CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.
RE-TRAPPED.
Misfortunes, they say, never come singly, and these words had hardly been uttered when voices were heard, and directly after a familiar voice said loudly, the words coming in through the low passage and quite plainly to the boys' ears,-- "Made the oar myself, Skipper Jarks, and I ought to know it again.

What I say is as they must ha' managed somehow to ha' got in here." The boat darkened the entrance for a few moments, and then glided by; while the cavern kept closing like some monstrous eye whose lid was pressed up from below, opening again fairly widely, enough almost to suggest the possibility of their passing under; but closing again as the tide rose and sank in slow, regular pulsations.
But as they watched they could make out that the soft wave rose higher and higher and sank perceptibly less, while the prisoners' eyesight became so preternaturally sharp that they could detect the gradual opening of the sea anemones, as they spread out their starry crowns of tentacles after the first kiss of the water had moistened them.

The many limpets, too, which had been tight up against the smooth rock, like bosses or excrescences, were visibly raising their shells and standing up, partly detached.
Then a new horror attracted the boys, and made them almost frantic for the moment; for, as they crouched there in the bottom of the boat, watching the slowly diminishing amount of light which came in through the archway, the water softly and quickly, welled up, nearly shut the entry, and a wave ran up the passage and passed under the boat, which was heaved up so high that the gunwale grated against the roof, and they had to bend themselves down to avoid being pressed against the rock.
Then, as they lay there, they heard the wave run on and on, whispering and waking up the echoes far inside, till the whole of the interior seemed to be alive with lapping, hissing sounds, which slowly died away as the boat sank to nearly its old level, and the light flashed in once more.
"That's a hint to do something," said Vince, as he rose up, finding that his head nearly touched the shell-encrusted roof.
"Yes; to force our way out," said Mike excitedly.

"We must before it's too late." "It is too late, as I told you before," said Vince sharply.

"Look for yourself.