THE passage continued of limited width for a number of rods. The floor lay almost level, smooth enough to make going easy. The light from the torch showed only walls of bare rock on either side, and once, when Margaret turned the rays upward, the narrowing slant to an apex far above their heads. The two explorers went in silence. Saxe thought the footing safe enough so that he could content himself with watching the girl, whose every motion was a delight to him, seen dimly in the glow that penetrated from without. He was not minded to waste many glances on barren cliffs, while so much of living beauty went in buoyant grace there before him. Margaret, however, gave no apparent attention to aught save the immediate business of the moment, which was holding her gaze to the path lighted by the torch. And so they came presently into a spacious chamber within the earth. As the two entered here, Margaret halted,[258] and Saxe eagerly stepped to her side. The girl flashed the torch here and there, to reveal the nature of the place. Saxe guessed that the room had a diameter of about fifty feet. The walls of ragged rock formed an uneven circle. They bent inward in the ascent, with a dome-like effect, to a height of hardly two score feet.
Margaret wasted no time. After one examination of the walls by the torch, she fixed the light on a portion of the side opposite them, a little to the left. Saxe, peering intently in this direction, thought that he detected two patches of shadow, a little denser than the surrounding dark, which might be the openings into other tunnels. The girl’s words proved his surmise right.
“There are two passages over there, close together,” she announced. “As I remember, the one we followed was that on the right. Of course, the money might be hidden anywhere. But we might go a little way in that passage first, so that you’ll understand how it runs downward.”
“Yes,” Saxe agreed. “The place in which to search is narrowed by the statement in the cipher about the bottom of the lake. Does the[259] other passage, too, run downward?”
The girl shook her head instinctively, although the action was not visible, since the outdoor light did not penetrate thus far, and the beam cast by the torch was directed from her.
“I know nothing of the second passage,” she explained. “We didn’t enter it. Come.”
They set out across the chamber, walking side by side, and so came to the passage-way of which Margaret had had experience. This proved to be somewhat broader than that through which they had come. They had advanced but a very short way, when the floor began to slope sharply downward. Saxe realized that this rate of descent need not be continued long to bring them to the level of the lake’s bottom. He knew that the highest point of the island could have hardly more than a hundred feet of elevation above the surface of the lake. Indeed, he was sure that the entrance to the cavern was only a little distance above the level of the water. They had climbed the bluff that lined the shore, and had afterward ascended a few slight rises, but the total vertical height could not have been more than fifty[260] feet. The inclination of the passage downward was enough to overcome this speedily, if it should continue. And it did continue, for such a long way that at last Saxe was sure the waters of the lake lay above them.
The two wayfarers within this secret place of the earth spoke little, and that for the most part of the things immediately about them. The floor of this passage-way here was not free from rubble, as the other had been. It was littered everywhere with fallen fragments, so that there was need to watch each step with care. Saxe experienced a new happiness when the difficulties of the path became so serious as to justify him in taking the hand of Margaret to help her in surmounting a fallen boulder. As the pulse of her blood touched his, it throbbed a rapture in his heart. In this dark vault of the earth, he forgot the first object of the subterranean wandering—forgot in worship of the woman at his side; Margaret herself sharply recalled him to the prosaic.
“Do you notice the difference in the light?” she asked. “I’m sure it’s dying out. It must need recharging. We must hurry back.”
A note of apprehension in the speaker’s voice[261] aroused Saxe to instant concern. He gave a quick glance toward the circle of light cast by the torch, and perceived that its radiance had in fact grown less.
“Yes,” he answered, “it’s failing. We must turn. Anyhow, I’ve seen enough to understand that this is the likeliest place in which to hunt for the gold.”
As he spoke, they turned about together, and began the ascent with hastening steps, for the thought that the torch might die out while they were still within the cavern was far from pleasant to either of them. The girl’s anxiety was revealed in the next question:
“Have you matches?”
With a start of dismay, Saxe recalled that he had left his match-safe in the pocket of his coat, which remained in the canoe. Nevertheless, he made a perfunctory search.
“No,” he admitted reluctantly; “I left them in the canoe.” He heard the girl sigh; but she said nothing more, only hastened her steps. The dimming of the torch was very apparent now.
The two scrambled over the unevennesses of the passage with what haste they might. Saxe[262] congratulated himself on the fact that there had been no other passages branching from that in which they had made the descent, for the turns, while never sharp, had been frequent enough to breed perilous confusion were there need of choice. In the next instant, however, he remembered the abstraction of his thoughts during the traversing of the route, and he was filled with self-reproach at the realization that, after all, there might have been such branches. And, just then, the two halted abruptly, arrested by a sud............