“Jack! Jack! How in the world did you get there?” asked Mike, in the greatest amazement and surprise. “Are the girls with you?”
“No. Only George,” said Jack, jumping lightly down and stooping to get out of the hearth. “Come on, George.”
Prince Paul picked himself up and stared in surprise at the two black-faced people coming from the chimney. Then he solemnly bowed to them and shook hands.
“We’ll tell all there is to tell later on,” said George. “There’s no time to lose now. Dawn comes in a few hours and Mr. Diaz will be back to take Paul with him, so we have only that time to get you away safely. Come along back with us now - this hidden way that we have found leads back to Peep-Hole.”
“The girls and Dimmy are waiting with lots of food in George’s boat,” Jack said excitedly to Mike. “We’re going to the secret island, Mike. Think of it!”
Paul knew all about the secret island, for Mike had told him about it whilst the two had been prisoners together. His pale little face lighted up with joy. He took Mike’s arm and squeezed it.
“Let’s go quickly,” he begged. So George took Paul, and Mike followed Jack, and they all disappeared up the chimney, leaving behind on the floor a great mass of soot.
Down the iron ladder they climbed, Paul a bit afraid for he was not used to adventures of this sort. Then along the hidden way they went in single file.
But suddenly George, who was leading, stopped in dismay. The others bumped into him.
“What’s up, George?” asked Jack.
“Just what I feared!” groaned George. “The roof’s fallen in again - and it’s a bad fall this time. We’ll never clear it! We’re trapped!”
Jack pressed by George and looked at the fall of earth and stones in silence. It was true. It was a very bad fall - now what were they to do?
An Exciting Time
“Goodness, George! Whatever shall we do now?” said Jack anxiously. “We can never clear that fall - it looks as if the roof has fallen in for yards! We can’t go back to the Old House - we’d just be walking into danger!”
George rubbed his chin and thought hard. They couldn’t go forward - they couldn’t go back - and certainly they couldn’t stay in the middle!
“Seems as if we’d better go and have a look at that other blocked-up passage,” said George at last. “You know - the one that branches off this one to join the secret way between the shore-cave and the cellars of the Old House.”
“Right,” said Jack. “The block there may not be so bad as it looks. It’s our only chance anyway.”
They all went to the place where the passage branched off. They squeezed down it till they came to the block. George pulled away some of the stones and tried to see how much of the passage was stopped up.
“I believe if the four of us could work at it we might clear it in time,” said George at last. “And I’ve got a good idea too - the block is mostly of stones and bits of rock. If I pick them up, pass them to Jack, and he passes them to Paul and Paul to Mike, Mike could pile them up behind him and make them look as if there has been a good old roof-fall there! So if Mr. Diaz does come along he’ll think it’s impossible to come this way. And we’ll be safely on the other side of the stones!”
“Good old George!” said Mike and Jack, who always loved a good idea. “Come on - we’ll start.”
“What do I do?” asked Paul, who was half-frightened, half-thrilled at being with the others. They told him what to do.
“You only just take hold of the stones I pass you,” said Jack, “and pass them behind to Mike.”
They set to work. George cleared away the stones, passing them to the others. Mike threw them behind him, and soon a great pile lay there, looking exactly as if they had fallen from the roof of the passage!
Soon George had cleared away quite a bit of the block. He shone his torch up and down it, and gave a cry of joy.
“I believe it’ll be all right, boys! I can see the passage beyond already. We’ll only need to clear a bit more, and we shall have a hole big enough to squeeze through.”
They worked and worked. Paul became tired and they had to let him have a rest. Two hours went by. George felt rather anxious. He did not want Mr. Diaz to discover that Paul and Mike had escaped before they had all got safely away in the boat.
At last there was a hole big enough to squeeze through. One by one they got through it, and then George did a funny thing.
He glanced up at the roof near the block and then, taking a big stone, he struck the roof hard. A shower of earth fell at once.
“George! What are you doing?” cried Jack.
“I’m just making a small roof-fall,” grinned George, his teeth flashing in the light of Jack’s torch. “If I can fill up the hole we’ve made in the block, we’ll be all right. We don’t want our dear friend Mr. Diaz to squeeze through the hole too!”
“Good idea,” said Jack. “Now hadn’t we better go on, George? It’s getting late.”
“Sh!” said George suddenly. Everyone stood perfectly quiet in the passage. “Switch off your torches,” whispered George. “I can hear something.”
They all switched off their torches. Sounds were coming near - voices - angry voices!
“Oh, do let’s go,” whispered Mike. But George shook his head in the darkness and whispered “No.”
“We don’t want them to hear us,” he said in a low tone. “They may guess where this leads to if they hear us, and go rushing off to the beach to find our boat. I think we’re safe enough if we keep quiet. Put your arm round Paul, Jack - he’s frightened, poor kid!”
They stood there in perfect silence. They heard Mr. Diaz and Luiz and someone else talking. They came to the roof-fall in the other passage and exclaimed about it.
“Look at that! They can’t have gone down that way!”
“It might have fallen after they had gone,” said the sleepy voice of Luiz. Then a sharper voice spoke loudly.
“This is disgraceful - to let the boy slip through your fingers like this! Are you sure there is no other way out of this passage?”
“There’s a branch off it somewhere here,” came Luiz’s voice. Footsteps came up to the blockage through which George and the others had managed to squeeze.
“There’s a great pile of stones here,” said Mr. Diaz, peering over the stones that the boys had piled up. “And another roof-fall or something beyond. They couldn’t possibly have got through that. No, it looks as if they escaped down that passage to Peep-Hole, and the roof fell after they had gone through. Well, our best course is to go back to the Old House and make a raid on Peep-Hole. The boys are sure to be there.”
The voices and the footsteps grew fainter. At last they could no longer be heard. Everybody sighed with relief.
“Now we can get on,” said George cheerfully. “I thought somehow they wouldn’t guess we’d gone this way - and anyway they don’t know that it leads down to the passage to the shore-cave. Come on!”
They stumbled down the secret passage and at last came to an opening in the ground at their feet. Jack shone his torch down.
“This is where our passage joins the shore-passage,” he cried in excitement. “We’ll have to jump down into it. No wonder we didn’t spot it when we used the shore-passage - we didn’t dream of looking for holes in the roof, did we?”
They all jumped down into the passage below. Then they made their way quickly to the cave, sliding down into it, holding safely to the rope that swung there to help them.
“I wonder if the girls are there in the boat all right,” said Mike.
The girls were there! They had been there for hours, anxiously waiting with Dimmy. They had not been able to imagine what could have happened to everyone!