’t managed to catch that rock, and known how to swim, I should have been done. It runs like a mill-race, and I could feel no bottom.”
We dared not follow the banks of the subterranean river for fear lest we should fall into it again in the darkness. So after Good had rested a while, and we had drunk our fill of the water, which was sweet and fresh, and washed our faces, that needed it sadly, as well as we could, we started from the banks of this African Styx, and began to retrace our steps along the tunnel, Good dripping unpleasantly in front of us. At length we came to another gallery leading to our right.
“We may as well take it,” said Sir Henry wearily; “all roads are alike here; we can only go on till we drop.”
Slowly, for a long, long while, we stumbled, utterly exhausted, along this new tunnel, Sir Henry now leading the way. Again I thought of abandoning that basket, but did not.
Suddenly he stopped, and we bumped up against him.