After the Hungry Tiger had pushed back the pink block, Betsy and her two companions settled themselves as comfortably as they could in the little cavern. It was too dark to see, but they could hear the sad singer crooning drearily to himself. Carter immediately ran his fingers along the floor. Fortunately it was stone.
"No danger of taking root here," he whispered in a relieved voice to Betsy. "Hello, what's that racket?" That racket, as we already know, was Irashi and the pink Guardsmen, and as the noise continued, the Vegetable Man, who was tallest, stuck his ears through the crevice between the blocks. What Carter heard through his corn ears was simply amazing, and as he immediately repeated it to the little company below, they soon forgot their discomfort in their interest. When Fizzenpop explained who the last prisoner was, the barber threw his shaving mug joyfully into the air and began to prance wildly up and down upon the shins of the sad singer.
"Three cheers for the Scarlet Prince!" roared the barber, thumping on the wall with his razor. "Three cheers for Prince Evered of Rash!"
"Be quiet," begged Betsy anxiously, "they'll hear you. Oh, hush!" But the barber refused to be restrained and continued to thump enthusiastically upon the wall. Withdrawing his ears from the crevice, Carter groped about in the dark in an effort to stop the reckless fellow, but at the third snatch, the whole side of the cavern fell away and pitched the entire company into a dark damp tunnel. Carter managed to slip his arm round Betsy Bobbin, as he fell past her, and they could hear the sputter and groans of the Rash barber and the singer far below. "Anyway!" gasped Betsy, as they skidded down the slippery passageway together, "anyway we're out of Rash!"
"Is this anyway," groaned the Vegetable Man, trying to keep himself and Betsy right side up. "Well, if this is anyway, I prefer some other way. Whew!"
Betsy was about to reply when the floor of the tunnel dropped out and they fell straight downward, then, striking a rubbery incline, shot straight upward. The rest of the trip was more like a rush through a scenic railway tunnel than anything Betsy ever had experienced. Up slides, down slides, round loops, bends and curves, swooped the Rash prisoners till there was no breath left in any one of them. And when, after a half hour of it, they shot out into the open, they lay for nearly five minutes, perfectly motionless, where they had fallen. Then the Rash singer sat up and in a strangled voice quavered:
"We're down! We're down and out of Rash,
And everything has gone to smash!
Snif! Snif! A trip like this upsets me,
But how we got here is what gets me!"