CHAPTER XIII
PERHAPS TEN THOUSAND YEARS OLD
"By Jove!" gasped Dave, also bending back a bush and glaring down, his eyes wide open with interest.
"That"s where our man went," d.i.c.k whispered.
"Not a doubt of it," Dave a.s.sented. "We"ll signal the other fellows, and then get him at our leisure."
"Unless there are other openings to this cave," d.i.c.k hinted.
"That"s so! The fellow may be a quarter of a mile away from here already," Darrin quivered. "Let"s not lose any time. I"ll go in there first."
Dave was on his knees, quivering with eagerness, dominated by purpose, when d.i.c.k grabbed him, hauling him back.
"Let me alone," growled Dave. "Don"t interfere with me!"
"But you don"t know what you might run into in there, Darry,"
Prescott insisted firmly. "For one thing, you have no idea how many villains may have their secret home in there."
"Then, what are you going to do?" Darry demanded, looking up.
"I"m going to watch, right here, while you go forward and find Tom and Dan. Bring them here, and then we"ll decide what ought to be done."
"That"s rather slow," hot-headed Darry objected.
"It is, and a heap safer," d.i.c.k contended. "Hot-foot it after Tom and Dan. I"ll stay right here and see to it that the mouth of the cave doesn"t run away. Start---at once, Darry, please!
Don"t let us waste time."
Knowing how stubborn d.i.c.k could be when he knew that he was wholly right, Dave lost no time in argument. He sprinted away, and presently d.i.c.k heard faint echoes of Darry"s signaling, "hoo-hoo!"
A few minutes later the trio came up at a dog trot.
Not one of them spoke, as all had lost their breath in their haste.
Tom, now in the lead, dashed up to where d.i.c.k stood on guard a few yards away from the bushes.
"Over there," nodded d.i.c.k, pointing to the bushes.
Tom and Dan pulled the bushes aside curiously.
"If we"re going into that cave we may as well cut the bushes down,"
murmured Reade, producing a pocket knife. "Any objections, Chief?"
"No," smiled d.i.c.k, "and I"m not the Big Chief, either. Cut the bushes down, if you want. Move over, and I"ll give you some help."
Within a short time the bushes had been cut down close to the ground, revealing an irregular shaped opening in the cave. This aperture was about three feet high and some five feet in width.
"Did you bring that pocket flash lamp, Tom?" asked d.i.c.k suddenly.
"Thank goodness, I did," replied Reade, producing the lamp.
d.i.c.k took it and crawled a few feet into the hole.
"There"s water all along on the floor here," he called, "but just a dribble. Come in here and you"ll find that you can stand up."
It needed no urging to induce the other boys to follow. Then they stood up, in almost complete darkness, save when the flashlight showed them their surroundings.
Some parts of the cave rose to a height of perhaps sixteen feet.
Twelve feet was about the average height. From what the boys could see as they moved along, the cave extended for some sixty feet.
"I don"t believe there"s anyone in here except ourselves," muttered Darry in disgust, peering all around him. "In that case, we are wasting our time in this cave. Phew! How cold it is in here!"
"And well it might be," laughed d.i.c.k. "Do you see that ma.s.s just ahead of us?"
"What is it?" asked Dan. "Flash the light on it."
"Come over and look at it," d.i.c.k went on. "No one could live in this cold place. It is chilling me to the bone, just to stand here. And now you see why that little trickle of water keeps moving out through the mouth of the cave. Fellows, we"re in one of nature"s icehouses."
"But we"re not after ice," Dave protested.
"We won"t turn down ice in the wilderness, when we can find it in July," d.i.c.k rejoined.
"Not much!" answered practical Tom Reade. "Why, fellows, ice is just what we need at the camp. Let"s get a closer look at it and make plans for an ice-box over at the camp."
"But I want to follow that man of mystery," protested Dave.
"Go ahead, David, little giant," d.i.c.k laughed. "We won"t stop you. But we"ve lost our man of mystery, anyway, and this cave contains something that we really do want. Tom, you"re the mathematician of the party. How much ice is there here?"
"If I could see better I could tell you better," sniffed Reade.
"Hundreds of tons of it, anyway."
"How did the stuff get here?" asked Dan wonderingly.
d.i.c.k was now at the edge of the ice pile, and flashed the light at the roof of the cavern.
"See the rifts in the rock up there?" he asked. "Water must have leaked in here during the heavy winter rains. It was cold water, too. Then, in extra cold spells, such as this country experiences, the water must have frozen. As heat doesn"t get in here in warm weather the ice may have been here for generations. Fellows, we may be looking upon ice that was here when George Washington was a boy."
"I"ve read, somewhere," declared Tom soberly, "that icebergs that float down from the polar regions in spring often represent ice that is at least ten thousand years old. Fellows, some of this very ice may have been here in this cave long, long before Julius Caesar went into the soldiering business!"
That thought had somewhat of an awesome effect upon d.i.c.k & Co.
The four high school boys felt as though they were in the presence of great antiquity.
"But the practical side of it," declared Tom, "is that we must devise the best way of cutting some of this ice and getting it across the lake to the camp."
"Oh, you can break off enough for making ice water," replied Dave Darrin impatiently, "and take it over in the canoe, though the spring water is cold enough for anybody."
"All of Dave"s thoughts are still on the man of mystery," d.i.c.k declared, with a chuckle.