as so slow that I often
despaired of seeing that light again.

Often and often I could have lain down and cried like a child, and it
required no weak effort to keep my emotion back.

"Seems to me, Mas'r Harry," said Tom at last, "this is a very big place
we're in, for the more I try about, the less I seem able to get on.
Shall we rest a bit?"

Had Tom said, "Shall we keep on?" I should have made the same
reply--"Yes." And then, as we extended our aching limbs upon the soft
soil which covered the floor of the cave in this part, a delicious sense
of tranquillity stole over me, and almost instantaneously I sank into a
deep dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

TO DAYLIGHT.

How long we lay in that stupor--more than sleep--I cannot tell; but I
was awoke by Tom, and once more we slowly continued our journey, walking
now though--for the absence of fresh perils had given us courage--and
with our arms extended we went slowly on; but ever with the soft earth
of the cave beneath our feet, and the stillness only broken by the
occasional shriek of a bird.

"Say, Mas'r Harry," said Tom after a long silence. "We are only
wandering here and there without finding the passage to go out."

"I have been thinking so too, Tom," I said, as a thought struck me.
Then loudly--"Look out, and see if you can make out anything when I
fire: the flash may guide us."

Taking out my pistol I fired upwards, when it was as if the whole cave
were being crushed up together--thunder, roar, and bellow, in a
deafening series of echoes--echoes succeeded by the rustling as of ten
thousand wings, and shrieks that were deafening--noises which were quite
a quarter of an hour in subsiding.

"We must be near to an opening, Tom," I said, as soon as I could make
myself heard.

"All right, Mas'r Harry, and I've seen it," he said cheerily. "This is
a big place, hundreds of feet over, but the passage out lies here; that
firing of the pistol was a good idea of yours."

He took my hand and stepped out boldly. Then feeling his way with
caution, he exclaimed joyfully that he had found the opening, into which
we stepped, and soon knew by the hollow sound that we were in a rapidly
contracting passage.

From time to time I now flashed off a little powder in the pan of my
pistol, in which instant we were able to see that we were in one of the
riven passages of the cave, similar to those which we had before
traversed; and, faint with hunger, we press