"Yes, and that isn't all. You'll continue to eat 'em as long as I'm the cook. Come on, Paul; it's a day's work."
We dragged the bodies down to the edge of the stream and tossed them into the current, saving three or four for the replenishment of the larder.
I then first tried my hand at the task of skinning and cleaning them, and by the time I had finished was thoroughly disgusted with it and myself. Harry had become hardened to it; he whistled over the job as though he had been born in a butcher's shop.
"I'd rather go hungry," I declared, washing my hands and arms in the cool water.
"Oh, sure," said Harry; "my efforts are never appreciated. I've fed you up till you've finally graduated from the skeleton class, and you immediately begin to criticize the table. I know now what it means to run a boarding-house. Why don't you change your hotel?"
By the time we had finished we were pretty well tired out, but Harry wouldn't hear of rest. I was eager myself for another look at the exit of that stream. So, again taking up our spears, we set out across the cavern, this time with Desiree between us. She swallowed Harry's ridicule of her fear and refused to stay behind.
Again we stood at the point where the stream left the cavern through the broad arch of a tunnel.
"There's a chance there," said Harry, turning to me. "It looks good."
"Yes, if we had a boat," I agreed. "But that's a ten-mile current, and probably deep."
I waded out some twenty feet and was nearly swept beneath the surface as the water circled about my shoulders.