The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna Part 16

"Now, who's for seeing the caves?" cried Chet, rising briskly. "You girls declared you wanted to go 'way through the hill."

"Won't we get lost?" asked Nellie, timidly.

"Not a bit of it. It's a straight pa.s.sage--nearly," said Chet. "Lance and I have been through a couple of times. We come out into just the prettiest little valley in the middle of the island--and not far from the park, at that."

"But people _have_ been lost in the caves," objected one girl.

"Not of late years. There are side pa.s.sages, I know, where a fellow could get turned around."

"It's just like a maze, over at the east end," Lance observed. "But we won't go into that part."

"And the way is marked along the walls of the straight cave in red paint. I've got a box of tapers," said Chet, and ran to the boat for them.

"Gas lighters," said Dorothy.

"Oh, Jolly!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bobby Hargrew. "You know what that new hired girl of ours said when mother showed her how to cook macaroni? She says:

"'Sure, Mrs. Hargrew, do youse be atein' them things?'

"And when mother told her yes, Bridget said:

"'Well! well! Where I wor'rked last they used 'em to light the gas wid!'"

The party of young folk had to follow a narrow path along the sh.o.r.e of the cove for some distance ere they came to the first opening into the caves. The sheer face of Boulder Head rose more than a hundred feet above their heads. There were shelves and crevices in the rock, out of which stunted trees and bushes grew in abundance; but there was no practicable path to the top of the cliff.

"They say that, years ago, a man used to live on this island who could climb that cliff like a goat," Chet said.

"Bet none of you boys could climb it," cried Bobby Hargrew.

"And we're not going to try it, Miss! Not on a double-dare," laughed Chet. "We'll go through it, if you please. Now, here's the opening of the main pa.s.sage. You see, there's an arrow in red painted on the rock just inside."

"It looks awfully dark," said Nellie, quaveringly.

"And suppose the 'lone pirate' should be hiding in there?" whispered Dora to her twin.

"We--ell! I guess there are enough of us to frighten him away," said Dorothy.

Chet took the lead with a lighted taper. Of course, when he was well inside the small flame gave a very pale glow; but those behind could see it. Then Lance followed with another light at about the middle of the Indian file, and Otto Sitz brought up the rear with a third.

"You look out somebody doesn't creep up behind you and bite, Otto,"

laughed Bobby Hargrew, who was just ahead of the Swiss boy.

"Dat don't worry me von bit," growled Otto. "It iss only ha'ants I am afraid of, and ha'nts don't live in caves."

"No," said Bobby, shivering. "B--r--r--r! they'd freeze to death in here. Isn't it cold, after coming out of the warm sun?"

But when they were once well into the pa.s.sage through the rock, and the first 'shivery' feeling had worn off, the girls as well as the boys were hilarious. When they shouted in the high and vaulted chambers their voices were echoed thunderously in their ears. The flaming tapers were reflected in places from many points of quartz, or mica. The floor of the cavern was quite smooth, and rose only a little. In places the walls were worn as smooth as gla.s.s. In some dim, past age the center of this island must have been a great lake, and the water had found an outlet through these pa.s.sages.

At one point they found a little circular chamber at one side, in which was a bed of pine branches. It really looked as though the place had been used----and not so long before----as a camp. There were the ashes of a fire on the floor.

"Here's where the pirate has been living," Dora declared to her sister.

"It would scare the girls into fits if we should tell them so."

"Hush!" said Dorothy. "Perhaps that man _is_ here somewhere," and she, at least, was glad to hurry on, although Chet searched the chamber with particular care.

"What do you expect to find here, old man?" asked Lance, laughing.

But his chum only shook his head and led the way toward the distant outlet of the pa.s.sage.

CHAPTER XIII

THE STRANGE MAN AGAIN

They came out of the cave into a hollow, grown to a wilderness of small trees, yet carpeted between with a brilliant sod of short gra.s.s. On the steep sides were larger trees; but evidently, at a time not then long past, the cup of the hollow had been cleared. And at one side was the ruin of a log hut.

"The man who lived alone at this end of the island, and climbed up and down Boulder Head, used to occupy this hut," said Chet.

"But those logs were cut a hundred years ago!" cried Dora Lockwood. "See how they have rotted at the ends."

"I guess that's so. n.o.body knows who built the cabin."

"Indians!" cried Jess.

"Indians didn't built log houses. The first settlers did that. Indians lived in wigwams," declared Laura.

"Some old hunter lived here, maybe, when the woods were full of bears and wildcats," suggested her chum.

"What's that!" suddenly shrieked Bobby. "There's a wildcat, now!"

"Behave!" commanded Laura, shaking the smaller girl. "You can't scare us that way."

"Nothing more ferocious inhabits these woods than a Teddy-bear," laughed Jess Morse.

"Then it was a Teddy bear I saw in that tree," declared Bobby, pointing.

"And it was a live one."

The girls--some of them, at least--drew together. "What did you see, Clara?" demanded Nellie Agnew.

"A little brown animal----"

"A red squirrel!" cried Lance.

"Hark!" cried Chet. "I hear him."