"Have you your knives?" she asked her sisters when they came to her.
"Yes," they both answered.
"Come with me, Mary," she said, taking Tommy's knife from her. "Go on with the others; we will follow soon."
Mary and she returned to the point where the roof sloped, and Elizabeth, slipping to her knees, began to prod at it with the knife. To her great joy a shower of loose shale fell.
"Help me, Mary; work as hard as you can."
They plied their knives energetically. The missionary, anxious to learn what they were about, joined them, and, having no other implement, lifted a piece of hard rock and prodded at the roof with that. Soon a considerable heap of earth and shale was piled up on the floor. But their tools were poor substitutes for pickaxes, and Elizabeth feared that there would not be time to block the tunnel effectively before the savages arrived.
All at once there was a tremendous crash, and the girls started back in alarm, not quickly enough to escape some clods of earth that struck them heavily. The loosening of the under layer of the roof had disturbed the mass above, and there had now fallen upon the floor an immense quantity of debris which completely blocked the tunnel, and could only be removed with long labour.
Elizabeth gave a cry of joy.
"We are saved for the present," she said. "Come!"
They hurried after the others, whom they overtook just as they reached the opening into the pit.