While Gorbo was battering himself against the heavy little door, which had closed so gently and firmly as if pushed to from without, Sylvia clung to Joe and hid her face and trembled. Joe held her tight without speaking; he, too, tough and adventurous as he was, had received a shock.
Gorbo turned round at last, and in the faint light that came from somewhere below they could see a badly scared look on his face, and it was all twisted as if he were going to cry. He was thinking of the horrid mess he had got the little ones into.
“I’ve done it this time,” he said. “So the old woman was right after all.”
“Which old woman?” asked Joe.
“An old woman who told my mother that she would only have one son and that he would be the biggest fool among the Snergs.”
“Then it isn’t your fault,” said Joe, to comfort him. “If it was all settled before you were born.”
“That’s so!” exclaimed Gorbo. “I must be a fool not to think of that before. But then if I had thought of it,” he added mournfully, “I wouldn’t be a fool and the old woman would have been wrong; so it works out all right.”
“But you’re sometimes quite sensible,” said Joe. “Isn’t he, Sylvia?”
“Y—y--yes,” agreed Sylvia. “But I wish we could get out.”
“It seems to me,” said Gorbo, “--not that I am much of a man to listen to—that we should see what we can see down these steps.”
“Well, we can’t stay here for ever,” said Joe, “so let’s go.”
“I’ll go ahead,” said Gorbo. “If there are any fierce things that bite below, they can have first bite at me and serve me right.”
With this cheerful remark he started off. Joe went next and Sylvia came close behind him. The way was very narrow and so low that their heads nearly touched the roof, small as they were. And they went down and down and down, and the more they went down the lighter it got with a sickly yellowish-green light that seemed to come from a little growth on the walls, like fungus. There was absolutely nothing to see but steps and walls, very neatly cut out of solid rock. It must have been an awful job for those who did all this work, whoever they were.
“Do you think these steps go on for ever and ever?” asked Joe after a time.
“No,” replied Gorbo, stopping suddenly. “They’ve come to an end.” He was standing in a little flat place, from which five narrow passages branched out like the fingers of a hand. The question of which passage to take was indeed a hard one.
“We’d better start with the first one,” said Gorbo. “Then if it’s a wrong one we’ll try the next, and so on.”
“But suppose we go miles and miles before we find it’s a wrong one,” objected Joe. “We’d be hours over it, wouldn’t we?”
Gorbo scratched his head. “That sounds sound,” he observed.
“I know!” cried Joe. “We’ll see which one is ‘out.’ Let Sylvia try. She knows all the out poems.”
“All right.” Sylvia began to take great interest in the matter now. “Which one shall I try it with?”
“Try the cat one,” suggested Joe, after consideration.
So Sylvia pointed her finger at the little tunnels one after the other and repeated:
“If you want to stroke a cat
Lay it flat upon a mat.
Hold it firmly by the tail
Smack it if it starts to wail.
If it starts to spit and shout
Pick it up and throw it OUT.”
She stopped with her finger pointing at the fourth tunnel and she looked excitedly at the others, because it was becoming like a game.
“Here we go,” said Gorbo, making his way into the fourth tunnel.
They went on and on and on along the tunnel, and just at the exact moment when they agreed that it would never have any end, they fetched up against a blank wall. But on either side was a passage going at right angles, and the question was of course, which was the right one to take?
Sylvia repeated her little mystic rhyme, and “out” was the left-hand turning, so they went along it. After a dozen steps it turned to the right, and a little further on to the left; then it went straight on until it came to an end, with a smooth wall in front and on both sides. There was nothing for it but to go back and take the other turning. They wondered why the people who had done all this work had made this extra blind passage. Joe said they had done it to make it more interesting and adventurous. Sylvia said they had done it because they were pigs. Gorbo said it was merely because they were worse fools than he was and it quite cheered him up.
The other road soon began to turn gently to the left; then without rhyme or reason it turned gently to the right; then to the right and left alternately in very sharp turns. And just when they were convinced that it would go on turning idiotically for ever and ever they came suddenly into what appeared to be a mighty cavern, lighted by the same yellowish-green light of the tunnels, only more so, and full of monster mushrooms.