“You’ll have to stop removing the snow now,” said Jerry. “I can’t poke any more out, for the drift is up over the hole in the wall.”
“All right,” replied Hamp, cheerfully, as he crawled into the tunnel. “The snow is so light that I can pack it under me and against the sides. It’s nice and warm in here, fellows, but it’s dark as pitch. I wish there was a little light.”
“You’ll have to wish,” replied Jerry. “You can strike matches on the way back from the storehouse.”
Hamp laughed, and his voice had a hollow, muffled ring.
“Better let me come in and help you,” cried Brick.
“No; stay there,” responded Hamp. “If two fellows were working, we would surely have a cave-in. I’m getting along all right.”
By this time he was five feet from the cabin. On hands and knees he went slowly ahead through the intense darkness. He wore stout buckskin gloves, and carried a slab of bark, with which he patted down the snow in front of him and slapped it against the sides of the tunnel. He could hear, as though from a great distance, the ceaseless roar of the tempest. All was quiet in the cabin, and he dared not call out to his companions, for fear his voice would bring an avalanche of snow into the tunnel.
Yet the lad was in a hazardous situation, and to himself he did not disguise the fact. At any moment might come disaster in the shape of a cave-in or a falling tree. Then, in the darkness, he would have little chance of escape.
He worked forward slowly and bravely. He had a definite plan in mind. Directly out from the cabin door was the fireplace, and two or three feet to the right of this lay a flat stone, on which the boys had frequently sat while cooking the meals. Straight down the ravine from the stone was the storehouse. To reach the latter seemed simple enough, but it was not so easy after all.
Now and then he would throw himself flat, and stretch out his arms and legs to their fullest extent to make sure that the tunnel had no crooks.