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Page 16
The boat came up against a solid projection of rock!
"I don't seem to see any way out!" George exclaimed.
"Well, it's there somewhere!" declared Will.
"I see it now!" cried George. "It's under water!"
"Under water?" repeated Will.
"Yes, under water!" answered George. "If we get out of this hole
before the pumps get to working we'll have to swim!"
Will turned his searchlight on the dip and saw that it was now full
clear to the down dropping roof.
"I guess we'll have to swim," he agreed.
"That black water doesn't look good to me," George exclaimed with a
little shudder. "It seems to me that I can see snakes and alligators
wiggling in it from here. Looks worse to me than the swamps of the
Everglades! And there was a quart of snakes to every pint of water
down there!"
"But we got to swim just the same!" urged Will. "In half an hour from
now the air in this chamber will be unbreathable. There is no vent
at all, now that the water fills the dip, and the coal gas is
naturally seeping in all the time."
"That's all right, too!" admitted George. "But I'm not going to jump
into that black water until I have to. If a rope or something should
twine around my legs while I was in there, I'd drop dead with fright!
Besides," he went on, "the chances are that Canfield will get the
pumps going before long now."
The boys waited for a long half hour, during which time the water rose
steadily. It seemed certain that the mine was about to be flooded
throughout all the lower levels.
"Tommy and Sandy may have bumped into just such a situation as this,"
Will said, as he pushed the boat from side to side in the hope of
coming upon some exit from the place.
"Serves 'em good and right!" exclaimed George.
Will chuckled to himself and held up a wet hand high up toward the
roof of the chamber or passage.
"There's a current of air here!" he said.
"Then we won't smother to dead!" George grunted.
"And, look here," Will continued, as the boat bumped into a pyramid of
shale which had been thrown up to within a few inches of the roof,
"some one has been building this hill of refuse and using it for a
refuge!"
"It does look that way," George agreed. "That shows that, at some
time the water must have ascended to the very top of the wall. We may
have to climb up there ourselves in order to keep from getting our
clothing soaked in that ink down there!"
The water rose higher and higher in the passage, and it seemed to the
boys that by this time most of the lower gangways were entirely
impassible.
"It doesn't seem to me that the water in this blooming old mine could
rise any faster if the whole Mississippi river were turned into it!"
cried George in a tone of disgust. "If Canfield doesn't get his pumps
going before long, he'll have a job here that'll take him all winter."
"I presume he's doing the best he can," Will argued. "For all we know,
the boilers as well as the electric motors may have been tampered
with. That would be just our luck!"
"I wonder what's become of that bum detective?" asked George after a
short silence. "We heard him rowing along in front of us one minute,
and the next minute there wasn't a single sound to indicate that there
was another boat in the mine."
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