"We went to a clump of bushes," says Huck, "and Tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit candles and crawled in on our hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked about among the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't 'a' noticed there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says: 'Now we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath and write his name in blood.'" That is the sort of cave it is--a wonderful, mysterious place, black as India ink; a maze of passage-ways and vaulted rooms, eaten by the waters of long ago through the limestone cliffs; a seemingly endless cavern full of stalactites and stalagmites, looking like great conical masses of candle grease; a damp, oppressive labyrinth of eerie rock formations, to kindle the most bloodcurdling imaginings. As we moved in, away from the daylight, illuminating our way, feebly, with such matches as we happened to have with us, and with newspaper torches, the man who had driven us out there told us about the cave. "They ain't no one ever explored it," he said. "'S too big. Why, they's a lake in here--quite a big lake, with fish in it. And they's an arm of the cave that goes away down underneath the river. They say they's wells, too--holes with no bottoms to 'em. Prob'ly that's where them people went to that's got lost in the cave." "Have people gotten lost in here?" I asked. "Oh, yes," he said cheerfully. "They say there's some that's gone in and never come out again. She's quite a cave." I began to walk more gingerly into the blackness. "I suppose," I said to him presently, "there are toads and snakes and such things here?" He hastened to set my mind at rest on that. "Oh, Lord bless you, yes!" he declared. "Bats, too." "And I suppose some of those holes you speak of are full of snakes?" "Most likely." His voice reverberated in the darkness. "But I can't be sure. Nobody that's ever been in them holes ain't lived to tell the tale." By this time we had reached a point at which no glimmer of light from the mouth of the cave was visible. We were feeling our way along, running our hands over the damp rocks and putting our feet before us with the utmost caution. I knew, of course, that it would add a good deal to my story if one of our party fell into a hole and was never again heard from, but the more I thought about it the more advisable it seemed to me that I should not be that one. I had an engagement for dinner that evening, and besides, if I fell in, who would write the story? Certainly the driver of the auto-hack, for all his good will, could hardly do it justice; whereas, if he fell in I could at a pinch drive the little Ford back to the city.