“Let’s hope this tunnel is straight all the way through,” muttered Tom. “If there’s a winding in it and we bring up against the sides it may send us all to kingdom come.”
“Right you are,” returned Frank, “but there’s no help for it. We’ve got to take our chance.”
He had scarcely gotten the words out of his mouth when what Tom had feared came to pass. The boat smashed head on into the rocky wall where the tunnel described a curve. There was a grinding of oars, a splintering of planks and a startled exclamation from the Army Boys.
Luckily Frank and Tom had been sitting in the stern of the boat, and, though they were badly shaken, escaped the full force of the blow. Billy and the corporal were thrown from their seats into the bottom of the boat. The bow was smashed in, and a great jagged hole in the side opened the way for a flood of water that rushed in. In a moment the boat had sunk to the gunwales. Another moment and she had gone under the surface and the four occupants found themselves floundering in the water.
All were expert swimmers, and the ducking meant nothing in itself. But the loss of the boat might well mean the loss of their liberty or their lives.
They swam to the rocky side nearest them and clambered up on the bank. The path along the canal was a narrow one and the wall of the tunnel rose up perfectly smooth on the further side of it, affording no opportunity of concealment.
The corporal gathered them around him. It was time for quick thinking for the sound of oars had grown plainer and the enemy would soon be upon them.
“We’ll have to run for it,” Wilson whispered. “We ought to be able to keep ahead of them until we reach the other end of the tunnel. It would be easy enough if we could see where we were going, but we’ll have to feel our way and make sure we don’t tumble into the canal. We’ve got the chance that they may make the same mistake that we did and smash into the canal wall. But then again they may know more about the way the canal runs and steer clear of it. Come along, now. I’ll lead the way and you fellows keep close behind me.”
They started off at as rapid a pace as they dared in the pitch blackness and soon had the satisfaction of noting that the sound of oars had grown fainter, thus indicating that they were outdistancing their pursuers.
They had kept this up for perhaps ten minutes when they caught sight of something that seemed like a star in the distance. But as they drew nearer they saw that it was a fire that had been built on the canal bank, and soon they could detect the figures of men moving about it.