He didn't know what had happened, except for one clear thing: they had been mousetrapped. The ghost had lured them on, waiting until the pit was reached before pausing in flight to give them a chance to catch up. And the chance had turned out to be the trap.
"Rick! Can you hear me?"
"I hear you." Scotty seemed terribly far away. Then Rick saw his friend's silhouette, as a dark shape against the lesser darkness of the sky. At a guess Scotty was fifty feet up.
"Hang on while I get a light!"
Rick wondered if his pal was going all the way back to get one of the flashlights they had left behind in the precipitous chase. He wasn't worried about his ability to stay afloat.
He had his breath back somewhat now, so he paddled slowly to a point on the wall of the pit under Scotty's position. He bumped gently into rock and felt with his hands while treading water. The rock surface was rough, but the roughness was regular, the wall flat. Then his fingers felt a groove and his mind created the image to match it. A drill hole! He was in a quarry!
It made sense, Rick thought. This was good limestone country. The ghost had simply led them to an abandoned limestone quarry, and he had obligingly fallen in! A miracle he hadn't broken his neck.
Yellow light cut the darkness and he looked up. Scotty apparently didn't intend to be caught without matches again, for in a moment he appeared, a torch of dry twigs in his hand. It blazed brightly. Scotty placed it on the quarry's lip and added more fuel. The flames mounted higher as the wood caught. Only when the flames were high enough to see by did Scotty look down.
"See a way up, Rick?"