CHAPTER XXII
FENN'S MISHAP
Fenn had not gone very far, in pursuit of the two Chinamen and theirwhite companion, before he became aware that he was not as strong as hethought he was. In his legs there was strange trembling, and his headfelt dizzy.
"I guess I was sicker than I imagined," he said to himself, as he keptdoggedly on. "But I'll trail 'em. I'm going to find out where they arestaying, how they get to the cliff, and what it's all about."
Ahead of him Fenn could hear the trio making their way through theunderbrush. They seemed to be following some trail, as there was afaintly-defined path through the woods at this point.
"They must be preparing to smuggle in a shipload of Chinese," thoughtFenn. "Probably it's the same gang we scared off farther down the lake.They've come up here. Oh, if I had some way of sending word to agovernment detective, I could catch 'em in the very act! But, if I canfind out where the landing place is I can show the officers how to getto it. That is, if they don't take the alarm and skip out. They mustknow me by this time."
The trail was becoming more difficult to follow. It still led toward thelake and Fenn was sure he was on the right track. Already he had visionsof what he would do with the reward money, after he had given his chumstheir shares.
"Whew! But I'm getting tired!" exclaimed the lad, after making his waythrough a particularly thick bit of underbrush. "I wish some of thefellows were along to take up the chase. I wonder if they're going muchfarther?"
He paused a moment to rest, and listened intently for a sound of theretreating footsteps of those ahead of him.
"Why," he exclaimed, after a second or two. "I can't hear them!"
There were no sounds save those made by the birds and small beasts ofthe forest.
"They've distanced me!" Fern exclaimed. "I couldn't keep up with them!Now I've lost track of them! What shall I do?"
He was trembling, partly from excitement, and partly from nervousnessand weakness. A mist seemed to come before his eyes. He looked abouthim and saw, off to the left, a little hill.
"I'll climb that, and see if I can catch a glimpse of them," he said,speaking aloud. The sound of his own voice seemed to bring hisconfidence back to him. His legs lost their trembling and he feltstronger.
Up to the summit of the hill he made his way, finding it a more toilsomeclimb than he had imagined. He reached the top. Below him, stretched outlike a narrow ribbon of gray on a background of green, was the littletrail he had been following, and which had been taken by the three men.It wound in and out among the woods, extending toward the lake, aglimpse of the shining water of which Fenn could just catch.
Something moving on the trail caught his eye. He looked intently at it,and, the next moment he exclaimed:
"There they are! They're hurrying along as if a whole band of detectiveswas after them, instead of me alone. Now to see if I can't catch up tothem."
He gave one more look at the two Celestials and the white man, who,every moment were nearing their goal, and then, hurried down the otherside of the hill, to cut across through the woods at the foot, and soreach the trail.
Fenn had not gone more than a dozen steps when suddenly, having made ajump over a large boulder in his path, he came down rather heavily onthe other side, in the midst of a clump of ferns.
There was a curious sinking of the ground, as though it had caved in.Fenn felt himself falling, down, down, down! He threw out his hands, andtried to grab something. He grasped a bunch of fern, but this went downwith him.
"Help! Help!" he instinctively called, though he knew no one was withinhearing, save, perhaps, those three strange men, and he did not believethey would help him if they did hear his calls for aid.
Fenn was slipping and sliding down some inclined chute that seemed tolead from the summit of the hill, into the interior of the earth. It wasso dark he could see absolutely nothing and all he could feel around himwere walls of dirt.
They seemed strangely smooth, and he wondered how he could slide overthem and not feel bumps from rough stones which must surely be juttingout here and there from the sides of the shaft down which he hadtumbled.
He put out his hands, endeavoring to find something to grasp to stay hisprogress, and then he discovered the reason for his smooth passage.
The walls of the curious slanting tunnel, in which he had been made aninvoluntary prisoner, were composed of smooth clay. Down them water wasslowly dripping, from some subterranean spring, making the sides assmooth and slippery as glass.
Fenn tried in vain to dig his fingers into the walls, in order to stayhis progress, but he only ran the risk of tearing his nails off, and hesoon desisted. All he could do was to allow himself to be carried alongby the force of gravity, and the incline of the tunnel was not so greatas to make his progress dangerous.
"It's the stopping part I've got to worry about," thought poor Fenn. "Iwonder what's at the end of all this?"
Suddenly, as he was sliding along, feet foremost, in the darkness, hisoutstretched right hand came in contact with something that caused himto start in terror. It was a round, thin slimy object, that seemedstretched out beside him.
"A snake!" he exclaimed. "I've fallen into a den of serpents!"
He drew his hand quickly away, fear and disgust overpowering him for amoment. Then the thing seemed to be at his left hand. This time, inspite of himself, his fingers closed around it.
"A rope! It's a rope!" he cried aloud, as he vainly tried to catch holdof it and stay his sliding downward. But the rope slipped from hisfingers, and his journey down the curious shaft was unstayed.
"This must have been dug by men," thought Fenn. "I'll wager the smugglershad something to do with it. Why, maybe it's one of the ways they landtheir men. That's it! I must be sliding right down into the lake. Theyuse the rope with which to pull themselves up the slippery tunnel."
This idea seemed feasible to him, and he made further efforts to graspthe rope, in order that he might stop and pull himself up, instead ofbeing carried on into Lake Superior.
For that this was to be his fate he now feared, since, as near as hecould tell, the tunnel sloped in that direction. But though heoccasionally felt the rope, first on one side of him, and then on theother, he could not get a sufficient grasp on the slippery strands,covered as they were with clay, to check his progress.
"I guess I'm doomed to go to the bottom," he thought. "If I only fallinto deep water it won't be so bad. I can swim out. But if I land on therocks--"
Fenn did not like to think about it. In fact his heart was full of terrorat his strange situation, and only his natural courage kept him fromgiving way to despair. But he was filled with a dogged determination tosave himself if he could, even at the end.
Though it has taken quite a while to describe Fenn's queer mishap, it didnot take him long to accomplish it. He was slipping along at considerablespeed, being shunted from side to side as the tunnel widened or narrowed,but, on the whole, being carried onward and downward in a fairly straightline.
Suddenly the blackness was illuminated the least bit by a tiny point oflight below and in front of him. It looked like an opening.
"There's daylight ahead," thought the boy. "That must be where the freshair comes from," for he had noticed that the tunnel was not close, butthat a current of air was circulating through it. Fenn was wrong as tothe source of this supply, as he learned later, but he had little timeto speculate on this matter, for, much sooner than he expected, he hadreached the spot of the light.
He saw, suddenly looming before him, an opening that marked the end ofthe tunnel. The shaft gave a sharp upward turn and Fenn was shot up andout, just as are packages that are sent down those iron chutes from thesidewalk into store basements.
A moment later the boy, covered with mud from head to foot, foundhimself on a narrow ledge on the face of a cliff overlooking LakeSuperior. He lay, partly stunned for a moment, and blinking at thestrong light into which he had come from the darkness of the shaft.
Below him rolled the great lake, on which he and his chums had sorecently been sailing in the _Modoc_. Fenn arose to his feet, andgave a glance about him.
"It's the same place!" he murmured. "The same place where we saw the menwho so mysteriously disappeared! I'm on the track of their secret!"
He looked at the ledge on which he stood. It was long and narrow, and,not far from where he was, he saw a partly-round opening, that seemed tobe the mouth of another shaft, leading straight down.
"Well, more wonders!" exclaimed Fenn, walking toward it. As he did so,he was startled to see the head of a man emerge from the second shaft.The fellow gave one look at Fenn and then, with a cry of warning to someone below, he disappeared.
Fenn, startled and somewhat alarmed, hesitated. He was on the brink ofan odd discovery.