Part 13 (2/2)

”No wonder it gave way,” he muttered. ”The thing is dead and withered.

But”--as a sudden thought struck him--”it will make a dandy torch and help save matches.”

He lit the dead bush, which blazed up bravely, illumining his surroundings with a ruddy glow. Above him was a dark hole, presumably the one through which he had fallen. But there was no way of escape in that direction. He turned his gaze another way. The cave appeared to recede beyond the light of the blazing branch.

Looking down, he saw that the floor of the cave was thickly littered with leaves and small branches. This encouraged him a good deal.

”They couldn't have been blown in by the hole I fell through,” he mused, ”for the dead bush covered that. Their being here must mean that there is another entrance to this place.”

Carrying his torch aloft, he struck off into the cave. Its floor sloped gently upward as he progressed and the walls began to grow narrower. The air, too, rapidly lost its musty odor, and blew fresh and sweet on his perspiring head.

”This will be quite an adventure to tell about if I ever get out of here,” muttered Raynor, and the thought of Jack, whom he had almost forgotten in his fright at his fall into the cave, occurred to him.

What could have happened to his chum? Surely he had not been foolhardy enough to face the marauders alone? Raynor did not know what to make of it.

”Somehow,” he pondered, ”I am sure that lantern had something to do with Jack. I wonder if they would have dared to carry him off? I wish to goodness I'd kept on, instead of leaning against that bush. Even if I do get out of here, the light must be far out of sight by this time, and I'll have to wait till daylight, anyhow, for I must have walked almost a mile from the other entrance to the cave by this time.”

His thoughts ran along in this strain as he walked. The thought of Captain Simms' alarm, too, when he found both boys missing, gave him a good deal of worry.

He was thinking over this phase of the situation when he was startled by a low growl, coming from a pile of rocks just ahead of him. What could it be? Holding his breath painfully, while a cold chill ran down his spine, Raynor came to a dead pause and listened. His improvised torch had almost burned out and it was appalling to think that he faced the possibility of being in darkness ere long, with a wild beast close at hand.

Again came the growl. It echoed and re-echoed hollowly in the cave till the frightened lad appeared to be menaced from all directions.

”It must be a bear, or some wild beast just as bad,” thought Raynor.

The growling was repeated, but now it appeared to be retreating from him. Plucking up courage, after a while, Raynor, waving his torch, pushed forward again. He came to a place where it was necessary to scramble up to a sort of platform considerably higher than the path he had been traversing.

As he gained this, he saw several tiny bright lights in front of him.

”Hurrah! It's the stars!” he cried aloud.

”The--s-t-a-r-s!” the echoes boomed back.

At almost the same instant Raynor saw, in front of him, what looked like two b.a.l.l.s of livid green flame.

But the boy knew that they were the eyes of whatever beast it was that had sent its growls echoing fearfully through the cave.

CHAPTER XVI.

A ”GHOSTESS” ABROAD.

Suddenly, like an inspiration, Jack thought of a way in which he might free his captive hands. Naturally quick-witted, the emergency he found himself facing had made his mind more active than usual.

”That grindstone,” he thought. ”I can work the treadle with my foot, while I stand backward to it. If I hold the rope against the sharp edge of the stone it ought to cut through in a very short time.”

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