The Mystery at Bob-White Cave

us,” Honey said. “What do you see in the stream, Trixie?”
    “Nothing.Absolutely nothing!” Trixie said despairingly. She sat down on a jutting rock near the stream’s edge and turned her flashlight on the wall nearest her. In the light she saw a pair of bright button eyes. A small pack rat looked timidly from a cleft in the rock. As Trixie watched, it ran out to the stream and along the water’s edge, then disappeared.
    That’s queer , she thought. Where did it go? She stood up to investigate and saw, across the stream, a deep grotto in the wall. Calling to Mart and Honey to follow, she stepped across and started walking ahead, her flashlight beaming at the ground ahead of her.
    Suddenly she stopped, motionless with fright. A wide sinkhole yawned at her feet! Just one more step and she would have plunged down a dark hole.
    “Don’t come one inch nearer!” she warned. “I have to see where this leads. Lie down flat, then just creep up to the edge so we can look down.”
    Mart and Honey followed Trixie’s lead, flattening themselves and crawling to the edge of the hole. When the light of their three carbide lamps shone down, they saw an amazing spectacle. Beneath the rim, the well widened like the inside of an inverted bucket, its sides a series of narrow ledges, slimy and dripping, descending about thirty feet and ending in a shimmer of water.
    “It’s awful!” Honey said. “You’d have fallen, in just another second, and we’d never have seen you again. I can’t look at it.”
    “I can,” Mart said realistically. “There’s nothing horrible about it except that it’s blacker than night down there. Let’s look around with our flashlights.”
    “Let’s do!” Trixie said. “There, do you see what I see? The bottom of that hole is alive with ghost fish! And look at the salamanders crawling around the wall just above the water. Jeepers! It’s a gold mine of ghosts!”
    “We can’t ever get them, either—unless—do you think we could tie a dip net on a rope and bring some of them up?” Honey asked. “Watch out, Trixie; don’t go any nearer.”
    “There isn’t anything to fear. Mart, salamanders can’t possibly live in deep water, can they?” asked Trixie.
    “Not on your life. Most of them don’t live in water at all—just in damp places, usually.”
    “Then that means...
    “Yeah!That there’s only an inch or two of water at the bottom of that hole. Say....”
    “That’s just what I’m thinking. One of us can easily go down there and get the fish—five hundred dollars’ worth of fish!”
    “Trixie Belden, I’ll die if either one of you tries to go down into that awful place!” Honey cried. “I’ll go and get Mr. Hawkins. Don’t you dare to go down there!”
    “I’d dare a lot more than that for five hundred dollars to put toward that station wagon. Why, Honey, I’ve gone down the side of a cliff on the Hudson River, a cliff lots higher than this well is deep, and you never said a word.”
    “It wasn’t a black well, and it was a long way off from the river,” Honey said, her voice quivering. “ Please , Trixie, wait till tomorrow. We did promise your Uncle Andrew to obey all the cave rules.”
    “Did he mention anything about going down a little old well with water as shallow as this?”
    “No, but we should wait and ask him or ask Mr. Hawkins, or go get Brian and Jim.”
    “And let all those fish get away? How do I know there isn’t an outlet for that water so they’ll vanish? Oh, Honey, it’s just as safe as going down a cliff on the game preserve around your home. There are three of us in this cave together, aren’t there? That’s one of the main rules. Everybody knows we’re inside this particular cave, don’t they? That’s another rule. We have plenty of light and good strong ropes, haven’t we? Don’t you see that it will be all right?”
    “No, I don’t. Why can’t I at least get Jim and Brian, if you don’t want me to tell Mr. Hawkins?”
    “I don’t want to wait, and they’d think we were sissies to call them away from rock hunting. There’s just one thing, Mart....”
    “And that is?”
    “I’ll be the one to go down the rope.”
    Honey stifled a scream.
    “Just why?” Mart asked.
    “Because I weigh less,” Trixie said.
    “Even if you do, Mart couldn’t possibly pull you up. He couldn’t even hold you when you’d be going down.”
    “Honey, did you ever hear of belaying? Watch. Mart, tie the end of the rope around