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Page 8
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. At length, after a long half hour, Tommy
stumbled over an obstruction lying in a chamber which somehow seemed
strangely familiar. He lifted his foot and gave the obstruction a
hearty kick.
"That's my Indian sign of the trail!" grunted Sandy.
"For the love of Mike!" exclaimed Tommy. "Have we been traveling all
this time to come out in this same old hole at last?"
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