Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns | Page 6

came in here?" asked Tommy.
"About a thousand, I guess," replied Sandy.
"Yes, and we'd have a fine old time getting out if you hadn't brought that ball of twine!"
"Tell you what we'll do," Sandy said, as the boys turned their faces down the gangway, "we'll pass around the next shoulder of rock and then shut off our lights. Perhaps, the kids who gave the cry of the pack in there will then show their light again."
"That's a good idea, too!"
The boys came at length to a brattice, which is a screen, of either wood or heavy cloth, set up in a passage to divert the current of air to a bench where workmen are engaged, and dodged down behind it, after turning off their lights, of course,
"Now, come on with your old light," whispered Tommy.
As if in answer to the boy's challenge, the light showed again, apparently but a few yards way from their hiding place.
A moment later the call of pack sounding louder than before, rang through the passage. The boys sprang to their feet and switched on their lights.
"Why don't you come out and show yourselves?" shouted Tommy.
"I don't believe you're Scouts at all!" declared Sandy.
There was no answer. The boys could hear the drip of water and the purring of the current as it crept into a lower gang-way, but that was all.
"That settles it for tonight!" exclaimed Tommy. "I'm not going to hang around here waiting for Boy Scouts who don't respond to signals!"
"That's me!" agreed Sandy. "We'll go to bed and think the matter over. There may be some way of trapping those fellows."
"Suppose it should be Jimmie Maynard and Dick Thomson?" asked Tommy.
"Then we'd have the case closed up in a jiffy!" was the reply.
Before leaving that particular chamber, Tommy selected a large round piece of "Gob," placed it in the center of the open space, and laid another small piece of shale on top of it.
"What are you doing that for?" demanded Sandy.
"Don't you know your Indian signs?" demanded the boy. "This means, 'this is the trail.' Now I'll put one stone to the right and that will tell these imitation Boy Scouts to turn to the right if they want to get out."
"I guess they can get out if they want to," suggested Sandy.
Thirty or forty feet further on, where, following the string, the boys turned again, this time to the left, Tommy laid another signal which showed the direction to be taken.
"There," he said with a grin, "we've started them on the right path. If they don't want to follow it, that isn't our fault!"
"We must be getting pretty near the shaft," Sandy said, after the boys had walked for nearly half an hour on the backward track.
"Pull on your string," suggested Tommy, "and see if it stiffens up like only a short length of it remained out."
Sandy did as requested, and then dropped to the floor with his searchlight laid along the extension of the cord.
"The other end is loose!" he said in a tone of alarm.
"Loose?" echoed Tommy. "How did it ever get loose?"
Sandy sat down on the floor of the passage and began drawing the cord in, hand over hand.
"I'm going to see if it's been cut!" he said.
Tommy stepped on the swiftly moving cord and held it fast to the floor.
"You mustn't draw it in!" he exclaimed. "As long as it lies on the floor as we strung it out, we can follow it without taking any chances. If you pull it in, then it's all off."
"I understand!" Sandy agreed. "I didn't pull much of it in."
The boys started up the gangway, one of them keeping a searchlight on the white thread of cord.
They seemed to make a great many turns and once or twice Sandy declared that they were walking round and round in a circle.
"I don't believe the passages run so we could walk around in a circle!" argued Tommy. "That ain't the way they run passages in mines!"
"I don't care!" Sandy insisted. "We've been turning to the left about all the time, and if you leave it to me, we'll presently come out in the chamber where we heard the call of the pack!"
"That may be right," admitted Tommy. "It does seem as if we'd been turning to the left most of the time. Besides," he went on, "we've been walking long enough to have reached the shaft three or four times. "
"And yet," argued Sandy, "we've been following the line of the cord every step. It lies right in the middle of the gangway here, and we're going the way it points all the time."
This bit of reasoning seemed to give the boys fresh courage, and they walked on, expecting every moment to come in sight of the frame work which surrounded the shaft.