"Say," breezed Lanky, his mouth full of cold venison, "that sounds as if you might expect to be marooned down here in all these twists and turns and big vaulted halls for a whole week!" "You never can tell," was the rather noncommittal answer he received. "Better to make it last two whole days, even if we have to keep on short rations, than to gobble the last scrap and then go hungry." "Oh, rats, Frank! Something seems to tell me we've reached the end of our hard luck and are nearly ready to fall in with our own at last. Anyway, let's find one more big cave, if not more; and after that when you say the word we'll throw up the sponge. But only for a time! I'm bound to light on that five-fingered cave, if I keep searching all the rest of the summer." So they went along for another stretch of time. Finally Frank came to a sudden halt. "Anything doing?" snapped his mate, bringing his gun up and peering earnestly into the half gloom lying beyond. "Only that I'm about all in, and we both need rest after all we've gone through lately," Frank told him decisively. "Just as you say, Frank," Lanky agreed. To tell the truth his own knees were shaky from so much crawling and bending down, in negotiating many of the low and sinuous passages. "We're coming to another cave, I imagine from the way things run, Lanky, and no matter what it looks like, we'll manage to get some rest. While we sleep we'll be saving our stock of torches. After we've got back our strength will be time enough to think of finding some sort of outlet to this queer old rambling underground place that makes me think of what I've read about those catacombs under the city of Rome." "Sounds as though you didn't want to go back over our course and make use of that same crevice for an exit, Frank." "As the cook says," Frank told him, with a little laugh, "when giving directions for stewing a rabbit: 'First get your rabbit!' That's the prime thing. With us it would mean find the crevice once more." Lanky whistled on hearing Frank say that. "I opine from the way you talk," he observed, "that you don't bank much on our chances for doing that!" "Well, to begin with, Lanky, we've used two-thirds of our stock of fire-sticks up coming here, and long before we could make that crevice again we'd be groping in pitch darkness, also in danger of falling down one of the precipices we've been avoiding." "Wow! that's tough luck I'd say, Frank! I've been so bent on finding that five-fingered cave I've let everything else slip out of my mind." "And more than that," continued the other prospector, "I feel pretty certain we couldn't locate that crevice in a week of hunting!" "Lost! Lost, like the babes in the wood!" groaned Lanky, in pretended dismay but some real anxiety. "Well," Frank informed his chum, "here's our cave, just as I reckoned would be the case; so after a little look around we'll pick out the softest rock we can find and say good-bye to all our troubles for a time."