and then added, with a sorry smile, "I am laid up, just as the Rocket is!"
"The question is, now we are down at the bottom of this hole, how are we going to get out?" said Dick to Peterson.
"We'll have to get out some way," was the unsatisfactory response. "See, the water is coming in faster than ever."
The lumberman was right, the water had been running in a tiny stream not larger than a child's wrist; now it was pouring in steadily like a cataract. Soon the bottom of the hole had formed a pool several inches deep.
"Wait till it fills up and then swim out," suggested Larry.
"No, thanks," returned Dick. "We might be drowned by that operation."
The hole was irregular in shape, about ten feet in diameter and fully twenty feet deep. What had caused the sudden sinking was a mystery until it was solved by the water in the pool suddenly dropping away into another hole still deeper. Then of a sudden the trio went down again, this time at an angle, to find themselves in a good sized cave, where all was dark and uncertain.
The tumble had wrenched Larry's ankle still more, and the youth could not suppress his groans of pain.
