"Some hot coffee would go down mighty well!" remarked Nort.
"Then you're going to have it!" asserted his cousin. They had brought some of the cold beverage along in tin flasks, and these were soon heating over a little blaze that was kindled along the bank of the underground stream that was again dry.
The food and hot drink put new hearts into all of them, especially Nort, and when appetites were appeased they gathered about the cheerful, if small, blaze, which gave off scarcely any smoke, and held a discussion.
"What I think we had better do," said Bud, "is to travel on until we come to the place—if such a place there is—where this stream again shunts off to the side. For I'm sure there is such a place if we find that the water is running into the tunnel from the river."
"We can't be sure of that, though," Old Billee said.
"No, but we can find out when we get to the other end of the tunnel," declared Bud. "My idea is—though, of course, I might be wrong—that there are two side passages, so to speak. Sometimes the water branches off the main channel and fills the pool where we found Nort on the rock. Then it may flow down another channel, farther on, but nearer to the river end of the tunnel."
"But if the water came along the main channel, until it got here, and then filled the pool to the limit, as was evidently the case," suggested Nort, "why wouldn't the water then back up and go on to our reservoir—and it didn't do that."
"There may be some outlet from that pool and cavern where we were," said Bud.
They considered this for a moment, and agreed that he might be right.
"Then what we've got to look for," went on Bud, "is another side passage where the water is shunted off, that is, providing it is not cut off at the river pipe. And if there is such a passage it must be on the right-hand side of the stream, as was the one where Nort fell in. For we went all along the left-hand bank the other time, and didn't discover anything."