Slowly but surely they dug through the mass of dirt and stones and they were just beginning to hope that they might succeed when they received an unexpected check. They had cleared away a good part of the debris, but when they started again after a moment’s rest they found that they could go no farther, for the bones struck upon a solid rock.
Mad with disappointment and rage, the boys threw themselves upon the rock, tore at it with their nails and struck at it with their bare hands until they were all raw and bleeding. Finally, exhausted and weakened by the lack of air, they threw themselves, panting, on the ground where they lay unable to move for a few minutes.
Jack was the first to recover himself and, sitting up, he put his hand to his head, which seemed to be whirling around dizzily, and said sharply:
“Come, this will never do! Here when we need what little brains we have, we use them by acting like fools. If I could only think! If I could—only—think,” he muttered, while his head dropped wearily to his knee.
“Jack, Jack!” Tom cried, springing to his feet. “I can’t stand it! I’ll go mad if I have to stay here much longer! Can’t you hear the birds singing out there? Can’t you hear the murmuring of the brook? Can’t you smell the air sweet with the glorious sunshine filtering through the leaves and touching all the flowers with gold? Why, man, the world’s alive out there, while in here the darkness—awful darkness is bearing me down, crushing me—” and with a shuddering sob he sank down and buried his face in his hands, trying to shut out that impenetrable wall that seemed to be closing in upon him on all sides.
“Listen a minute, Tom, old friend, old comrade!” Jack said gently, soothingly, reaching over to put an arm about Tom’s shoulders. “We forgot all about Don,—our Don who has never failed any of us in a tight place. He must have escaped from those lumbermen all right or they would have said something about having done for him when they came to look for us here. Well, now, suppose he has escaped, what would he naturally do first? Why, he’d go straight to the camp of course and get the fellows here to help us. If he did that, we may expect them any time now. All we have to do is to wait.”
At Jack’s calm, matter-of-fact tone, Tom gathered himself together and said frankly, “Jack, you make me heartily ashamed of myself! From now on I’ll try to act like a man and a Scout!”
So the boys, encouraged by the faint ray of hope, sat side by side to wait for whatever might be in store for them. Only once, as the air got thicker and they found it harder to breathe, Tom muttered, “I only hope they come soon!” And with that they fell into a sort of stupor from which they aroused themselves with great difficulty from time to time.
Meanwhile Don’s one thought and aim had been to reach camp and bring help to his friends. At first he had trouble in striking the trail and had to go way back to the scene of the attack before he finally found it. Then with nose to the ground and with eyes that turned neither to the right nor to the left, he trotted steadily along. There was no rabbit in that whole wide expanse of forest that could have tempted him to leave the trail that day, for the well-being, perhaps the lives, of his two best friends were at stake.