Neither boy dared to admit, even to himself, that it was altogether a possibility that there might not be any way out; in which case they would be in as bad a fix as before. As for waiting at the bottom of the hole down which White-eye had pulled them, it was beginning to grow painfully apparent that they might stand a good chance of remaining there till Doomsday without anyone discovering their whereabouts.
Once more matches were struck and they gazed eagerly about them. They fully realized now that it was becoming a matter of life and death to them to find some means of escape from this underground prison into which, through no fault of their own, they had blundered.
But rigidly as they inspected their prison, it was some time before they found that on one side of the cavern a low archway in the rock led into what appeared to be another rift in the rocky formation underlying the mountain side.
“Shall we try it?” asked Hardware as his sixth match fluttered out.
“Unanimous unicorns, yes!” was the energetic reply. “We can’t stay here, and it’s no use going back.”
“Good, the word is forward, then.”
Hardware, as he spoke, bent low to get under the archway of living rock, which, centuries before, had been tunneled out during some disturbance of the earth, and once more the boys found themselves in a narrow rift through which they could barely squeeze.
“Gracious, if this gets any narrower we are stuck for fair,” gasped Persimmons, as they shoved and panted through the darkness.
“Don’t think of that; just say to yourself, ‘We’ve got to get out of this,’” urged young Simmons’ companion.
In this way they went forward for some distance further when the rift began to widen once more. Suddenly they collided with a solid wall of rock. It appeared that the rift had come to an end.