sten better;
for, as you doubtless know, the action of the jaws precludes keen
attention to outside sounds.

"What's the matter?" asked Dick, noting his cousin's act.

"I heard something," Bud answered.

"I'm hearing things all the while!" declared Dick. "This is the most
weird place for mysterious noises I ever struck!"

"But this is different," insisted Bud. "Listen!"

Nort and Dick stopped chewing and strained their ears to catch the
sound that had attracted Bud's attention. A strange, rushing,
whispering echo seemed to fill the tunnel.

"Doesn't that sound like rushing water?" asked Bud.

"Yes," agreed Dick, after a moment of intentness; "it does."

"Look out!" quickly yelled Nort. "It _is_ water, and on the rush, too!
Jump for your lives! It's a flood!" and making a grab for one of the
lanterns, that they might not be left in total blackness, he sprang
toward the rocky side of the tunnel, an example followed by his
companions.

And the rush of waters filled the underground cave with a mighty,
roaring sound.

CHAPTER XII

THE RISING FLOOD

Stumbling, slipping, sliding, half-falling, bruising themselves on the
sharp rocks, but ever leaping forward toward the sides of the tunnel,
and away from the depressed centre down which they could see the rush
of waters coming, the boy ranchers at last managed to reach the granite
wall. Nort had succeeded in grabbing up one of the lanterns, but there
was no time for Dick or Bud to take one, and the food had to be
abandoned.

"Climb up! Climb up, if there's a ledge!" shouted Bud. "We'll be
drowned if we can't get above the water!"

He had, somehow or other, brought up in the rear. Though he did not
admit it, this was because he had shoved his cousins ahead of him,
hoping thus to enable them to gain a safe place.

And as Nort and Dick glanced back they saw, in the gleam of the one
lantern left alight, a white mass of water bearing down on them, and,
seemingly, filling the tunnel from wall to wall, as it rushed foaming
and murmuring onward.

It was as though a dam had suddenly burst, or some obstruction had been
removed, allowing the pent-up waters to rush along the accustomed
channel. And if you have ever noticed a dammed-up stream, say in some
gutter, thus quickly released, you can imagine what happened on a
larger scale in the tunnel where the boys were.

The water, normally, flowed only in the four-foot channel. But now it
spread out on e