A Place of Peril.—The Descent of the Darkness.—Dreadful Expectation.—The Sound from the nether Abyss.—The rising Waters.—Higher and higher.—A Gleam of Hope.—The Beams intermixed.—Borne upward on the Waters.—The last Chance.—A final Struggle.—Pat up to the Surface.—Dropping a Line to a Friend.—The midnight Sky, and the moonlit Sea.—The lone Hut.—The Explorers.—Despondency.—A last Resort.—Sleepers awake.—Wild and frantic Joy.—The Voice of the Landlord.—The Joint Stock Company, and the Steam Engine.
THE coming of darkness gave a new horror to those which already surrounded Bart and Pat far down in the pit. This made them perceive how long they had already been down, and threw a new difficulty in the way of escape. But that way of escape seemed already to be effectually closed when Pat brought back his terrible intelligence from the bottom of the pit. They had formed a new plan, which had given them hope; but now the only way of carrying out that plan into execution was snatched from them by the advance of the waters. There was nothing for them to do. To climb up the log casing was impossible, and to dig through the clay was equally so without some strong, sharp instrument, like the pickaxe.
Nothing was visible down below, and up above it grew steadily darker. Whether the water below was rising higher in the pit or not they were unable to find out from actual sight, but they had a full conviction that it was steadily advancing higher and higher towards them, and that with its advance it was also unsettling or sapping away altogether the sides of the pit. Awful were the moments, and terrible the forebodings. The darkness intensified every fear, and made the actual dangers by which they were surrounded still more formidable.
Overhead they could see the shadowy form of the broken beam still hanging, and still threatening to fall at any moment. The rope fastened to it had broken below the point where they were seated, and was within reach of their hands; but it was of no use. Had the beam above been strong, they could have easily saved themselves in this way; but the beam being broken, they dared not touch the rope. The terror of the broken beam was, however, lost sight of in the presence of that greater terror advancing from below, minute by minute—the terror of that water into whose mysterious sources they had penetrated; whose secret fountain they had broken up, and which now, like some formidable monster too rashly challenged, was advancing step by step, in irresistible power, to take vengeance upon these reckless intruders. That soil beneath had shown its looseness by tumbling down in the removal of the lower logs; the tenacious upper clay did not exist there; and it seemed to them that the rising water, by permeating all the soil, might at any moment cause all the pit to fail together in one heap of undistinguishable ruin. In that case, they would be overwhelmed beyond the possibility of escape, and snatched from the world to destruction, without leaving behind them the faintest vestige, or the slightest token of their awful fate.
At such a moment nothing was said. Nothing could be said. They sat there then in silence, listening with sharpened senses for any sound that might tell of the approach of the water. For a long time, however, they heard nothing except the quick throbbing of their own hearts, until, at last, there gradually came up a dull sound, which slowly resolved itself into something like thumping and grinding.
They listened now with intense excitement and agitation to these sounds.
What were they?
There was only one meaning which they were able to give to them. It seemed as if these sounds must indicate the breaking up of the lower casing of logs that lined the pit—the first notice sent them of that break-up which was inevitable. Every sound seemed to tell of some new log severed from its place by the pressure of the surrounding soil, which, now saturated with water, and transformed to a sort of ooze, streamed through the crannies, and destroyed the staying of the pit. At this thought the expectation of the end grew stronger, their awful doom seemed more immediate, and every nerve tingled, and every fibre of their being thrilled with a sense of horror.
They sat with their legs hanging over, and their hands grasping the log beneath as firmly as they could. It was while they were in this position that Bart felt something strike his foot. At that touch his first impulse made him shrink back in terror, and jerk both feet into the air. The same moment Pat felt the same, and evinced the same repugnance by a similar gesture. A moment’s thought, however, served to show Bart what it might be; so, reaching his feet down as far as he could in order to test it, he found that his suspicions were correct, and that the water had risen to that point. What had touched his foot was a log that had floated on the top of the rising water.
But there were more than one log, and this was the discovery that Bart made; and these logs were a dense mass that filled the pit, and were carried up by the water in this way. They had loosened many logs at the bottom, and had stood the long ones upright, while the shorter ones lay lengthwise. It was in about this same position that the mass of logs now floated up, and reached the place where they could be touched.
In a moment a joyful cry escaped Bart.
“What’s the matter?” cried Pat.
“Were safe! we’re safe!” cried Bart.
These were the first words that had been spoken since Pat first announced the entrance of the water.
“Safe, is it?” said Pat. “I’d like to know how, so I would.”
“Why, these logs; only feel with your feet, Pat. They’re all floating up. I never thought of that. Only feel how compact and solid they are. They’ll bear our weight, and we can float up with them.” Pat for a moment made no remark, but reached out his feet, and felt as far as he could. Then a cry of joy burst from him.
“Huroo!” he cried. “By the powers! but it’s safe we are. Sure it’s as solid as a flure, so it is. It’s a raft that we have, and it’ll float us as high as it goes.”
“Yes, if it don’t cave in first.”
“Cave in, is it? O, sure but it won’t be likely to cave in up here at all at all.”
“We’d better lie along at full length.”
“An what’ll we do that for?”
“O, so as to get the advantage of the floating power of all the logs. If we stand on one or two they’ll sink down at once.”
“Sure an that’s so. It’s right you are, so it is. We’ll lie down at full lingth; an O, don’t I wish we could take a bit of a nap!”
“No, don’t think of that, Pat; we’ve got lots to do yet.”
“Nappin? me nappin? Sure it’s only funnin I wor.”
“At any rate, we need only to float up to the plank casing. Then we’ll be all right. And it seems to be coming up pretty fast. It’s risen a foot already, since we first felt it.”
“So it has, sure.”
“We’d better be getting ready. I’ll drop off first, and roll over to the other side, and hold on to as many as I can, and then you come along after me.”
“Wait a bit, sure, till it gits a few inches higher. It’ll be up fast enough, sure.”
“O, yes, of course.”
The boys now waited in silence for a little while longer. The water rose steadily, bearing up the mass of logs on their surface. At length, slowly and cautiously, Bart allowed himself to pass upon the logs, and to his immense delight, found that they supported his weight.
“Hurrah, Pat!” said he. “They’re as solid as a rock. Come along.”
In a few moments Pat was by his side.
“I had no idea,” said Bart, “that they would be so solid.”
“Nor me ayther,” said Pat.
“I tell you what it is. The logs were stood upright, and as they floated up from the ground, they were turned in all directions, and got so mixed up, that each one supported the other, and the short logs have got mixed up with the long ones; and so it’s just like a regular raft, and they bear us as well as if they’d al............