“The tide will fill this cave to the very top, I believe,” said he.
“Yes,” answered Will, in a voice of fixed resolve; “there’s nothing for it but to try a long dive right out through the mouth and into the rocks. We may get through, and it’s our only chance!”
“Go on, then, Will. Hurry, before it’s too late! And—have an eye to mother, won’t you?” Here a sob came into Reube’s voice. “You know I’m a poor swimmer and no diver. Good-bye!” and he held out his hand.
But Will was coolly putting on his coat again.
“I forgot that,” said he, simply. “Well, we’ll find some other way, dear old man. Bring along your matches;” and he turned back toward the depths of the cave.
For answer Reube merely gripped his arm with a strong pressure and stepped ahead with a lighted match. He could not urge Will to carry out the plan just proposed because in his heart, for all his confidence in Will’s powers as a swimmer, he could not believe it feasible. He saw, in imagination, his comrade’s battered body washing helplessly among the weedy and foaming rocks; while in the cave, for all the horror of it, there would certainly be some hours of respite—and who could say what they might not devise in all that time? He had a marvelous faith in Will’s resources.
In grim silence, and husbanding every match with jealous care, they explored the main cave to its end. Its end was a horrid, round, wet hole, a few feet deep, and not large enough to admit them side by side. They looked each other fairly in the eyes for the first time since that one glance when they had learned that they were entrapped. Reube’s eyes were stern, enduring—the eyes of one who had known life long. The boy had all gone out of them. Will’s eyes looked simply quiet and kind, but his mouth was set and his lips were white.
“This is just a rat hole, Reube,” said he. “We won’t stay here anyway. Seems to me it would be better to have room to stand up and meet it like a man.”
“Yes,” replied Reube, his voice choking with a sort of exaltation at his comrade’s courage; “we’ll go back to the little gallery with the high roof. We’ll get up on that ledge and we’ll fight it out with the water to the last gasp, eh? It’s pretty tough—especially for mother!”
“Well,” said Will, with a queer, low tone of cheerfulness which seemed to his friend to mean more than cries and tears, “when I think of mother and Ted it sort of comes over me that I’d like to say my prayers—eh?” and for a minute or two, standing shoulder to shoulder, he and Reube leaned their faces silently against the oozy rock in the darkness. Then, lighting another match, they made all haste possible back to the side gallery, ascended it, and climbed upon the ledge. Hardly had they got there when they heard the tide whispering stealthily about the entrance of the passage. They felt that it was marking them down in their new retreat.