CHAPTER XXV

FROM ABOVE

At the moment when Skinny had crawled out of the cave an inspiration had come to him. He had no idea what had caused the suffocating fumes which had filled the place. The cave, as he remembered it, contained nothing inflammable into which his lighted match could have fallen; nor anything on which he could have tripped. Yet he had stumbled on something of considerable bulk. However, he did not pause to consider these mysteries.

He emerged into the fresh air and daylight, coughing incessantly. He called to make sure that Danville was following, but there was no answer. Astonished and concerned, he re-approached the entrance, calling. Not hearing any answer he was seized with panic fear. To reënter the cave was quite impossible. Even the outer entrance under the tree root was smoky, and the passage between the rocks was filled with the dense fumes. That was at about the moment when Danville thought to soak his scarf in the muddy water. Skinny shouted into the volume of emerging smoke, but it stifled him, even where he stood in the open, and he was compelled to withdraw from the entrance.

It was then he had his inspiration. He remembered that very early that summer he and Charlie Avery, a new boy from Long Island, had seen a little speck of light in the low roof of the cave. Charlie had poked his scout staff up through this and Skinny had gone out and scrambled up to see if it had penetrated through to the open air. He found that it had, and that by reason of a rather odd condition. This cave was part of a jumble of dense brush and fallen trees; it had probably been made in some terrific storm. A tree on the hillock above the cave had been blown over, doubtless from the same cause which had uprooted the one below that formed part of the intricate entrance. Indeed the spot was a tangled jungle of rock and dense brush and fallen trees, and the cave only a grotto caused by the upheaval.

In falling, this tree above the cave had wrenched part of its root up and it was just in this depression, now soggy and overgrown, that Charlie Avery's staff had gone through. If the little dungeon underneath had been lighted one could have seen the disturbance caused by that wrenching from above, and it was one of the standard jokes of Temple Camp to tell a new boy there were snakes in the cave and then direct his groping progress against a dangling end of root that hung down into the dank, earthy vault. The startled visitor usually reacted very satisfactorily to this. Here, you will understand, the roof of the cave was thinnest, and the ground in the excavation where the root had been was soft because of the water that was continually collecting in it and seeping through into the cave. Some day there would be a cave-in here, but no one ever worried about it.

Skinny knew about all this and now it occurred to him that he might work open a hole in this soft depression and release the fumes more rapidly than they would escape through the entrance. It was, indeed, the only rescue work that he could do. He was already fearful that it would be too late to save his friend. If his effort resulted in a cave-in, even so that would release the smoke and probably not completely engulf the victim.

Breaking off a branch from a tree, he began churning it around in the soft earth with feverish excitement. He became possessed, just as when he had won the prize canoe. His emotional power (which no one knew about) gave him strength, and he strove with maniacal effort to get the stick down, pushing it, then working it in a circle. Soon it broke and he secured another, so large that he could hardly handle it. When it became blocked by rock or bits of root he actually cried in nervous excitement and gave vent to his annoyance by screaming. One cannot keep this sort of thing up very long; the nerves give out if the strength does not. Skinny was on the verge of hysteria. But still he strove like a little David with his great unwieldy Goliath of a stick, pushing, twisting, pulling, crying, falling and rising again, and hanging on it to pry open a hole into that stifling tomb below.

At last something happened. The stick plunged, Skinny lost his balance and went sprawling into the depression. But he smelled smoke. He had been successful, the long stick had penetrated into the cave. Right beside him a thin column rose and dissolved in the air. He rose, breathing excitedly, and holding a cut knee. But he did not care. He grabbed hold of the stick again, pulling the end of it around in a large circle to enlarge the tiny hole he had made. He tripped, he stumbled, and again cut himself sorely when he went sprawling on a bit of pointed rock. But he was up again, pulling, hauling, wrenching. He was in a state of frenzy, this insignificant, staring little fellow whom they "jollied." He seemed to be fighting the whole universe, wrestling with the elements. Blood was streaming from his cut leg, his face was dripping with sweat, his eyes were wild.

Suddenly the ground on which he stood settled, he heard a dim thud, and the stick descended till only a few inches of it remained above surface. Now the smoke came out freely; there was no cave-in, but something had happened. In his small way, Skinny had changed the face of nature. Frantic with joy he brushed the smoke away from his face and tried to haul the stick up. Then he saw something which he could hardly believe; it seemed like magic, and to conjure his whole maniacal striving into a tumultuous dream. As he raised the long stick a snake was coiled loosely about it.

Slowly, almost mechanically the drowsy reptile included Skinny's leg in its slow winding. It tightened around the stick and the little thin limb binding them together like things bound around with cord. The action of the snake was not belligerent, it seemed asleep and made the horrible affair seem unreal. Its movement was like the weirdly slow motion pictures sometimes shown so as to reveal detail to the spectators. There was something appalling in its slow, drowsy tightening.