He felt willing to risk Injun Joe and all other terrors.

But Becky was very weak.

She had sunk into a dreary apathy and would not be roused.

She said she would wait, now, where she was, and die--it would not be long.

She told Tom to go with the kite-line and explore if he chose; but she implored him to come back every little while and speak to her; and she made him promise that when the awful time came, he would stay by her and hold her hand until all was over.
Tom kissed her, with a choking sensation in his throat, and made a show of being confident of finding the searchers or an escape from the cave; then he took the kite-line in his hand and went groping down one of the passages on his hands and knees, distressed with hunger and sick with bodings of coming doom..