The denial rang in Stud’s ears as he thrust his head into the black opening, entering, amidships, as the former muddle-headed explorer had done.
“That girl’s a trump–the girl with eyes the color of the little ‘heal-all’, that blue flower we pick up here in May! A trump! But so’s little Jess, too!”
Thus did Stoutheart, a knight of to-day, pay tribute to the world he left behind him, when he felt in his exploring knees, now creeping along the bottom of the Tinker’s Pot, that there was a chance of his leaving it behind forever.
“I don’t see what else he could have done,” said Tanpa, the Guardian, her fingers hysterically interlocking. “Somebody had to go up; and he’s the oldest boy–a Patrol Leader. But, oh! I wish my husband were here. Run and meet him, a couple of you!” She glanced appealingly at the scouts. “Oh! do–and hurry him back–back from the spring.”
Meanwhile Stud had forgotten even his backers in the feminine hearts below and was banking all on just one trusty ally–the headlight on his breast.
“Without the light, the little safety lamp, I couldn’t do-o it,” he told himself. “Gee! but it is as black in here as Erebus, a Tinker’s Pot, indeed–the blindest passage–blindest bargain–I ever struck! So–so sharp underneath, too!”
Yes, difficulty masked was in the “bargain”, yet he crept on over tapering ridges of rock that now and again buckled like teeth. But he knew by the parched sound of his own voice, as he shouted a question, that his courage might have ended in smoke, there and then, if it weren’t for the little lamp at his breast.
So rosily it burned now, in here, that its feeding oil seemed the red blood of his heart!
“Anyhow–anyhow, with it, I’ll be able to see which way the cat jumps!”
Here, Stoutheart more tightly gripped the club; the last words might prove more than mere figure of speech.