I held up my scout scarf to show him how it blew toward the valley. And again we heard the groans, long and low, sort of. "It's somewhere right around here," Bert said; then all of a sudden he said, "Look!" Just in back of us, not more than twenty or thirty feet off, was the pit I could see it plain, because the stone work came up a couple of feet or so above the ground. Right close to it was a canoe all smashed in. I could see now that a couple of hours or so earlier, the water must have poured through there when it first overflowed the creek. We listened again and could hear the groaning plain. "I don't know who it is," Bert said, "but that's the Gold Dust Twins' canoe. Come on." We plodded over through the mud and water to the pit and looked over the edge. It was pretty dark down there, but I could see that there was only a little water in the bottom of it--not much more than before. "That's funny," Bert said; "it must have overflowed in there when it first splashed down into the creek bed." He felt in his pocket and took out a flashlight and held it down the hole, but it was wet and wouldn't light. "Look down at the bottom, over at the left side," he said; "do you see something?" At first it looked like a bundle all covered with mud. Then I saw something white on it. It was a face. It didn't budge, just lay there; and it seemed awful white on account of the bottom being almost dark. "It's Skinny," Bert said, in a kind of whisper. I just said, "Yes." I couldn't say anything more, because I was all trembling. CHAPTER XXX TELLS ABOUT HOW TIGERS LEAP Of course, we didn't stop to think about it then, but I knew that when the water first came rushing through Nick's Valley, it must have been dashed right into the pit. There was Skinny's body to prove it. Afterward, when it got flowing into the creek bottom and spreading out over the fields below, I could see how it wouldn't flow into that hole. But you can see for yourself, if you look at the map, that in the first rush it _must_ have done that. Gee, I'm no civil engineer, but anyway, I could see that. Anyway, we didn't stop to think about that, or the canoe either, but only just Skinny. "See if the paddle's anywhere around," Bert said. His voice was awful funny--sharp kind of, as if he meant business. "What do you want that for?" I asked him, all excited. "Look and see--do as I tell you," he just said. It was in the smashed canoe and I just stood there holding it. "What'll I do with it?" I asked him. "Just hold it," he said. Then he said, "Now, Blakeley, there's only one way to get down there and that's to jump. It's pretty deep, but the main question is, 'is it wide enough?' If it is--well, I'm a tiger and I ought to manage it."