ervously,
while his cheek was noticed to have perceptibly paled:

"Let us get out of here, Jack. I am frightened, I admit. If anything
should happen to you I would never forgive myself."

He closed the lid of the chest with his foot, caught Jack by the arm, and
said as he hurried away:

"I don't know what it is, but I am not taking any risks."

They hurried along the passage by which they had entered the cabin,
reached the hole in the bow by which they had entered and then, as
Percival turned on his flashlight, which he had extinguished after
entering the cabin aft, they hurried forward toward the hole in the rocks.

"There is no water here, Dick, at any rate," said Jack.

"No, there is not, but I can't think what made--hello!"

"What's the matter, Dick?"

"Where is the way up? I can't find it. The passage was not a wide one, was
it? We cannot have gone astray?"

"No, I don't see how we could," muttered Jack, as he looked around him,
the place being well lighted by Dick's flash. "Hello! I see what the
trouble is, and now I know what the noise was."

"Well?" asked Percival.

"Some of the rocks have fallen in, Dick. That was what made the noise.
Here is our rope. We are in the right place, therefore. The way up is
closed, however. Or, at any rate, it is closed here, but I don't
believe----"

"The rocks were not loose, were they, Jack?"

"I did not notice that they were, and there has been no rain to send them
down. They must have been loose, however. How else could they have tumbled
in?"

"I don't know, unless some one took a bar or a pole, and sent them down
that way."

"Nonsense, Dick! Who would do that?"

"I know plenty who would do it. Who pushed you into the ravine, back at
Hilltop at the risk of your life?"

"Yes, but there is no one around, and no one knew where we were going. You
don't suspect little Jesse W., do you?"

"No, indeed," said Percival, with a hearty laugh, "but some one has seen
us go down here, and they have thrown down the rocks to make it harder for
us to get out."

"It does not seem likely, Dick," said Jack in a doubting tone. "There was
no one about, and we are the only ones who know the place. We said nothing
about it, and young Smith will keep quiet. Come, that is hardly worth
thinking of. Let us see how we can get out. There must be some way."

Dick turned his light this way and that, and Jack lighted a match, saying
with a significant chuckle:

"That is all very we