flight to give them a chance to catch up.
And the chance had turned out to be the trap.

"Rick! Can you hear me?"

"I hear you." Scotty seemed terribly far away. Then Rick saw his
friend's silhouette, as a dark shape against the lesser darkness of the
sky. At a guess Scotty was fifty feet up.

"Hang on while I get a light!"

Rick wondered if his pal was going all the way back to get one of the
flashlights they had left behind in the precipitous chase. He wasn't
worried about his ability to stay afloat.

He had his breath back somewhat now, so he paddled slowly to a point on
the wall of the pit under Scotty's position. He bumped gently into rock
and felt with his hands while treading water. The rock surface was
rough, but the roughness was regular, the wall flat. Then his fingers
felt a groove and his mind created the image to match it. A drill hole!
He was in a quarry!

It made sense, Rick thought. This was good limestone country. The ghost
had simply led them to an abandoned limestone quarry, and he had
obligingly fallen in! A miracle he hadn't broken his neck.

Yellow light cut the darkness and he looked up. Scotty apparently didn't
intend to be caught without matches again, for in a moment he appeared,
a torch of dry twigs in his hand. It blazed brightly. Scotty placed it
on the quarry's lip and added more fuel. The flames mounted higher as
the wood caught. Only when the flames were high enough to see by did
Scotty look down.

"See a way up, Rick?"

[Illustration: _"See a way up, Rick?" Scotty called_]

Rick was already searching. On the side to the right of where he had
fallen in was a shelf about two feet above the water. It led to another
shelf. He swam for it and pulled himself out, shaking water from his
clothes. The second shelf was easily reached, but then he was stuck. It
was easily twenty feet to the rim. The flickering light showed a sheer
wall that could not be climbed without a rope.

Scotty could see the problem, too. "I guess it's us for a rope. I'm sure
glad you didn't fall on that side."

"Amen." Where Rick had fallen was a sheer drop into the water. On any
other side he would have landed on a shelf.

"Will you be okay?" Scotty asked. "I'll leave the fire burning."

"Take off," Rick replied. "I'm happy as a cliff swallow on my little
shelf. Don't be long."

"Okay." Scotty was gone, leaving only the yellow glow of the fire for
company.

Unless, Rick thought, the Blue Ghost was hove