Tabitha's Vacation, page 79 by Ruth Alberta Brown
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ads; but it was a nuisance to have Billiard linger so long when he knew the others were just dying to go down.
At last Toady could resist temptation no longer. "I'm going, too," he announced with determination.
"Before Billiard comes up?"
He nodded grimly.
"But s'posing you're too heavy for just Irene and me," suggested Mercedes.
"I shall slide down the rope. I'd rather do that than have you drop me or let the rope out too fast."
"But--how can you?" Mercedes demurred.
"It's so far down there," said Irene.
"Aw, in gym work at school we slide down poles and bars and all sorts of things. It oughtn't to be any harder with a rope. I'm going to try, anyway."
Silently but enviously, the girls watched him spit on his palms, test the rope, and finally let himself slowly down into the shaft, with legs wrapped tightly about his slender, swaying support, and hands grasping the rough strands with a desperate grip, for, too late, he realized what a horrible fate would be his if he should fall; but when he would have gone back, he could not.
"How in the world will we ever get them up?" whispered Irene wonderingly; but before Mercedes could frame a reply, there was a crash from below, a cry, a grating sound of falling rock and then hideous, horrible silence.
"Toady!" shrieked the girls in frenzy, "did you fall?"
"No," came back a muffled answer. "I'm all right, but we have knocked down some boards and can't get out."
"Can't get out!" they repeated dully.
"No. Run for help! Our candle has gone out and it's as black as pitch in here."
"Who'll I go for?" wailed panic-stricken Mercedes, while Irene danced frantically around the shaft and wrung her hands as she chanted, "They'll smother, they'll smother, they'll smother!"
"Anyone, but hustle up!" yelled Toady impatiently, for his companions in the disaster had uttered not a sound since their first wild scream, and a horrible fear that they were hurt or even killed gripped h