“Did you hit him?”

“What was it?”

“Say, we’d better get out of this!”

Tom, Jack and Bert thus cried in turn. As for Dick he said nothing, and he did nothing, for he could not see to run in the darkness of the cave, and the rush of air, following the shot from his gun, had put out the match Tom was holding up.

“Show a light there,” called the marksman. “I think I plugged him all right.”

Tom struck another match and held it high above his head. Dick stood his ground, and Bert and Jack, who had started to run, came back to the mouth of the cave.

“No, I didn’t get him. I can see his green eyes yet!” shouted Dick. “Here goes for another shot.”

“Hold on!” cried Tom.

“What’s the matter?” asked Dick. “Don’t you want me to hit the beast?”

“I would if there was one there,” spoke Tom,[139] quietly, “but there’s no use wasting powder and lead on a stone wall.”

[139]

“A stone wall?” gasped Dick.

“Yes, that’s what you shot at. Look,” and Tom, advancing into the cave, held up a piece of wood he had lighted as a sort of torch, against the rocky wall of the cave. “That was what you thought were the glittering eyes of some animal,” he went on, and he pointed to two shining particles of mica in the rock. They were about the distance apart of an animal’s eyes, and when the match was reflected from them Dick mistook them for the orbs of a bear or some other beast. He had fired on the instant.

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” gasped the marksman.

“You’d have plugged him if it had been anything,” said Tom, as he held the little torch still closer to the rocky wall. Then they could all see where the shot from Dick’s gun had flattened out between the glittering bits of mica.

“Some shot, that,” complimented Bert, who, with Jack, had entered the cave.

“I should say yes,” added Jack.

“And in the dark, too,” came from Tom. “Well, fellows, we’re here. We’ve got a shelter, and now if we only had something to eat, we’d be 

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