While the boy was still standing by the crevice looking about with hopeful eyes, Frank caught sight of a moving object on the rim above.
“Now, what do you suppose that is?” he asked.
In a moment, Jack’s eyes rested on the object, too.
“It’s a boy!” he said. “A boy all right enough, and it’s peaches to prunes that he’s the chap who’s been playing villain ever since we came into the mountains. I wish he had with him the rope that he will eventually be hanged with.”
“Hush!” replied Frank with a grimace. “Keep it dark! Don’t you ever tell him that he’s going to be hanged. If you do, he won’t ever help us out of this blooming old punch bowl.”
The boy stood looking down into the bowl for a moment, listening to the shouts for assistance which the boys now sent up, made a few quick signals, and turned away.
As the reader understands, the assistance Norman sought to give the boys could best be rendered by seeking their friends and informing them of the situation. Jack and Frank were, of course, greatly enraged at the boy’s seemingly heartless desertion of them.
“Now what do you think of that for a cold-blooded reptile?” demanded Jack. “That fellow certainly is the limit!”
“You just wait,” Frank shouted, almost dancing about in his anger, “you just wait till I get my hands on that gink. I’ll change his face so his friends won’t know him. The idea of his going off and leaving us in such a fix as this!”
“Rotten?” echoed Frank, “it’s worse than rotten! It’s stinking mean!”
“Which reminds me,” Jack went on, “that if we ever get out of here we’ve got to accomplish the exit by our own exertions.”
“You talk like you had a suggestion to make,” Frank declared.
“I have!” answered Jack. “You see that crevice in the edge of the Punch Bowl, don’t you? Well, that used to carry away the waters of the pool. Some day the water became stuffed with sand and the pool found another way out.”
“I begin to understand!” Frank exclaimed. “I think I know what you mean. You have an idea that we can restore the water to its old channel and creep out through the larger passage, like the Egyptians crossing the Red Sea without getting their feet wet?”
“That’s the idea,” Jack exclaimed, “that’s just the idea! Only the Egyptians didn’t cross the Red Sea without getting their feet wet. It was the Hebrew children who crossed between two vertical walls of water. The Egyptians got theirs right there in the mud!”