Norman Rockwell, Tom and Becky lost in the cave
Tuesday
With all the grimness confronting us these days, we need an occasional good news story for relief. Such is the recent news that the twelve missing scouts, lost in a flooded cave for nine days, have been found alive. Apparently rescuers still must find a way to get them safely through the flood waters, but at least they can be fed and cared for.
When I heard the news, the story of Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher came to mind. I have visited the caves where Mark Twain set the scene and can report how easy it would be to lose one’s way in their labyrinthine passages, as Tom and Becky do on a school outing. (I highly recommend the guided tour.) To build up to the happy ending, here are two anxiety-ridden moments that will resonate for people following the scouts story. In the first, Tom has just encountered Injun Joe, who runs away, but nevertheless keeps searching for an exit:
But hunger and wretchedness rise superior to fears in the long run. Another tedious wait at the spring and another long sleep brought changes. The children awoke tortured with a raging hunger. Tom believed that it must be Wednesday or Thursday or even Friday or Saturday, now, and that the search had been given over. He proposed to explore another passage. 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.
The townspeople, meanwhile, are beside themselves:
TUESDAY afternoon came, and waned to the twilight. The village of St. Petersburg still mourned. The lost children had not been found. Public prayers had been offered up for them, and many and many a private prayer that had the petitioner’s whole heart in it; but still no good news came from the cave. The majority of the searchers had given up the quest and gone back to their daily avocations, saying that it was plain the children could never be found. Mrs. Thatcher was very ill, and a great part of the time delirious. People said it was heartbreaking to hear her call her child, and raise her head and listen a whole minute at a time, then lay it wearily down again with a moan. Aunt Polly had drooped into a settled melancholy, and her gray hair had grown almost white. The village went to its rest on Tuesday night, sad and forlorn.
And then the moment arrives that they have been praying for:
Away in the middle of the night a wild peal burst from the village bells, and in a moment the streets were swarming with frantic half-clad people, who shouted, “Turn out! turn out! they’re found! they’re found!” Tin pans and horns were added to the din, the population massed itself and moved toward the river, met the children coming in an open carriage drawn by shouting citizens, thronged around it, joined its homeward march, and swept magnificently up the main street roaring huzzah after huzzah!
The village was illuminated; nobody went to bed again; it was the greatest night the little town had ever seen. During the first half-hour a procession of villagers filed through Judge Thatcher’s house, seized the saved ones and kissed them, squeezed Mrs. Thatcher’s hand, tried to speak but couldn’t—and drifted out raining tears all over the place.
Too many stories end in tragedy. The ones that don’t help keep hope alive.
Update: Here’s another remarkable parallel. First, here’s the New York Times account of how the boys were found:
The British diver John Volanthen was placing guide lines to try to get closer to 12 missing boys and their soccer coach trapped in a flooded cave network when he ran out of line himself, forcing him to the water’s surface.
There they were, all 13, staring at him through the light of his headlamp. After 10 days of efforts racing against monsoon rains and rising water in the cave, the search for the missing soccer team had finally succeeded.
If his line had been even 15 feet shorter, he would have turned back and not reached them on that dive Monday night. The group would have spent at least another night on its own in the pitch black, not knowing if a rescue would ever come.
Here’s how Tom finds his way to an exit:
Tom lay upon a sofa with an eager auditory about him and told the history of the wonderful adventure, putting in many striking additions to adorn it withal; and closed with a description of how he left Becky and went on an exploring expedition; how he followed two avenues as far as his kite-line would reach; how he followed a third to the fullest stretch of the kite-line, and was about to turn back when he glimpsed a far-off speck that looked like daylight; dropped the line and groped toward it, pushed his head and shoulders through a small hole, and saw the broad Mississippi rolling by!
And if it had only happened to be night he would not have seen that speck of daylight and would not have explored that passage any more!
The celebrating relatives sound the same as well:
Relatives of the missing spent much of the 10 days of the search waiting for news in plastic chairs under a temporary awning near the operation’s command center.
They jumped and shouted with glee on Monday night when they heard that the group had been found.
Unfortunately, the story isn’t over yet. How do get the boys out of the cave, given that it’s the monsoon season and the boys don’t know how to swim, is the next challenge.
