“Looks that way,” was the moody reply. “At any rate I’m going to have a shot at the cause of all our trouble.”
“All right, if you miss, give me a chance at him.”
Harry Ware raised his rifle and fired directly at the bear’s head as the great, shaggy creature peered down into the dark hole. His shot was echoed almost simultaneously by a report from Persimmons’ rifle. There was no need for a third.
The great head sank lifelessly and hung limply over the edge of the hole above them.
“Good work!” cried young Simmons. “Now, if we can only get out of here we can bring back a pelt that will astonish them.”
“True enough; but the problem is how to get out.”
“Let’s light up and see what sort of a place we have got into.”
As he spoke Persimmons struck a match from his pocket case and a yellow glow illumined their surroundings. They had fallen into a sort of rift in the hillside with a narrow opening in it through which poor White-eye had plunged, dragging them with him. But the light of the match, even in the brief period it endured, showed them that it would be impossible to clamber out by the way they had so unceremoniously entered. The hole, or rift, was larger at the bottom than the top, and they would have had to be able to walk upside down, like flies on a sloping ceiling, to regain the mouth of the hole.
It was plain that they must find some other means of egress. But how this was to be accomplished was a puzzling question.