The End of the Tunnel

by Paul Capon

  Jane handed the trinket to Tom, and he took it to the nearest candle.

  “It’s a brooch, all right,” he said. “Look, you can see where the iron pin fitted, but it’s definitely not prehistoric. The workmanship is too good. I should think it’s Roman. Or Romano-British, most probably.”

  “What’s it made of?” asked Jane.

  “Gold without a doubt “

  “Gold!” Ruth squealed. “Jane, you’ll get an enormous amount of money for it!”

  “Oh, I won’t sell it,” said Jane. “I’ll keep it with my arrowhead and have a museum. Tom, may I keep it?”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Tom, handing it back to her. “You’re a lucky girl!”

  “Maybe that’s only a beginning,” said Boyd, watching Jane fasten the brooch to her T-shirt with a safety pin. “Maybe once we start looking we’ll find masses and masses of treasure. What say we start searching as soon as we’ve had lunch?”

  “Oh, yes!” cried Ruth. “Boxes and trunks and heaps of treasure. Ruth Risdon, the richest girl in the school!”

  “I never knew such a mercenary child,” muttered Tom. “I don’t know . . .”

  At lunch they talked of nothing but the brooch and the possibilities of finding more treasure, and Tom added fuel to the flames by remarking that the Romans were believed to have buried a vast quantity of gold and silver before they left England, and the hoard had never been found.

  “No kidding?” asked Boyd.

  “No kidding. One of the teachers told us about it. I think it was in the year 418.”

  This statement was followed by an awed silence that lasted a couple of seconds, then all four started talking at once. Ruth thought they would find the hiding place somewhere high in the walls of the cavern, and the twins were sure the treasure was buried under the floor.

  “The teacher said ‘buried,’ didn’t he, Tom?” asked Boyd.

  “Well . . . yes,” said Tom doubtfully. “Actually, I think he said it was hidden in the earth.”

  Boyd reminded Tom of a particular boulder that had attracted his attention the previous year. “That one over there,” he said, pointing with a piece of meat pie. “I’m certain it hides a hole. Look at the way it sits — sort of unnatural, unless there’s a hole under it.”

  Ruth managed to control her giggling sufficiently to say, “Oh, Boyd, you and that old boulder! Anyway, what’s the use? We tried and tried to move it and couldn’t.”

  “Yes, but that was a year ago,” said Tom. “We’re all stronger and heavier now.”

  “Sure,” agreed Boyd. “Even last year we were able to rock it a little.”

  Tom got up. “I’m going to take a look at it,” he said. “Coming, Boyd?”

  “Sure.”

  They took candles and crossed to the big stone resting only a couple of yards from the wall. Boyd was right, Tom decided — the boulder did have an unnatural look. In fact, it didn’t look as if it belonged there at all; its texture was different and there was something odd about the way it sat.

  Ruth and Jane followed, holding lighted candles, and Tom asked them to go back for the rope.

  “It’s not such a huge boulder,” he remarked. “We ought to be able to shift it.”

  Ruth and Jane arrived with the rope, and, taking it, Tom wound it round the base of the boulder and gave each of the girls an end.

  “You two pull; we’ll shove,” he said. “Boyd, if the stone moves and there is a hole under it, look out you don’t fall in!”

  Once more they worked to a “one, two, three, HEAVE” rhythm, and at each heave the boulder trembled encouragingly. Then, at the sixth or seventh try, it rose a couple of inches — enough for Tom and Boyd to see that under the stone there was a hole!

  Tom called a halt. “Let’s have a short breather,” he said. “There’s definitely a hole under the rock, but what it’s like or how big it is, I couldn’t tell. Could you, Boyd?”

  “No, but I guess it’s pretty big.”

  Ruth was jumping up and down with excitement. “We’ve got to move it! We’ve got to, or burst.”

  “Well, then don’t use all your energy jumping,” said Tom. “Why don’t you two hitch the rope round your waists and work facing the boulder? You’ll get more purchase that way, and if the boulder rolls forward you’ll be able to dodge it.”

  The girls did as he suggested, and he and Boyd got into position.

  “Now,” said Tom, putting his shoulder to the rock. “Everyone ready?”

  Tom drew a deep breath.

  “One, two, three, HEAVE.”

  Both boys crouched low. Tom’s muscles felt as if they would crack, the blood pounded in his ears and the sweat poured down his face, but he had his reward when the boulder slowly rose. He could see an inch or two of the hole beneath it, and it was still rising.

  “HEAVE.” Tom gasped, and from somewhere each of the four found yet another ounce of strength. Higher and higher the stone rose, grating against the hole’s far edge. Suddenly it slithered and lurched forward, and Tom knew the battle was won.

  “O.K.,” he said. “Rest.”

  Puffing as if they had run a mile, the explorers crowded round the hole. It was about a yard across, and everything below was as black as the darkest night. The boulder was not entirely clear of the hole, but there was enough room to squeeze past it, and it seemed to be as secure in its new position as it had been in its old.

  Boyd pulled the flashlight out of his pocket and shone it down the hole.

  “I can’t see much,” said Tom, “except a lot of stones. It’s too far to drop, so we’ll have to fix the rope to the boulder and climb down.”

  “I’m the lightest,” said Ruth. “Why don’t you lower me as a sort of scout? Then I can report on the treasure.”

  The others laughed but agreed that her idea was a good one. Boyd tied one end of the rope around Ruth’s waist, then he tied the rope’s other end around his own middle. Both boys threw themselves face down to pay the rope out. Ruth, helped by Jane, climbed into the hole, and for a moment clung to its edge by her fingers. Then she transferred her weight to the rope while the boys held it steady and Jane tucked the flashlight into the waist of her jeans.

  “O.K., lower away,” sang out Ruth gaily, and her voice echoed and re-echoed in the darkness below.

  Knot by knot the rope disappeared. The knots were about three feet apart and Tom could keep a rough check on his sister’s descent. When thirty feet had gone down with no word from her, he asked Jane, who was beside over the hole, to give her a shout.

  “Ruthie!” yelled Jane. “How’re you doing?”

  “All right,” came the echoing answer. “Ask the boys to hold it a second. I want to get the flashlight out, and that means hanging on with one hand.”

  The boys stopped paying out the rope and waited.

  After a minute or two Jane said, “She has the flashlight on, but I still can’t see anything except stones,” and at the same moment they heard Ruth shout to resume lowering her.

  “How much farther, Ruth?” asked Jane.

  “Not much. About twenty feet, I suppose.”

  Her guess was a good one, for, when just over fifty feet of rope had been paid out, she called to say she was down.

  “Any treasure?” asked Jane.

  “Could be. There are enough stones down here to bury all the gold in the world!”

  Tom crawled to the edge of the hole and peered down. He could see very little. The flashlight made only a small pool of light, and its beam was partly obscured by a haze of dust.

  “What’s it like, Ruth?” he yelled.

  “It’s hard to describe. Wait till you haul me up. It’s an extraordinary place, but I can’t make out all of it.”

  “Big?”

  “Enormous. It’s a sort of tunnel and looks as if it goes on for miles and miles.” The light moved to and fro, then she shouted, “Haul me up, Boyd. It’s a bit scary.”

  In a few minutes, with Jane helping, she climbed
out looking as if she’d been in a flour bin — she was white from head to foot.

  “You’ve no idea what it’s like.” She panted, slapping her jeans to get the dust out. “The place seems so terribly old. I’ll bet I’m the first person down there since the cave dwellers left. I wouldn’t be surprised if we meet a dinosaur or two.”

  “Yeah, but what’s it like?” asked Boyd.

  Ruth was not so good at explaining as she was at imagining, but the impression she conveyed was of a huge, rugged tunnel arching over a river of small stones. “They’re beastly to walk on,” she said, “and they’re covered with a white, powdery dust that kicks up into clouds when you move.

  Tom glanced anxiously from her to Boyd, and said, “You know, this is going to be a real job of exploration. Don’t you think we ought to leave it until tomorrow?”

  The girls shouted him down indignantly, and Boyd took their side.

  “We’ve plenty of time, Tom,” he said, “and going back will be easier than getting here was. We’ll have the current with us.”

  “All right,” murmured Tom. “Whatever you say.” There would soon come a time when he would wish with all his heart that he had taken a stronger stand.

  CHAPTER 4

  The boulder that had given so much trouble when the foursome moved it from the hole now was most useful as an anchor for their climbing rope. It was perfectly firm in its new position, and all they had to do was run the rope round its base and tie it.

  They worked to their usual routine. First Tom and Boyd lowered the girls, then the rucksacks. Then Boyd climbed down the rope hand over hand, and, when he was down, Tom followed.

  “I suppose we leave the rope where it is?” said Ruth as they helped one another on with the rucksacks.

  “I guess so,” said Boyd. “There’s nothing else to do, is there?”

  It was an eerie place, and, as Ruth had suggested, it was as if nothing had changed since the beginning of time. It was utterly bereft of life. There was no clusters of bats, no cobwebs, not even fungus. There was nothing except rock, stones and dust.

  Boyd consulted his compass by the light of the flashlight. “The tunnel runs east and west,” he said. “Which direction shall we go?”

  “West,” said Ruth without hesitation. “Civilization always moves westward. At least, that’s what our history teacher says, and we’re civilized, aren’t we?”

  The others laughed, but somehow in that vast tunnel their laughter sounded thin and unconvincing.

  “All right, west it is,” said Tom and, accepting the flashlight from Boyd, he started to lead the way.

  The others bunched closely behind him. Their footsteps and the rattle of stones reverberated along the tunnel until it sounded like an army marching over crushed stone. Dust rose in clouds, making them sneeze and choke, and ahead there was nothing except the darkest darkness they had ever seen.

  “This might go on for miles,” murmured Ruth. “Twenty miles. Fifty. A hundred, even.”

  “I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” said Tom, shining the flashlight on his watch. “We’ll go on for twenty minutes, and if nothing interesting has happened by then we’ll call it a day and turn back.”

  The suggestion was greeted with approval, but Tom had hardly made it before they noticed that the tunnel was changing. For one thing it was rapidly becoming wider, and for another, it was beginning to slope downward much more sharply.

  “Deeper and deeper,” muttered Ruth, and at that moment Tom halted abruptly and flung out his arms.

  “Get back!” he cried. “There’s nothing ahead except a hole.”

  All four retreated rapidly for a few yards and Tom’s heart was thumping in his chest like a trip hammer.

  “Wow! That was nasty,” he said. “It was like suddenly coming to the edge of a cliff. Look, girls, you wait here while Boyd and I go investigate.”

  “Gee, I couldn’t think what had happened,” muttered Boyd as he and Tom moved cautiously forward. “I thought maybe there was a tiger or something!”

  Tom kept the flashlight unwaveringly on the stones, which presently thinned out and gave place to bare rock. “Steady,” he said. “We’re just coming to it.”

  As he spoke, the light picked out a sharp edge of rock lying across their path and beyond it there was nothing but darkness. Tom went down on his hands and knees and crawled forward. Boyd followed suit, and when they came to the gap Tom shone the light into the void. Below they could just make out a surface of rock strewn with a few small boulders.

  “It’s not too bad a drop,” said Boyd, peering down. “About twenty feet, I’d say.”

  “That’s about it,” agreed Tom. “I expect this tunnel was once the course of an underground river, and I dare say there was a waterfall here. Now, the problem is how to get down.”

  “Well, we’ve got the clothesline. All we need is something to fix it to.”

  They scrambled to their feet and went over to the tunnel wall. It was very rugged and soon the light picked out a small point of rock that Tom thought would do.

  “A loop over that should hold,” he remarked.

  “I guess so,” agreed Boyd and called to the girls to join them.

  The descent gave them very little difficulty, and they managed it without even taking off their rucksacks. As usual, the boys lowered the girls first, then slid down themselves. Except that the line burned their hands slightly, it was almost as good as the knotted rope.

  This part of the tunnel was different. Its floor was solid rock, smooth and level, and there were no stones other than a sparse scattering of boulders. There was no dust either, and in all ways the going promised to be much easier.

  “I want to save the flashlight battery as much as I can,” said Tom, “so let’s do a blind march.”

  Each of them put a hand on the shoulder of the one in front, then the only person who risked tripping over a boulder was Tom himself.

  After they had gone a few yards, Tom switched off the light and they covered the next twenty paces or so in darkness. Then Tom switched it on again briefly, made sure there was no danger ahead and turned it off again.

  “I’m still keeping to my twenty-minute plan,” he said, as they negotiated the fourth stretch of total darkness, “and now we have only three minutes to — ”

  His foot touched something that clinked and he broke off abruptly. He switched on the torch and there, lying on the tunnel floor, was a pile of coins mixed with dust and pebbles.

  “Treasure!” Ruth gasped. “A hoard of coins!”

  Jane picked up a small, bright coin that lay on top of the pile. Tom shone the light on it, and the others crowded around. Suddenly it dawned on them that the coin was an almost new American penny.

  “The Devil’s Well!” exclaimed Boyd. “We must be directly under it.”

  All four gazed upward. Above their heads was a great funnel-shaped shaft going up and up, and gradually dwindling to a tiny disk of light no bigger than a pinhead. From two thousand feet below the surface of the earth they were looking straight up at the sky.

  “Let’s light some candles,” cried Ruth, “and see what all these coins are!”

  The hoard represented a marvelous collection. On top were a great number of modern pennies, halfpennies and farthings as well as a few sixpences and shillings dropped by picnic parties. Farther and farther back in history went the coins. The copper coins were too numerous to count, and there were several silver coins and one gold piece.

  “Gee, if we look at every one separately,” said Boyd, “we’ll be here all night. We’d better take them along and examine them when we get back.”

  A little reluctantly, the others agreed and began pushing the coins into the rucksacks.

  “We must see what the last coin is,” said Ruth when the pile was nearly exhausted. “Steady, everyone.”

  Tom shone the light on the dark patch of rock, and carefully Boyd picked up the last six or seven coins, some of them very thin and fragile. Then Ruth found one
more and rubbed it clean on her jeans.

  “It’s copper, I think,” she said, holding it to the nearest candle. “I can just make out some letters. There’s a funny-looking A, leaning against an E, then L-F-R — and a gap-E-D-R-E-X. Alfred Rex?”

  “King Alfred the Great!” exclaimed Tom, taking the coin. “Must be. There weren’t any other Alfreds.”

  “When was he king?” asked Jane.

  “Oh, more than a thousand years ago. He died about the year 900.”

  “Gosh! And to think people have been dropping coins down here ever since.” Jane was wide-eyed with astonishment.

  “I think we’d better make tracks for home,” Tom told the others.

  “Guess so,” agreed Boyd, hitching on his rucksack. “Wow, it’s been a swell adventure. I could spend the whole vacation here.”

  Everyone was in high spirits, and with the coins jingling in their rucksacks they made good time back to the place Tom called the waterfall. Now that they were homeward bound, he did not trouble to switch off the flashlight, and when the twenty-foot wall of rock loomed out of the darkness they raced toward it, yelling and whooping.

  Tom took hold of the dangling line. “Shall I go first?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Boyd.

  The line was harder to climb than the knotted rope, and before Tom was halfway up he wished he had left his rucksack below. However, he continued to struggle upward and had nearly reached the top when the line trembled ominously. Something was giving way. He made a frantic grab for the rock’s top edge.

  “Look out!” he yelled, then he heard a sharp crack and realized he was falling.

  There came a scream from Ruth, a muffled grunt from Boyd, and the next moment Tom was lying unhurt among the boulders with Boyd beneath him.

  The girls helped them up. Tom was only slightly shaken, but Boyd had an inch-long cut on his forehead, and blood was streaming from it. Jane quickly got the first-aid kit from Ruth’s rucksack and made Boyd sit on a boulder while she tended the wound.

  “Thanks a lot, Boyd, old chap,” said Tom. “That was really noble.”