Sherry opened the cellar door and paused at the top. “Who’s down there?” he called, in a voice of thunder.
From somewhere below came a dismal wail. “Throw me a plank, somebody, I’m drowning. There’s a tidal wave down here!”
“It’s Slim!” cried Nyoda, recognizing his voice. “What’s the matter?” she called.
She and Sherry raced down the cellar stairs, with the Winnebagos and the two boys streaming after.
They found Slim lying on the floor of the fruit cellar, nearly drowned in a pool of vinegar which was gushing over him from the wreck of a two-hundred-gallon barrel lying beside him. Around him and on top of him lay the debris of a shelf of canned fruit.
Sherry and the boys rescued him and finally succeeded in convincing him that he was not fatally injured. The stream of vinegar was diverted into a nearby drain, and Slim told his tale of woe.
He had been down in the cellar looking for the secret passage. There was a place in the stone wall that sounded hollow when he struck it with a hammer, and he went around to see what was on the other side of that wall. It was the fruit cellar. While he was poking around in it a big stone suddenly fell down out of the wall and smashed in the head of the barrel, which tipped over almost on top of him, and nearly drowned him in vinegar, while the jars of fruit came down all around him.
“That loose stone in the wall!” exclaimed Sherry. “I forgot to warn you boys about it when you were sounding the walls with hammers. It’s a mighty good thing it fell on the barrel and not on you.”
He and Nyoda turned cold at the thought of what might have happened.
But the sight of Slim, dripping with vinegar and covered with canned peaches, drove all thoughts of tragedy out of their minds, and the cellar resounded with peals of helpless laughter for the next twenty minutes. Justice tried to sweep up the broken glass, but sank weakly into a bin of potatoes and went from one convulsion into another, until the Captain finally poured a dipper of water over him to calm him down.