Chapter V: Through the Tunnel

The roar of the stream was much increased as the canoe shot into the natural rock tunnel. The walls caught and threw it back with tenfold power. The darkness was terrifying.

As the canoe sped on its arrowy way into the darkness, Buffalo Bill crouched in the bow, trying to penetrate the gloom. Now and then the white spray that boiled about some half-sunken rock could be seen, and the canoe steered past it.

Occasionally he shouted a command to Flynn, but he doubted if in that mad turmoil of sound the plucky young Irishman heard him.

The minutes seemed like hours, and how long that terrifying voyage lasted the scout did not know.

With a jerk and a thump the canoe scraped over some sunken object. A small hole had been torn in its bottom, near the prow, and the water began to come in over the scout’s feet. Apparently the end of the wild journey was at an end, for it was clear the canoe could not now live many minutes.

The scout tried to block the rent partially by thrusting his foot against it, but still the water came in, and the exertions he put forth with the paddle made it hard for him to keep his foot over that hole. He did not try to communicate this ugly fact to the praying darky, nor to the heroic Irishman. They would know it soon enough. Premature knowledge would do them no good. He only did his best to keep the water from rushing in.

The scout felt the canoe sinking slowly under him, when ahead he dimly discerned some dark outline, which a minute later proved to be an island, low and rocky, but with sand round its margin, as he later discovered.

With a desperate sweep of the paddle he swung the prow of the canoe toward this island.

The light craft struck it with such force that the forward end was lifted, bouncing up apparently, and then slipped over the wave-worn rocks, driven on by the waves and by the momentum of the canoe.

The scout sprang out at once, and, seizing the painter, he began to haul on it, to bring the canoe still farther out of the water.

Cudjo aroused when he saw that the canoe had struck and was actually aground on what seemed to be land. He could see but the dim outline, but that was enough, and with a howl he sprang out of the water, landing waist-deep. He would have been swept away, if Michael Flynn, coming after him, had not caught him and helped him to make a landing.

Buffalo Bill aided both as they scrambled out of the water.

Cudjo dropped down on the wet rocks, lifting his voice again in prayer.

“Help here with the boat, Flynn,” said the scout.

Together they dragged it clear of the water, placing it well up beyond the waves.

The island was but a few yards wide and not over twenty yards long; but in the center it rose to a secure height above the stream, and there the rocks were comparatively dry, for the waves and the wash of the current did not reach them.

Buffalo Bill did not begin to explore the island until he had made the painter of the canoe fast to a jutting point of rock.

“Come, Cudjo!” he said, shouting the words. “Be a man! We’re safe for the present.”

The darky stopped praying and got on his feet.

“Marse Cody, we is dead men!” he urged. “We ain’t drowned, but here we is, and we can’t git away. I reckon dis is de center of de earf. How we gwine to git out of it?”

The scout walked toward the other end of the small island, which lay in the very middle of the stream. The darkness was too great to see what was in the river beyond this island; but that they had found a refuge at a time when matters could not have been worse gave him a renewal of hope.

“Pl’ase Heaven, we’re shtill livin’!” said Flynn, standing beside the scout and looking out in the darkness where the river lost itself.

“And as long as there’s life there is hope,” was the scout’s answer.

“Thrue f’r ye! That canoe may yit take us out av this.”

“It has had a hole knocked in it, at the prow, but I think we can patch it.”

“A hole in it! Whoosh! Thin it’s dead lucky we are that this island was close by. I seen ye throw the head av the canoe into it, and then I pulled f’r it, and we made it. But how we’re to git aff av it, and what we’ll find whin we do, I dunnaw.”

Cudjo came slowly across the rocky island, shivering.

“Marse Cody,” he cried, “what y’o fink of dat man?”

“Klamath John?”

“Yas, sir. What yo’ fink of him, now? I done warn yo’ not to trust ’im. But you did, and here we is. Did yo’ see dem whiskers and dat hair dat man was wearin’? Befo’ Gawd, dat beat me!”

“An’ it’s mesilf will bate him, if iver I see his ugly mug ag’in. False whiskers and false hair, d’ye mind! It was the iligant make-up that he had, to be sure. I’m hopin’ that he’s livin’, so that I can hammer his face in f’r that.”

When they examined the canoe they decided that they could patch it. Then they sat down to talk over their situation.

“Klamath John fooled me,” Buffalo Bill admitted. “But I still think the letter he showed me was genuine. I’ve got that letter with me now, and we’ll see if we can take a look at it. I was sure it said take the right fork of the river.”

He drew out his waterproof metallic match box, and then from the stores that were in the canoe he got a candle. Having struck his match and lighted his candle, he first looked over the island by its light, and then examined the letter written by Red Reynard, the Fox.

“‘Take the right fork, where it branches, and you’re safe enough,’” Buffalo Bill read from this letter.

All three looked at those words.

“But here is a thing that we didn’t properly consider. Red Reynard may have thought of the other branch as the right fork. Perhaps he meant the one on the right hand looking upstream, instead of the one on the right hand looking downstream. And that would make all the difference in the world.”

“It was quare, the way that rapscallion did, anyhow,” said Flynn. “He thought we had taken the wrong coorse, and thin he wint that wild he was clane an idjiot. ’Twas that made him pull aff his whiskers an’ wig.”

“The whiskers were pulled off when I threw him down in the canoe,” Buffalo Bill corrected.

“Ye’re right. It’s a wondher I ricollict annything. The whiskers fell aff whin ye threw him down. And thin I suppose he got that rickless, fr’m seein’ that he was rev’aled in his duplicity, that he pulled aff the wig. He laughed like a young hyena, begorra, whin he did it. The man was clane cr-razy.”

“An’ we was crazy for comin’ wid ’im!” expostulated Cudjo. “I’se wonderin’ dat I’se livin’ dis minute.”

“Yez seen him git holt av that rope?” said the Irishman. “Did he know the rope was there, or did he not? In the evint that he did, thin he was expictin’ it, and was prepared f’r it; and was ready to jump, before we got to it. Thin, by the same token, he wasn’t cr-razy, but was a schemin’ divil, bint on l’adin’ us to desthruction.”

To conclude that Klamath John had deliberately planned to take the great risk of springing from the canoe to that rope was to credit him with a daring which bordered on lunacy. Yet that wild laugh, which still rang in their ears, had been the laugh of a madman, or of a man whose change from despair to hope had seemed to result temporarily in a sort of insanity. The whole thing was a mystery.

“Can we belave that letther now?” said Flynn. “And if we can’t belave it, what thin? Is there gold layin’ r-round in lumps and sphlinters down in the Golconda Cup? Is there a Golconda Cup at all. And is that pirut ye call Red Reynard doon there?”

“We’ll know better when we get there.”

“When we git dar?” cried Cudjo. “Marse Cody, you knows we ain’t nebber gwine git dar!”

“I’m hoping we shall.”

“How you ’specs tuh bring dat combobberation about?” Cudjo demanded.

“We’ll float on down this stream in the canoe, after we get it patched.”

“If we tries it, we is sho’ dead men!” Cudjo protested.

“If we stay here we are dead men.”

“I reckons dat’s so, Marse Cody. We is dead men no matter how yo’ fix it.”

“I’m niver dead, so long as I’m livin’!” Flynn declared, with true Irish hopefulness. “This may be Lost River, and it may be the other fork av it. I dunnaw. But whatever it is, it shore goes somewhere.”

“It goes into de groun’, Marse Flynn. Ain’t we in de ground now? An’ if we goes furder we suttinly will be mo’ deeper into de ground’, won’t we? Dis Los’ River is a los’ river, which mean dat it run down into de yea’th and never come up no mo’. And if we goes wid it, how we gwine tuh come up? You des ’splain to me dat, will yo’?”

“I ain’t belavin’ it goes down into the earth no great ways, annyhow!” Flynn protested. “It runs fasht enough here, I know, but that’s no r’ason it doesn’t come out into the sunlight ag’in. I’m goin’ to stick to it that it does, begorra! It’s no use to belave anny other way; f’r if we thried niver so har-rd we couldn’t git back up this sthrame.”

“That’s to be taken as settled,” said Buffalo Bill. “We can’t get back up the stream. Therefore, if we leave this island, we’ve got to go downstream, no matter what happens. I think we’d better see if we can’t patch the canoe.”

He wanted to put Flynn and Cudjo to work, knowing it would help to bolster their spirits.

It took an hour of close work to patch the hole in the prow.

The stores were lifted out of the canoe and carried to the highest part of the island, and the canoe was also carried to that point, before work on it began.

The three men down on their knees, in the flickering candlelight, working at the canoe, on that dark little island set in the blackness of the underground river, presented a strange sight. The river roared by close at hand, and the dark walls and roof of the singular natural tunnel stretched in each direction as far as eye could see.

“We could live here some time,” said the scout cheerfully. “We’ve got stores enough, and we have the whole river for our water supply.”

“But dey’s bats and fings in here, Marse Cody!” the darky objected. “I hear um go flyin’ by.”

Yet Cudjo was in no haste to leave the island and trust his precious self to that wild black torrent.

When they had patched the canoe they again sat on the rocks and talked over the situation.

“It will soon be dark outside,” said the scout, holding his watch so that the candlelight fell on the dial. “Shall we try it before morning?”

Cudjo declared his desire to wait for daylight outside.

“I think, myself, it will be better,” the scout urged, when Flynn did not express his opinion. “With daylight, we could see when we approached the end of this stream, where it flows out of the tunnel. For I’m taking it for granted that it flows out somewhere. And, also, it seems to me that the light from the outside may get in here to a certain extent, and so that would help us. We can set candles in the prow of the canoe; but if we could have a few rays of daylight additional it would be welcome.”

So they decided to remain in their present position until the scout’s watch showed that morning had come.

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