ACTING instantly on the impulse of an old sailor, Reube had sprung forward almost with the shock, and started to haul down the mainsail in order to relieve the strain. The next moment, however, while the half-lowered sail was bulging and flapping, he leaped into the bow to help Will. The latter rose with a gasp and stood waist deep, clinging to the bowsprit. His head and arms were bedaubed grotesquely with the mud into which he had plunged with such violence. He gazed sternly at Reube, and exclaimed:

“Perhaps you’ll claim that you know these mud banks as well as I do! I earnestly hope you may, some day, gain the same intimate knowledge of them!”

Then he climbed aboard and finished the furling of the sails, while Reube rolled convulsively in the bottom of the boat, unable to control his laughter. He recovered himself only when Will trod upon him without apology, and threatened to put him overboard.

When the sails had been made snug, and the pinkie bailed out, and the mud cleaned with pains from Will’s face and hair and garments, there was nothing to do but watch the Dido in the distance and wait for the tide to fall. In another half hour, or a little more, only a waste of red flats and yellow pools separated the two stranded boats. Reube took off his shoes and socks, rolled his trousers up high, and stepped overboard. These precautions were for Will superfluous; so he went as he was, and congratulated himself on being able to defy all hidden clam shells. Before he went, however, he took the precaution to put out the pinkie’s anchor, for which Reube derided him.

“The pinkie’s no Western stern-wheeler, to navigate a field of wet grass!” said he. “I fancy she’ll wait here till next tide all right!”

“Yes—but then?” queried Will, laconically.

“Then,” replied Reube, “we’ll come back for her with the Dido.”

“There’s lots one never knows!” said Will, as he looked carefully to the anchor rope. And as things turned out it was well he did so—a fact which Reube had to acknowledge penitently.

The distance between the stranded boats was little more than a quarter of a mile, yet it took the boys some time to traverse it. The bottom of the cove was for the most part a deep and clinging ooze, which took them to the knee at every step, and held their feet with the suction of an airpump. Here and there were patches of hard sand to give them a moment’s ease; but here and there, too, were the dreaded “honey pots” for which that part of the coast is noted, and to avoid these they had to go most circumspectly. The “honey pot” is a sort of quicksand in which sand is replaced by slime—a bottomless quagmire which does its work with inexorable certainty and deadly speed. Both Reube and Will knew the strange, ominous olive hue staining the red mud over the mouths of these traps, but they knew, also, that all signs sometimes fail, so they took the boathook with them and prodded their path cautiously. At last, after wading a long, shallow lagoon, the bottom of which was thick with shells, and unfriendly to Reube’s bare feet, they reached the runaway Dido.

Breathless with anxiety, Reube climbed over the side, suddenly imagining all sorts of damage and defilement. But his darling was none the worse for her involuntary cruise. She had shipped some muddy water, but that was all that Reube could grumble at. Gandy had been too shrewd to do anything that might look like malice aforethought. In a trice the trim craft was bailed out and sponged dry. Then Will admired her critically from stem to stern, from top to keel, asking a thousand learned questions by the way, and feeling almost persuaded to build a boat himself. But even this interesting procedure came to an end, and at length the comrades threw themselves down on the cuddy roof, and realized that they were hungry. It was long past their dinner time. The tide was not yet at its lowest ebb, and it would be four or five hours ere they could hope to get the boats again afloat.

The only thing they had to eat was a pocketful of dried dulse which Reube had brought with him. This they devoured, and it made them very thirsty. They decided to go ashore and look for a spring. Far away, on the crest of the upland, were some houses, at which they gazed hungrily, but the idea of leaving the Dido and the pinkie for any such long jaunt was not to be entertained for a moment. As they again stepped out into the mud Will repeated the precaution which he had taken in regard to the pinkie. He put out the little anchor, and paid no heed to Reube’s derision. To be sure, Reube was both owner and captain, but Will stood not on ceremony.

Not far from high-water mark our thirsty explorers found a clear, cold spring bubbling out from beneath a white plaster rock. The water was very hard, carrying a great deal of lime in solution, and Will lectured learnedly on the bad effect it would have upon their stomachs if they drank much of it. As usually happens, however, this theorizing had small force against the very practical fact of their thirst. So they drank till they were perfectly satisfied, and were afterward none the worse. This, Will insisted, was thanks to the abundance of sorrel which they found amid the grass near by, whose acid was kind enough to neutralize the lime which they had swallowed.

“But I say,” urged Reube, “there are folks back yonder who drink water like this all their lives. The wells in this plaster belt are all hard like this, and some of the people who drink from them live to over ninety.”

“That proves nothing,” said Will, “except that they are a long-lived stock. If they had sense enough to go somewhere else and drink soft water they might live to over a hundred!”

Reube cared little for argument, always finding it hard to know whether Will was in earnest or not. He lazily changed the subject.

“By the way,” he remarked, “now’s just the chance to visit the cave at the end of the Point!”

“Cave!” cried Will, jumping up from the grass. “What cave? How can there be a cave round here without me knowing it?”

“Why, I only heard of it myself last fall,” said Reube. “You see, the mouth of it isn’t uncovered till near low water; and nobody comes near this point at any time, there being nothing to come for, and the shoals and eddies so troublesome. I’ve sailed round here a good deal at high and half tide, but no one comes near it when tide’s out. You see all the broken rocks scattered away out across the flats from the Point. And as for the “honey pots” between them—well, old Chris Boltenhouse, who told me all about the place last fall, said they were a terror. You couldn’t step without getting into one. Chris also told me that the Acadians, at the time of their expulsion, had used the cave as a hiding place for some of their treasures, and that when he was a boy quite a lot of coin and silver ornaments had been found there.”

“Queer, too,” muttered Will, “how things like that drop out of people’s minds, come back, and are forgotten again! Well, let’s look into the hole while we’ve got time;” and the two ran hastily to the narrow end of the turf.

Over the slippery rocks below tide mark they had to move more deliberately, but in a short time they reached the foot of the promontory and stood on the verge of the flats not half an hour above low water. Very villainous indeed looked the flats, with the olive-hued menace spread over them on every hand. But there was no sign of a cave. Scanning the rocks minutely, our explorers skirted the whole front of the headland, but in vain. Then they started to retrace their steps, inveighing against the falsity of traditions. But now, their faces being turned, the rocky masses took on for them a new configuration, and they discovered a narrow strait, as it were, behind a jutting bowlder. It was a most unlikely-looking place for a cave entrance, but Will poked his nose into it curiously. The next moment he shouted:

“Found!”

Reube sprang to his side. There, behind the sentinel rock, was a narrow, triangular opening of about the height of a man. Its base, some four feet wide, was thickly silted with mud, and its sides dripped forbiddingly. Will stepped inside, and then turned.

“It’s darker than Egypt!” he exclaimed. “How are we going to explore it without a light?”

“Ah,” said Reube in tones of triumph, “I’ve got ahead this time, Will! I happened to bring a whole bunch of matches from home in my pocket to supply the Dido’s cuddy. And I picked up this on the Point when you were running ahead in such a hurry.” And he drew a sliver of driftwood pine from under his jacket.

“Good for you, old man!” cried Will, joyously. In a second or two the sliver was ablaze, and the explorers plunged into a narrow passage whose floor sloped upward swiftly.

Will marched ahead carrying the torch.