"Take him to the inner cave," directed the man, whom the others addressed as Dirkfell, "and then come back. We need you in getting this last load out. After that we'll take a rest."

Fenn tried to see where he was being carried, but it was almost impossible in the darkness. There were several flickering torches, stuck in the earthen walls of the cavern, here and there, and, by the glimmers of them, the youth could see men hurrying to and fro. Some carried picks and others shovels, while some bore boxes that seemed to be very heavy.

"I wonder what sort of a place I've gotten into," thought Fenn. "Maybe it's--yes, I'll bet that's what it is--a gold mine!"

For a moment the thought of this made his heart beat strangely fast.

Then cooler reason came to him, and he recalled that the region around Lake Superior contained no gold, though there were mines of other minerals, some quite valuable.

This train of thought was interrupted by the sudden stopping of the man who was carrying him, as though he was a baby. The fellow stooped down, kicked a door open with his foot, and, the next moment Fenn found himself in a small cave, lighted by a lantern hanging over a rough table, around which several chairs were drawn.

"Here's where you stay until the boss tells you to come out," fairly growled the man.

Fenn did not reply, and the fellow withdrew, taking care, as the lad noted, to lock the door after him. No sooner was the portal closed, than Fenn began an inspection of the place. He took the lantern and held it close to the door. It was made of heavy planks, and the fastening seemed to be on the outside. As for the remainder of the cave, the walls were composed of hard clay, or harder rock. The place was a sort of niche, hollowed out from the larger cavern.

"Well, I seem to be in a pickle," observed Fenn grimly. "That comes of prying too much into other people's affairs, I s'pose. No help for it, however. I'm here and the next question is how to get away. I wish the boys were with me--no, I don't either. It's bad enough to be here myself, without getting them into trouble.

"I guess they'll be surprised when they get back to camp and find me gone. I wish I'd left some sort of a message. They won't know where to look for me."

But Fenn did not give his chums credit for their energy. The prisoner made a circuit of his dungeon, and concluded there was no way, at present, of getting out. He readily got rid of the rope that fastened his arms behind him.

"I will just take another look at that door," mused Fenn, when, having completed his tour of inspection, which did not take him long, he again found himself in front of the portal. He held the lantern up as high as he could. "If I stood on a chair I could see better," he reasoned. He got one of the rough pieces of furniture, mounted it, and, was just raising the light up to the top of the door when his hand slipped and the lantern fell, smashing the gla.s.s, and extinguishing the wick.

"Hu!" exclaimed Fenn, standing on the chair in the darkness. "Lucky it didn't explode and set fire to the oil. I'd been worse off then I am now."

He was in total darkness, and was about to get down off the chair, and grope his way back to the table, when a gleam of light, showing through a crack in the door, attracted his attention.

"Somebody is coming," he said. "Maybe they're going to let me out. Or, perhaps, they heard the lantern fall."

But, as he looked, he saw that the gleam was not made by a torch or lantern being carried by someone approaching his dungeon. Instead it came from several torches stuck in the wall of the main cave.

And, by the light of these torches Fenn made an odd discovery. Several men were digging in the sides of the cavern, loosening the clay and soft rock with picks and shovels. They were piling the material in boxes which were loaded into a car, that ran on a small track, and were hurried off, to some place that the boy could not see.

As he watched he saw Dirkfell approach, and, by signs and gestures, for Fenn could not hear at that distance, the man urged the laborers to work faster.

"They're mining," thought Fenn. "It must be valuable stuff, too, or they wouldn't take out such small quant.i.ties. And they must be working in secret, or they wouldn't take all the precautions they do, to remain hidden. There's something queer back of all this, and I'd like to see what it is."

Fenn applied his eye closely to the crack in the door. He could see the men gathered about a cavity in the cavern wall, on which they were working, and, from the way in which they pointed at something the boy believed they must have come upon a rich deposit of whatever ore they were mining.

"I wish I was out of this place!" exclaimed Fenn to himself. "If I had the boys here to help me I'll bet we could escape, and then there'd be a different story to tell.

"There must be an opening, somewhere," he reasoned. "That air comes from under the door. It's fresh, so there must be some communication directly with the outer air, from the big cave."

He stretched out flat on his face, and put his eyes as close as he could to the bottom of the portal. He saw light beneath it, and, jumping up, exclaimed:

"That's it! I see a way to get out. But I must wait until the men have gone!"

An idea had come to Fenn. The floor of the small cave he was in, was of earth. Between it and the bottom of the door, was quite a s.p.a.ce. If he could enlarge this s.p.a.ce, it might be possible for him to crawl under the door, and this he resolved to attempt, as soon as it would be safe.

He felt in his pocket to see if his knife was there, and his heart beat more rapidly as his fingers closed on the handle. It contained a large, strong blade, and he thought he could do his digging with it. But it would be necessary to wait until the men got out of the way, and, if they worked in two shifts, this would not occur.

Anxiously Fenn waited. Every minute seemed an hour as he sat there in the darkness, now and then kneeling down to peer under the door, to see if the men had gone. But, every time, he saw them at their queer operations, or taking something from the walls of the cave.

He fell into a doze, to be awakened by the entrance of some one into his apartment.

"Where's the light?" asked a voice Fenn recognized as belonging to the man who had carried him in.

"It fell and broke," he answered.

"Humph! Well, I'll bring another. The boss didn't give no orders to leave you in the dark. Here's some grub. It's supper time."

"What day is it?" asked Fenn.

"Thursday. Why?"

The boy did not answer. He knew, however, that he had been in the cave a much shorter time than he supposed. It was the evening of the same day he had started to follow the smugglers. Now he appeared to have lost track of them, but he was in the power of a gang as bad, if not worse.

The man brought another lantern, and also some water. The food was coa.r.s.e, but Fenn ate it with a good deal of relish.

"Guess you'll have to sleep on the table," the man went on, as he threw some blankets down. "There's no bed in this hotel," and he laughed.

But Fenn was too busy thinking of his plan to escape, to care about a bed. He hoped, now that it was night, the men would stop working. And, in this, he was not disappointed. Some one called a signal through the cavern, and the men, dropping their tools, and taking their torches with them, filed out of sight of the boy, watching from beneath the door.

He wanted to begin his digging at once, but concluded it would be safer to postpone it a while. He was sure it must have been several hours that he waited there in the silence. Then, taking an observation, and finding the outer cavern to be in blackness, he commenced to burrow under the door, like a dog after a hidden rabbit.

The big blade of his knife easily cut into the soft clay, and, working hard for some time, he had quite an opening beneath the portal. He tried to squeeze through, but found he was a bit too big for it.

"A little more and I can slip out," he whispered to himself.

Faster and faster he plied the knife, loosening the earth, and throwing it back with his hands. Once more he tried and, though it was a tight squeeze, he managed to wiggle out.

"Now!" he mused. "If I don't run into anybody I can get to the foot of the shaft, and go up that ladder. Guess I'll take the light."

He reached back under the door, and got hold of the lantern, which he had placed near the hole, slipping it under his coat so that the gleams would not betray him. Then, remembering, as best he could which way the man had carried him, he stole softly along, on the alert for any of the miners.

He had not gone more than a dozen feet, and had just turned a corner, which showed him a straight, long tunnel, that, he believed, led to the foot of the shaft, when, to his consternation, he heard a noise. At the same time a voice called:

"Hey! Where you goin'?"

Fenn resolved to chance all to boldness. Taking the lantern from under his coat, that he might see to run through the cave, he sprang forward, toward what he believed was the shaft down which he had come on the tree-trunk ladder.

"Stop! Stop!" called someone behind him, but Fenn kept on.

CHAPTER XXVII

A TIMELY RESCUE