"No, no!" panted Will. "It is too dangerous, Josh, I can't let you go."

"I say, don't be stoopid, lad. We can't stop here; you know. n.o.body won't bring us cake and loaves o' bread and pilchard and tea, will they?"

"But, Josh!"

"Look here, lad, it's easy enough going down, ain't it?"

"Yes, yes," cried Will; "but suppose there is no adit; suppose there is no way out to the sh.o.r.e: how will you get back?"

"There I am again," growled Josh in an ill-used tone. "I never thought of that. I've got a good big head, but it never seems to hold enough to make me think like other men."

"You could not climb up to the mouth, so how could you climb up again here?"

Josh remained silent for a few minutes, and then he gave a stamp with his foot.

"Why," he cried, "you're never so much more clever than me. Why didn't you think o' this here?"

"What? What are you going to do, Josh?"

"Do, lad!" he cried, suiting the action to the word by running the rope through his hands sailor-fashion till he got hold of the end; "why, I'm going to make a knot every half fathom as nigh as I can guess it, and then it'll be easy enough to climb up or down."

Will breathed more freely, and stood listening to his companion's work, for it was a task for only one.

"There you are," cried Josh at the end of a few minutes' knotting.

"Now, then, who'll go down first--you or me?"

"I will," said Will. "I'm better now."

"Glad to hear it, lad; but you ain't going first into that gashly hole while I'm here. Stand aside."

Catching hold of the rope again he gradually tightened it to feel whether it was all right and had not left its place over the iron bar; and then, swinging himself off, he descended quickly about fifty feet till Will could hear his feet splash into the water, and then he shouted:

"Hooray, lad!"

"Is there an adit, Josh?"

"Dunno yet, but there's a big stick o' wood floating here as someone's pitched down, and our old rope's lying across it. I shall make it fast to the end here before I go any farther."

A good deal of splashing ensued, and then as Will listened it seemed to him that his companion must have lowered himself partly into the adit, for the rope swung to and fro. Then his heart leaped, for Josh sang out cheerily:

"All right, lad! here's the adit just at the bottom here, and the water dribbling out over it, I think. Come on down."

"Come on down!" echoed Will.

"To be sure, lad. Here I'm in the hole all right. Lay hold o' the rope. It's all slack now."

He set it swinging as he spoke, and at the end of a few moments Will caught it, drew in a long breath, and let himself hang over the black gulf, which seemed far less awful now that there was a friendly voice below.

"Steady it is, lad, steady. There, they knots make her easy, don't they?" Josh kept on saying as his young companion lowered himself rapidly down into the darkness, till he could see the water with the light from above reflected upon it; and the next moment he was seized and drawn aside, his feet resting on solid stone. "Stoop your head, lad, mind."

He bent down, and Josh drew him into a gallery similar to that which they had just left, only there was a little stream of water trickling about their feet.

"Come along, lad. I'll go first," said Josh. "Never mind the ropes: we'll go up and haul them to the top when we get out."

Then creeping cautiously forward in the total darkness, and with Will following, Josh went slowly, feeling his way step by step for about fifty yards, when a faint ray of light sent joy into their b.r.e.a.s.t.s; and on pushing forward they found their way stopped by what seemed to be a heap of fallen rock and earth, at whose feet the little stream that ran from the mine trickled gently forth.

The light came through several interstices, which seemed to be overgrown with ferns and rough seagra.s.s and hanging brambles; but it needed no great effort to force some of them aside, sufficient for Josh to creep out, and the next minute they were standing in the broad sunshine, the reason of the mouth of the adit being closed evident before them, the earth and stones from the cliff above having gone on falling for perhaps a century, and plants of various kinds common to the cliff covering the debris, till all trace of the opening but that, where a spring seemed to be trickling forth was gone.

Will drew a long breath and gazed with delight at the sail-dotted sea.

Then, without a word he led the way up the cliff, till, after an arduous climb, they stood once more by the open shaft.

"I--say!" cried Josh, staring; and Will looked down with horror to see that the iron bar had so given way that the rope had gradually been dragged to the top, pa.s.sed over, and probably both Josh and Will had made their last descent depending upon the strength of the former's old silk neck-tie.

"What an escape, Josh!" cried Will.

"Well," said Josh smiling, "I didn't think the old bit had it in her.

Well, she is a good un, any way."

Stooping down he undid the knots, handed the rope to Will to haul, while he smilingly replaced his kerchief about his neck with a loose sailor's knot, tucking the ends afterwards inside his blue jersey, and then helped with the rope, taking hold of the old one, as it came up at last dripping wet, and soon forming it also into a coil.

The next thing was to drag out the iron bar, which came out easily enough, making Will shake his head at it reproachfully, as if he thought what an untrustworthy servant it was.

This and the ropes were hidden at last; and they turned to descend, when Josh exclaimed:--

"Well, lad, I s'pose you won't try any o' them games again?"

"Not try?" said Will. "I mean to try till I succeed."

CHAPTER NINE.

THE YOUNG "GENT" IN THE ETON JACKET AND HIM IN THE FLANNEL SUIT.

"Here!"

This was said in a loud, imperious tone by a well-dressed boy--at least if it is being well-dressed at the sea-side to be wearing a very tight Eton jacket and vest, an uncomfortably stiff lie-down collar, and a tall glossy black hat, of the kind called by some people chimney-pot, by the Americans stove-pipe.

He was a good-looking lad of fifteen or sixteen, with rather aquiline features and dark eyes, closely-cut hair, that sat well on a shapely head; but there was a sickly whiteness of complexion and thinness of cheek that gave him the look of a plant that had been forced in a place where there was not enough light.

He was standing on the pier at Peter Churchtown intently watching what was going on beneath him on the deck of the _Pretty Ruth_, where our friend Will was busy at work over a brown fishing-line contained in two baskets, in one of which, coiled round and round, was the line with a hook at every six feet distance, and each hook stuck in the edge of the basket; in the other the line was being carefully coiled; but as Will took a hook from the edge of one basket, he deftly baited it with a bit of curiously tough gelatinous-looking half transparent gristle, and laid it in the other basket, so that all the baits were in regular sequence, and there was no chance of the hooks being caught.

Close by Will sat Josh, busy at work upon an instrument or weapon which consisted of a large hook about as big as that used for meat; and this he had inserted in a strong staff of wood some four feet long, while, to secure it more tightly, he was binding the staff just below the hook most neatly with fine copper wire.

Sailors and fishermen generally do things neatly, from the fact that they pay great attention to their work, and do it in a very slow, deliberate fashion, the fashion in which Josh on that sunny afternoon was working, with one end of the copper wire made fast to a bolt, to keep it straight while he slowly turned the staff round and round.

No one paid any heed to the imperious "Here!" so the lad shouted again:

"Hi! Here! You, sir!"