Paul Varley was sorely shaken by his plunge into the depths of the ancient cellar. He struck its floor so heavily, indeed, that the breath seemed to be driven from his body.

For a little he lay, motionless and half stunned. Then, his brain clearing, and, be it said, his general sense of numbness giving place to a number of distinct aches and pangs, he groaned, raised himself on an elbow, sat up, and tried to peer about him.

The movements had accentuated the pains. Paul groaned again. Even at that moment, though, the greatest of his troubles was the gloom in which he found himself.

Except for the pale patch of light above his head, indicating the break in the flooring of the room he had first entered, everything was in darkness; not an even darkness, but patchy, lumpy, with weird suggestions of shadowy and grotesque shapes.

Experimentally Paul drew up a knee, and found that the joint was in working order. He stretched out his arms. One of them was lame and sore, but he appeared to have escaped broken bones. Encouraged slightly, he tested his other leg, closing the test with a vigorous kick. His foot encountered an obstacle, and a voice spoke in the darkness.

“Hi there! What do you think you’re doing?”

It was a startled voice, and a wrathful voice. The sound of it gave Paul an instant of dazed bewilderment. His wits were working, but he hadn’t recalled the circumstance that he was not alone in his misadventure.

“Oh!” he gasped. “Oh—oh, you’re there, then?”

“Naturally!” The Shark’s tone was no milder than before.

“And—and are you hurt?”

“Huh! What do you suppose?”

“But—but are you?”

“There are some statements,” said the Shark grimly, “which should not need to be made. That’s one of ’em.”

“I’m mighty sorry. I—I ought to have known.”

The contrition in Varley’s tone had its effect.

“Huh!” grunted the Shark, but less aggressively. “Huh! Certain causes are bound to produce certain results. I’m hurt—yes. I’m all banged up. But thank the stars! the worst didn’t happen. I haven’t broken ’em.”

“Your legs, you mean?”

“No; my glasses!” snapped the Shark. “I’m like a bat if anything happens to them.”

“I understand. But how about the rest of you—the legs and arms, I mean?”

There was a brief pause, as if the Shark might be taking account of stock, so to speak.

“Well, I’m lame in one foot or ankle—can’t be sure which,” he reported. “And I’m sore in one shoulder—must have landed on it. Otherwise, though, I guess I’m all right. I—ugh! Say, that hurt!”

By hearing rather than by sight Varley knew that the Shark was getting upon his feet. He followed the example; also he imitated the exclamation.

“Ouch! Whew! Say, I’ve got my troubles, too.”

There was a moment’s silence; then Varley spoke again:

“It’s queer—I don’t know what’s the matter, but I—I’m sort of dizzy, and—and choking, and—and——”

“It’s getting me, too,” the Shark agreed. “Hold on, though! I’ve got an idea.”

There was the faint click of the catch of a metal match-box. Then a tiny flame showed. By its feeble light Varley made out what were the vague shapes that had seemed like heavier shadows, piles of old barrels and boxes, the usual accumulation of odds and ends in a cellar. Then the sickly flame died down.

“Humph! That’s it, fast enough,” said the Shark. “Bad air—like the air in a well or a cave that’s been closed up. Match won’t burn in it. Guess we’d better get out.”

Varley was beginning to have difficulty in breathing.

“Great Scott, but I—I never was in such a place!” he panted. “So close—so stuffy—so sour—so—so——”

“Sure! Bet you there hasn’t been a window or door of this cellar opened in my time or yours. And not nearly enough air’d seep in to keep it sweet. And as for getting out—well, I guess we’d best go the way we came.”

With that he put his hands above his head, and groped for the edge of the broken flooring. Luckily, the ancient cellar was not deep. The Shark failed to get a grip, but Varley, who was taller, succeeded where he failed.

“Give me a leg up,” Paul directed, and the Shark obeyed. The effort was painful. Plucky fellow though he was, he couldn’t quite repress a groan. Varley uttered another, and another, as he raised himself; bettered his hold on the ragged ends of the boards; found them fragile as well as ragged; tore away fragments of the rotten wood; gained the stouter support of a beam, which appeared still to be sound; called upon the Shark for renewed and redoubled effort; exerted all his waning strength, and, at last, slowly and with difficulty, drew his body to the comparative safety of the floor.

Apparently most of the remaining boards were still sound enough to support his weight, though they creaked dismally, while he bent down and extended a helping hand to the Shark.

It was a fortunate thing for the young adventurers that the Shark was light. Varley, as it was, found his work cut out for him, especially as both he and his companion still felt the effects of the foul air of the cellar. By dint of their utmost joint endeavors the Shark finally half climbed, half was dragged, through the opening. Then he tried to struggle to his knees, but pitched forward and lay helpless and exhausted. Varley, in almost as grievous plight, laid hold upon his collar and began to drag him toward the window.

Experiences were crowding thick and fast upon the city youth, but he was rising to the emergency and proving the mettle that was in him. It was a hard task, desperately hard, to cover the few feet which lay between the gap in the floor and the wall. Varley gritted his teeth, and pulled and tugged at the Shark, and gained inch by inch. But when the window had been reached, he slumped upon the floor beside his comrade, and lay there, panting heavily.

Luckily the sash was still raised, and through the opening the fresh, damp air was pouring into the room. The Shark was the first to show its revivifying effects. He moved, lifted himself on an elbow. Varley, after a little, raised his head. The eyes of the two met.

The Shark nodded solemnly. “Much obliged. Good work. You’re all right. I won’t forget it.” His voice was faint, but there was more than a hint of his usual crisp speech.

With some difficulty Paul sat up. So did the Shark. There was a long pause, each regarding the other steadily. Suddenly Varley spoke:

“We’re lucky—to get out of that.” He jerked his head in the direction of the yawning hole in the floor.

“Sure!” responded the Shark. “You see how it was? Cellar’s been shut up tight, so the air goes bad. Read about such things. Knew something was happening to us, but it needed the way the match failed to burn to give me a hint of what it was.”

“I understand. But—but what next?”

Cautiously and with a manner of not being over-sure of himself, the Shark stood up. He peered out of the window, and shook his head.

“Worse than it was,” he made report. “Raining harder than ever. And say! I’m pretty wet.”

Varley, too, got upon his feet. A glance through the dingy panes sufficed. The Shark had not exaggerated the weather conditions outside.

“Well, what ought we to do?” Paul inquired. “Pile out into it?”

The Shark shook his head decidedly. “No; not just yet. I’m too nearly all in. Got to have a chance to pull myself together and get my second wind.”

Varley shivered. “This—this is a pretty tough place to stay.”

“We can help things a lot.”

“How?” Paul asked incredulously.

“There’s a fireplace yonder. We have matches. There’s a lot of dry stuff we can burn.”

“Yes, but——”

“There’s no ‘but’ about it. We’ve got a roof over our heads. We can have a fire. We will have one, and we’ll dry off, while we wait a while to see if the weather doesn’t change.”

“But the rest of the crowd? They’ll be wanting to start back to town.”

“They won’t start in an open sleigh in such a downpour.”

“But they won’t know where we are.”

“Huh! We don’t know just where they are this minute, either.”

Paul hesitated. “Why—why, if we could get word to ’em——”

Plainly, the Shark was rapidly becoming himself again, for he grunted scornfully. “Ugh! No telephone, no message. That’s all there is to it. May as well take things as they are and make the best of ’em.”

“Well, I suppose that’s so,” Paul admitted, ruefully. Making the best of a long deserted house did not appear to him to offer much of promise.

The Shark limped back to the break in the floor. He moved with caution, and came to no harm. Apparently the floor was in fair condition except at the spot where it had given way beneath their weight. The Shark offered an explanation:

“Umph! Must have been a patch of dry-rot, and we struck it. Happens that way sometimes—don’t know the reason. But they built for keeps, the old fellows did, and this old shack’ll stand nobody knows how much longer. Now let’s see what we can do for kindling.”

Bending down, he laid hold upon one of the fractured boards. The wood yielded to the pull, and he ripped off a piece a foot or more in length and two or three inches across. A second tug yielded a slightly smaller piece.

Varley was observing the proceedings wonderingly.

“You don’t mean to say, do you, that you can make a fire with that stuff?” he asked.

“I can start one,” quoth the Shark. “Got to get something else to keep her going.”

“Where can you get it?”

The Shark nodded at the hole in the floor. “Down there. Lot of junk lying around. Saw it while the match was flickering.”

Varley’s face lengthened. “What! You’d risk it in that cellar again?”

“I’d risk more than that for a fire. Need it in my business, and need it quick.”

“Well, you’re not going down there,” said Varley with decision.

The Shark peered at him. “Huh? I’m not? How you make that out?”

“Because I’m going down. Look here! Whoever goes ought not to stay there long. It’ll be a case of grabbing up stuff that’ll burn and passing it up to the other fellow. Now, I’ve got longer arms and legs than you have. I can reach farther. When it comes to getting out, I can get a grip on the floor, and you can lend a hand from above. The air below won’t be good, but it’ll be no worse than it was before. Maybe it’ll be a little better—perhaps some fresh air will leak down through the hole. But I can work the trick, and I can work it better than you could, because I’m better built for it.”

The Shark paused in the operation of splitting one of the pieces of board. He blinked at Varley for a moment.

“Hanged if I thought you had it in you!” he said frankly. “Oh, I don’t mean the courage—that’s common enough. I mean the gumption—the head-piece—the sense to figure it out. What you say’s all true; you’re better built for the job. So you may do it. And—well, you might as well go to it.”

Varley needed no urging. He lowered himself through the opening, and dropped to the floor of the cellar. The Shark struck another of his precious matches, and held it like a tiny torch to guide the forager. There was draft enough to make it flicker wildly, but the same air currents did Varley a good turn.

He told himself that there was a perceptible freshening of the atmosphere in the old cellar. The place certainly was still one in which he would not have cared to linger, but as he scrambled to a pile of rubbish, and caught up an armful, his breathing, though quickened, was not difficult. What he collected he could no more than guess, for the match flame hardly lightened the shadows. By feeling rather than by sight he knew that it was wood upon which he laid hands. Then the Shark had caught the load, and Varley was back for another, which followed the first through the opening. Then down shot the Shark’s arm, and a hand closed on Paul’s collar.

“That’s enough to begin with. You come up—while the coming’s good!”

The Shark’s tone was gruff, but, somehow, Varley knew there was approval in it. With right good will he obeyed the order; and with the other’s aid he was soon back in the room. His hands were bleeding from sliver wounds, and his clothes were torn, but his spirits were rising rapidly.

“Huh! Good work!” grunted the Shark. “Stuff’ll burn.”

Varley glanced at his plunder. It included barrel staves, broken for the most part; short lengths of board; a stick or two of split fire-wood; all coated with dust and cobwebs, which had accumulated in the course of many years.

“Sure it’ll burn,” he declared. “It ought to be as dry as tinder.”

The Shark knelt by the hearth and made a little pyramid of shavings, topped with bits of board. Then he struck another match; the shavings ignited; a yellow flame showed, and above it rose a curl of smoke.

Deftly the Shark brought forward more wood, and added it to the pile. The flames spread, and so, for that matter, did the smoke, which belched from the fireplace into the room.

“Got—got to wait for the chimney to warm,” gasped the Shark. “Always the way.... Whew! but that was a smotherer!”

A cloud of smoke had driven fairly in his face. Coughing, he retreated, until he could clear his lungs. Then he came back valorously and played stoker.

The fire began to burn more vigorously, and the flue to do its appointed part. There was less smoke, and more light in the room. Varley made his first deliberate inspection of their refuge.

The ceiling was very low; he could touch it by raising his hand. The walls were grimy and spotted. Big beams showed at the corners. The fireplace was a rough, but substantial, affair, smoke blackened. The pieces of furniture he had noticed on first entering were decrepit with age. The table lacked a leg; the settle sagged at one end; the chest of drawers was a ruin.

The Shark was taking off his overcoat, and unbuckling his high overshoes. From both shoes and coat steam was rising as they caught the heat from the fire.

Varley followed his companion’s example. As he removed his shoes, he whistled softly. The guaranteed waterproofing had not been up to the requirements of such a test as it had undergone.

The Shark sat down on the floor; so did Varley. Each clasped his hands about his knees, and stared at the fire. It was crackling merrily, but not loudly enough to drown the sounds of the rain dashing against the old house.

There was a long pause before either spoke. Then said Varley, ruminatively:

“I guess you were right—a fire does help things a lot. I shouldn’t have thought of it. Still, this is a new game for me, this knocking about in the wilds; and it’s an old story for you.”

“Not so very old,” corrected the Shark. “Had a taste of it while ago, up in the big woods. Time our crowd got caught in a blizzard we found an old shack, and took possession. And the first thing we did was to start a fire. And maybe we didn’t need it! Cold? It was! How cold? Huh! Some of the fellows were talking about thirty below. No thermometer along, though—pity! Man ought to travel equipped for taking notes. And a good, registered thermometer’d be a great comfort. So’d a barometer, eh?”

“Why—why, very likely.”

The Shark shook his head. “Trouble is, folks don’t realize the need of precision. They’ll make a guess at the temperature, and let it go at that. Bah!”

Varley, not knowing what response to make, said nothing.

The Shark resumed his staring at the fire. There was another pause, even longer than that which had gone before. Varley at last pulled out his watch, and uttered an exclamation of vexation.

“Thunder! The thing’s stopped—must have been caused by that fall. What time do you suppose it is?”

“Don’t know. Left my watch at home to-day,” said the Shark.

Varley sprang up—then groaned at the pangs he suffered as the result of his incautious haste of movement. He looked out of the window, his face lengthening.

“Cracky! but it’s getting mighty dark! And the rain’s fairly coming down in buckets. I can’t see any distance. But unless I’m amazingly mistaken—say, look here, will you?”

The Shark joined him.

“What’s that out there? Looks like a regular lake!” Paul cried.

The Shark made deliberate inspection. Close to the old house was now an expanse of water, probably not very deep, but certainly of considerable area.

“Back-water!” was the Shark’s verdict.

“Back-water?” Paul repeated doubtfully.

“From the river. It’s over its bank at some low spot, and the water has spread out. It fills up the low places, of course, and this house seems to stand on a little rise. Very likely we’re surrounded.”

“Cut off, you mean?”

“Not if we want to wade out.”

“Oh! Wade?” Varley did not look happy at the prospect.

The Shark studied the scene—so far as it could be made out in the dim light.

“Umph! Must be getting late,” he remarked coolly. “Don’t know that a wading job would be any wetter than a walk. Still, would either pay? We’re all right here. There’s more wood for the fire to be had down cellar.... Um, u-m-m! Maybe it’d be wisest to let well enough alone.”

“And stay here?”

“Sure! For a while, anyway, till the rain lessens, and that pond has a chance to drain off.”

“But will it drain off?”

The Shark shrugged his shoulders. “Nobody knows.”

Varley deliberated for a moment. “But how about the rest of the crowd? What’ll they be thinking?”

“Don’t know. I’m no mind reader.”

“But——”

“But what can we do about it?” the Shark broke in. “We can wade out of this and be like two drowned rats for wetness, or we can stay here.”

“All night?”

“If necessary. Nothing to hurt us, is there?”

“No,” said Paul reluctantly. “But I wish we—well, I wish we could get word to the others.”

The Shark grunted. Then he limped to the fireplace and gave the fire a poke with a stick. Flames shot higher, illuminating the room.

“This suits me better than what’s waiting for us outside,” he said, and dropped to his old place on the floor.

Paul joined him.

“Whew!” said the city youth, after a little. “Tell you, I never knew before what a comfort a fire could be!”