Chapter Five.

Chapter Five.Will finds himself in a Painful Position.It was a position perilous enough to alarm the stoutest-hearted man, and awkward enough without the danger to puzzle any schemer, and for a few minutes the lad stood with one hand resting on the rock, and the cold perspiration gathering on his forehead, trying to think what he had better do.As he stood, there was a low whispering noise that came up the shaft—a noise that puzzled him as to what it could be, for he did not realise that the water down below had, when set in motion by the fall of the rope, kept on lapping at the side, and that this lapping sound echoed and repeated itself strangely from the shaft-walls.“Say, my lad—below there!” came now from above.“Ahoy!” answered Will, the call acting like an electric shock and bringing him to himself.“Where are you?” shouted Josh.“Here, in a gallery of the old mine,” replied Will.“That’s right!” came back. “I thought perhaps you had fallen.”“No, I’m all right,” cried Will through the great granite speaking-tube; and then he listened for some words of comfort from his companion.“Below!” shouted Josh again.“Hullo!”“Say, my lad, the rope’s gone down.”“Yes, I know.”“Well, what’s to be done?” cried Josh.Will turned cold. He had expected to get a few words of comfort from his companion, and to hear that he was about to propose some plan for his rescue, and all he seemed ready to do was to ask for advice.“How came you to let the rope go?” cried Will, forcing himself into an angry fit so as to keep from feeling alarmed at his position.“Dunno! It kind o’ went all of itself like,” Josh shouted back. “What’s to be done? Can’t jump down into the water and swim out by the adit, can you?”“No,” cried Will angrily. “Here, go back and get a rope.”“Where?” shouted back Josh. “I say, I knowed you’d be getting into some mess or another going down there.”Will was equable enough in temper, but a remark like this from the man he had trusted with his life made him grind his teeth in a fit of anger, and wish he were beside Josh for a moment, to give him a bit of his mind.“Go up to any of the fishermen, never mind where, and borrow a line.”“All right!”“And, Josh.”“Hullo!”“Don’t make any fuss; don’t alarm anybody. I don’t want them to know at home.”“But suppose we never get you out again?” shouted Josh, in a tone of voice that startled a shag which was about to settle on a shelf of rock hard by, and sent it hurrying away to sea.Will stamped his foot at this, and mentally vowed that he would never trust Josh again.“Go and borrow a line,” he cried, “and look sharp. I don’t want any one to know.”“All right!” cried Josh; and directly after Will knew that he was alone.The place was not absolutely dark, for he could plainly make out the edge of the gallery, seen as it were against a faint twilight that came from above; and this was sufficient to guide him as to how far he dare go towards the shaft if he wished to move.For the first few minutes, though, he felt no disposition that way, and seating himself on the stony floor, with hundreds of loose fragments of granite beneath him, he tried to be calm and cool, and to come to a conclusion as to how he should escape.If Josh came back soon with a rope it would be easy enough; and possibly they might be able to rig up a grappling-iron or “creeper,” as the fishermen called it, for the line that was lost; but a little consideration told him that in all probability the line had sunk before now and was right at the bottom of the shaft.Then he wondered how long Josh would be, and whether he would have much difficulty in borrowing a rope.If Josh said at once what was the matter, there would be a crowd up at the head of the shaft directly with a score of lines; but he did not wish for that. Even in his awkward, if not perilous, position he did not want the village to be aware of his investigations. He had been carrying them on in secret for some time, and he hoped when they were made known to have something worth talking about.How long Josh seemed, and how dark it was! Perhaps he was being asked for at home, and he would be in disgrace.That was not likely, though. He had chosen his time too well.“I wonder how far it is down to the water?” he said at last; and feeling about, his hand came in contact with a large thin piece of stone, as big as an ordinary tile.He hesitated for a moment or two, and then threw it from him with such force that it struck the far side of the shaft and sent up a series of echoes before, from far below, there came a dull sullen plash, with a succession of whishing, lapping sounds, such as might have been given out if some monster had come to the top and were swimming round, disappointed by what had fallen not being food.“It’s all nonsense!” said Will. “I don’t believe any fish or eel would be living in an old shaft.”Some of the mining people were in the habit of saying that each water-filled pit, deep, mysterious, and dark, held strange creatures, of what kind no one knew, for individually they had never seen anything; but “some one” had told them that there were such creatures, and “some one else” had been “some one’s” authority: for the lower orders of Cornish folk, with all their honest simplicity and religious feeling, are exceedingly superstitious, and much given to a belief in old women’s tales.

It was a position perilous enough to alarm the stoutest-hearted man, and awkward enough without the danger to puzzle any schemer, and for a few minutes the lad stood with one hand resting on the rock, and the cold perspiration gathering on his forehead, trying to think what he had better do.

As he stood, there was a low whispering noise that came up the shaft—a noise that puzzled him as to what it could be, for he did not realise that the water down below had, when set in motion by the fall of the rope, kept on lapping at the side, and that this lapping sound echoed and repeated itself strangely from the shaft-walls.

“Say, my lad—below there!” came now from above.

“Ahoy!” answered Will, the call acting like an electric shock and bringing him to himself.

“Where are you?” shouted Josh.

“Here, in a gallery of the old mine,” replied Will.

“That’s right!” came back. “I thought perhaps you had fallen.”

“No, I’m all right,” cried Will through the great granite speaking-tube; and then he listened for some words of comfort from his companion.

“Below!” shouted Josh again.

“Hullo!”

“Say, my lad, the rope’s gone down.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, what’s to be done?” cried Josh.

Will turned cold. He had expected to get a few words of comfort from his companion, and to hear that he was about to propose some plan for his rescue, and all he seemed ready to do was to ask for advice.

“How came you to let the rope go?” cried Will, forcing himself into an angry fit so as to keep from feeling alarmed at his position.

“Dunno! It kind o’ went all of itself like,” Josh shouted back. “What’s to be done? Can’t jump down into the water and swim out by the adit, can you?”

“No,” cried Will angrily. “Here, go back and get a rope.”

“Where?” shouted back Josh. “I say, I knowed you’d be getting into some mess or another going down there.”

Will was equable enough in temper, but a remark like this from the man he had trusted with his life made him grind his teeth in a fit of anger, and wish he were beside Josh for a moment, to give him a bit of his mind.

“Go up to any of the fishermen, never mind where, and borrow a line.”

“All right!”

“And, Josh.”

“Hullo!”

“Don’t make any fuss; don’t alarm anybody. I don’t want them to know at home.”

“But suppose we never get you out again?” shouted Josh, in a tone of voice that startled a shag which was about to settle on a shelf of rock hard by, and sent it hurrying away to sea.

Will stamped his foot at this, and mentally vowed that he would never trust Josh again.

“Go and borrow a line,” he cried, “and look sharp. I don’t want any one to know.”

“All right!” cried Josh; and directly after Will knew that he was alone.

The place was not absolutely dark, for he could plainly make out the edge of the gallery, seen as it were against a faint twilight that came from above; and this was sufficient to guide him as to how far he dare go towards the shaft if he wished to move.

For the first few minutes, though, he felt no disposition that way, and seating himself on the stony floor, with hundreds of loose fragments of granite beneath him, he tried to be calm and cool, and to come to a conclusion as to how he should escape.

If Josh came back soon with a rope it would be easy enough; and possibly they might be able to rig up a grappling-iron or “creeper,” as the fishermen called it, for the line that was lost; but a little consideration told him that in all probability the line had sunk before now and was right at the bottom of the shaft.

Then he wondered how long Josh would be, and whether he would have much difficulty in borrowing a rope.

If Josh said at once what was the matter, there would be a crowd up at the head of the shaft directly with a score of lines; but he did not wish for that. Even in his awkward, if not perilous, position he did not want the village to be aware of his investigations. He had been carrying them on in secret for some time, and he hoped when they were made known to have something worth talking about.

How long Josh seemed, and how dark it was! Perhaps he was being asked for at home, and he would be in disgrace.

That was not likely, though. He had chosen his time too well.

“I wonder how far it is down to the water?” he said at last; and feeling about, his hand came in contact with a large thin piece of stone, as big as an ordinary tile.

He hesitated for a moment or two, and then threw it from him with such force that it struck the far side of the shaft and sent up a series of echoes before, from far below, there came a dull sullen plash, with a succession of whishing, lapping sounds, such as might have been given out if some monster had come to the top and were swimming round, disappointed by what had fallen not being food.

“It’s all nonsense!” said Will. “I don’t believe any fish or eel would be living in an old shaft.”

Some of the mining people were in the habit of saying that each water-filled pit, deep, mysterious, and dark, held strange creatures, of what kind no one knew, for individually they had never seen anything; but “some one” had told them that there were such creatures, and “some one else” had been “some one’s” authority: for the lower orders of Cornish folk, with all their honest simplicity and religious feeling, are exceedingly superstitious, and much given to a belief in old women’s tales.

Chapter Six.A Case of Lost Nerve, and the Help that came.It must have been quite an hour of painful waiting before Josh’s voice was heard from above.Will had been sitting there in the dark passage listening to every noise, though scarcely anything met his ear but the incessant drip and trickle of the water that oozed from the shaft sides, when all at once there was a faint sound from above, and his heart leapt with excitement.Was it Josh at last?“Bellow—er!” came down the shaft.“Ahoy!” shouted back Will. “Got a rope?”“Ay, lad; I’ve got un, a strong noo un as’ll hold us both, a good thirty fathom!”“Make it fast to the iron bar, Josh!” cried Will, whose hands now felt hot with excitement.“Ay, I won’t lose this gashly thing!” cried Josh, whose words came down the shaft-hole wonderfully distinctly, as if a giant were whispering near the lad’s ear.Will listened, and fancied he could hear his companion knotting the end of the rope and fastening it round the iron bar; but he could not be sure, and he waited as patiently as he could, but with a curious sensation of dread coming over him. He had felt courageous enough when he came down, indifferent, or thoughtless perhaps, as to the danger; but this accident with the rope had, though he did not realise it, shaken his confidence in Josh; and in addition, the long waiting in that horrible hole had unnerved him more than he knew, full proof of which he had ere long.“There, she’s fast enough now,” came down the great granite speaking-tube. “I’m going to send the line down, lad. She’s a gashly stiff un, but she was the best I could get. Make a good knot and hitch in her, and sit in it; I’ll soon have you up.”“All right!” shouted Will; but his voice sounded a little hoarse, and his hands grew moister than before.“Below there! down she comes!” said Josh; and, taking the ring of new hempen rope, freshly stained with cutch to tan it and make it water-resisting, he planted one foot upon the loop he had secured over the iron bar, and threw the coil down into the pit, so that the weight might tighten out the stiff hemp, uncoil the rings, and make it hang straight.The rope fell with a curious whistling crackling noise, tightening against the fisherman’s foot; and the knot would have jumped off but for his precaution. Then it stopped with a jerk, and Josh shouted again:“There you are, lad! See her?”“Ye–es,” came up faintly.“Well; lay hold and make her fast round you. Hold hard a minute till I’ve hauled up a fathom or two.”He stooped down, keeping his foot on the bar the while, took hold of the rope, and hauled it up a little way.“There you are, my lad; and now look sharp. I want you out of this unked place.”There was no answer, and Josh waited listening.“Haven’t you got her?” he shouted.“No; I can’t reach. I’m on the other side,” came up.“Oh, I see!” said Josh; and stooping down so as to keep the rope tight to the iron bar, he crept round to the opposite side of the shaft-hole, and held the rope close to the edge.“There you are, lad,” he said. “Got her?”No answer.“Have you got her?”“N–no! I can’t reach.”Josh Helston uttered a low whistle, and the skin of his forehead was full of wrinkles and puckers.“Look out, then!” he shouted; “I’ll make her sway. Look out and catch her as she comes to you.”He altered his position and began swinging the rope to and fro, so that as he looked down the void he could see that it struck first one side and then the other of the rocky hole; but there was no sudden tug from below, and he snouted down again:“Haven’t you got her, lad?”“N–no,” came up hoarsely; “I can’t reach.”Josh Helston wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and uttered the low whistle once again.Then an idea struck him.“Wait a bit, lad,” he cried; “I’ll make her come.”He began to haul the rope up again rapidly, fathom after fathom, till it began to come up wet; and soon after there was the end, which he took, and after looking round for a suitable piece he pounced upon a squarish piece of granite, which he secured to the rope by an ingenious hitch or two, such as are used by fishermen to make fast a killick—the name they give to the stone they use for anchoring a lobster-pot, or the end of a fishing-line in the sea.This done he began to lower it rapidly down.“Here’s a stone!” he shouted; “say when she’s level with where you are.”There was no answer, but there was the harsh grating noise made by the descending stone as it kept chipping up against the granite wall; and Will sat about two yards from the mouth of the gallery, dripping with cold perspiration, clinging almost convulsively to the rough wall against which he leaned, and waiting for the stone to be swung so low that Josh could give it a regular pendulum motion, and pretty well land it in the gallery.It seemed darker than ever, and to Will it was as if some horrible sensation of dread was creeping up his limbs to his brain, unnerving him more and more. For he had been already somewhat unnerved, and, in a manner quite different to his usual habit, he had stepped quite close to the mouth of his prison, felt about with his left hand till he found a niche, into which he could partly insert his fingers. Then, leaning forward, he was able to get his head clear, turn it, and glance upwards towards the light.It was so risky a thing to do that he shrank back directly with a shudder, and closed his eyes for a moment or two, seeming to realise for the first time the terrible danger of his venture.He collected himself a little, though, and waited, seeing the rope at last very faintly, after hearing its descent and splash in the water at the bottom.But though he could see it, as he said it was beyond his reach.Then it seemed to disappear, and come into sight again like a dark thread or the shadow of a cord. Now it seemed near, now afar off, and after waiting a few moments he made a snatch at it. As he did so he felt the fingers of his left hand gliding from the wet slippery niche into which he had driven them, and but for a violent spasmodic jerk of his body he would have been plunged headlong down to the bottom of the shaft.Shivering like one in an ague he half threw himself upon the rock, and crept back from the entrance to the gallery, hardly able to answer the demands of his companion at the mouth above.He forced himself, though, to answer, fighting all the time with the nervous dread that was growing upon him; and at last he knew, though he could hardly see it, that the great stone was being swung to and fro.“Now, lad, can’t you get it?” cried Josh; and once more the hoarse reply “No,” came up to him.“Try now!” cried Josh; and the stone was agitated more and more, striking the sides of the shaft, sometimes swinging into the gallery a foot as it seemed, but Will was as if in a nightmare—he could not stir.“Are you trying?” came down the shaft now in quite a sharp tone, to echo strangely from the sides.“No,” said Will faintly; and just then the stone struck against the opposite wall, the rope hung loose, and at the end of a moment or two there was once more the hollow sullen splash in the water at the bottom.“Here! hullo there!” cried Josh; “what’s up with you, lad?”“I—I don’t know!” cried Will hoarsely. “I shall be better soon.”“Better!” shouted Josh. “What! aren’t you all right?”Will did not answer, but sat there chained, as it were, to his place.Josh let fall the rope and stood upright, giving vent to a loud expiration of the breath, and then wiping the perspiration from his face.He was thinking, and when Josh thought he closed his eyes tightly, as if he could think better in the dark. He was not quick of imagination, but when he had caught at an idea he was ready to act upon it.The idea came pretty quickly now, and opening his eyes he looked sharply round, picked up a great stone, and drove the iron bar a little more tightly into the crevice of the rock.Then he threw down the stone, stooped and tried the bar to find it perfectly fast, and once more stopped to think.An idea came again, and he pulled off his black silk neckerchief, a very old weather-beaten affair, but tolerably strong, and kneeling down he bound it firmly round the bar above the rope, passing it through the loop at last, and knotting it securely below, so that the rope should not be likely to slip off the smooth iron.This done, Josh stood upright once more, gazing down into the black shaft.“Phew!” he said, with a fresh expiration of the breath; “it’s a gashly unked place, and the more you look the unkeder it gets, so here goes.”He went down on his hands and knees, took hold of the iron bar with one hand, then with the other, and shuffled his legs over the shaft, an act of daring ten times greater than that of Will, for he had no friend to leave who had strength of arm to drag him up.He held on by both hands for a few moments, then by one, as he took fast hold of the rope with, his short deformed hand, and twisted one leg in the rope, pressing his foot against it to have an additional hold; and then, without the slightest hesitation he loosed his grasp of the iron bar, placed the free hand above the other, and began to slide slowly down.If Josh Helston felt nervous he did not show it, but slid gently down, his hands being too horny from constant handling of ropes to be injured by the friction; neither did the task on hand seem difficult, as he went down and down, swaying more and more as the length of rope between him and the iron bar increased, and gradually beginning to turn as the hard rope showed a disposition to unwind.“He said she were strong enough to bear anything,” he muttered; “and I hope she be, for p’r’aps she’ll have to carry two.”How this was to happen did not seem very clear; but the idea was in Josh Helston’s not over clear head that it might be so, and the fact was that it took all his powers of brain to originate the idea of going down to help his companion—he had not got so far as the question of how they were to get out. Even if he had thought of it, there was the rope, and he would have said, “If you can climb down you can climb up.”Down lower and lower, with the water dripping upon him here, spurting out from between two blocks of granite there; but Josh’s mind was fixed upon one thing only, and that was to reach the spot where Will was waiting to be helped.For some distance he descended in silence. Then he began to shout:“Coming down,” he said. “Look out!”Will started and stared towards the mouth of the gallery, but he did not answer. He could not utter a word.“Coming down!” shouted Josh again at the end of a few seconds. “Where are you, lad?”There was no response for a few moments, and then, hoarse and strange from many feet below, came up the word:“Here!”“Right!” shouted back Josh quietly enough; “and that’s where I’ll be soon. I wish I had one o’ the boat’s lanterns here all the same.”The rope slipped slowly through his hands, checked as it was by the twist round his right leg, and he dropped lower and lower, turning gently round the while.“Now, then! Where?” he shouted again.“Here!” was the answer from close below now; and Josh took one look upwards, to see that the square mouth of the shaft seemed very small.“I’m ’bout with you now, my lad,” he said as he still glided down. “Now, where are you?”“Here!” came from below him: and he tightened his grasp, while the rope slowly turned till his face was opposite to the mouth of the shaft.“Right, lad!” he cried, striking his feet against the side of the shaft. “I can’t see very well,” he added as he swung to and fro more and more, “but I’m ’bout doing it, ain’t I?”“Yes—I think so,” faltered Will. “Take care.”“Sha’n’t let go o’ the rope, lad,” said Josh, striking his feet again on the shaft-wall, and giving himself such impetus that they rested, as he swung across, on the floor of the gallery, into which he was projected a foot; but the rope, of course, caught on the roof of the place, and he was jerked back and swept over to the opposite wall.The next time he approached the gallery backwards, and his feet barely touched; but he swung round again, gave himself a fresh impetus, shot himself forward, and as he entered the opening he let the rope slide through his hands for a few feet, the result being that when he tightened his grasp he was landed safely, and he drew a long breath.“Where are you?” he said sharply as he drew up more of the rope; and, making a running loop, passed it over his head and round his waist, so as there should be no danger of its getting free.“Here!” cried Will, whose nerve seemed to return now that he had a companion in his perilous position; and, starting up, he caught the rough fisherman tightly by the arm.

It must have been quite an hour of painful waiting before Josh’s voice was heard from above.

Will had been sitting there in the dark passage listening to every noise, though scarcely anything met his ear but the incessant drip and trickle of the water that oozed from the shaft sides, when all at once there was a faint sound from above, and his heart leapt with excitement.

Was it Josh at last?

“Bellow—er!” came down the shaft.

“Ahoy!” shouted back Will. “Got a rope?”

“Ay, lad; I’ve got un, a strong noo un as’ll hold us both, a good thirty fathom!”

“Make it fast to the iron bar, Josh!” cried Will, whose hands now felt hot with excitement.

“Ay, I won’t lose this gashly thing!” cried Josh, whose words came down the shaft-hole wonderfully distinctly, as if a giant were whispering near the lad’s ear.

Will listened, and fancied he could hear his companion knotting the end of the rope and fastening it round the iron bar; but he could not be sure, and he waited as patiently as he could, but with a curious sensation of dread coming over him. He had felt courageous enough when he came down, indifferent, or thoughtless perhaps, as to the danger; but this accident with the rope had, though he did not realise it, shaken his confidence in Josh; and in addition, the long waiting in that horrible hole had unnerved him more than he knew, full proof of which he had ere long.

“There, she’s fast enough now,” came down the great granite speaking-tube. “I’m going to send the line down, lad. She’s a gashly stiff un, but she was the best I could get. Make a good knot and hitch in her, and sit in it; I’ll soon have you up.”

“All right!” shouted Will; but his voice sounded a little hoarse, and his hands grew moister than before.

“Below there! down she comes!” said Josh; and, taking the ring of new hempen rope, freshly stained with cutch to tan it and make it water-resisting, he planted one foot upon the loop he had secured over the iron bar, and threw the coil down into the pit, so that the weight might tighten out the stiff hemp, uncoil the rings, and make it hang straight.

The rope fell with a curious whistling crackling noise, tightening against the fisherman’s foot; and the knot would have jumped off but for his precaution. Then it stopped with a jerk, and Josh shouted again:

“There you are, lad! See her?”

“Ye–es,” came up faintly.

“Well; lay hold and make her fast round you. Hold hard a minute till I’ve hauled up a fathom or two.”

He stooped down, keeping his foot on the bar the while, took hold of the rope, and hauled it up a little way.

“There you are, my lad; and now look sharp. I want you out of this unked place.”

There was no answer, and Josh waited listening.

“Haven’t you got her?” he shouted.

“No; I can’t reach. I’m on the other side,” came up.

“Oh, I see!” said Josh; and stooping down so as to keep the rope tight to the iron bar, he crept round to the opposite side of the shaft-hole, and held the rope close to the edge.

“There you are, lad,” he said. “Got her?”

No answer.

“Have you got her?”

“N–no! I can’t reach.”

Josh Helston uttered a low whistle, and the skin of his forehead was full of wrinkles and puckers.

“Look out, then!” he shouted; “I’ll make her sway. Look out and catch her as she comes to you.”

He altered his position and began swinging the rope to and fro, so that as he looked down the void he could see that it struck first one side and then the other of the rocky hole; but there was no sudden tug from below, and he snouted down again:

“Haven’t you got her, lad?”

“N–no,” came up hoarsely; “I can’t reach.”

Josh Helston wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and uttered the low whistle once again.

Then an idea struck him.

“Wait a bit, lad,” he cried; “I’ll make her come.”

He began to haul the rope up again rapidly, fathom after fathom, till it began to come up wet; and soon after there was the end, which he took, and after looking round for a suitable piece he pounced upon a squarish piece of granite, which he secured to the rope by an ingenious hitch or two, such as are used by fishermen to make fast a killick—the name they give to the stone they use for anchoring a lobster-pot, or the end of a fishing-line in the sea.

This done he began to lower it rapidly down.

“Here’s a stone!” he shouted; “say when she’s level with where you are.”

There was no answer, but there was the harsh grating noise made by the descending stone as it kept chipping up against the granite wall; and Will sat about two yards from the mouth of the gallery, dripping with cold perspiration, clinging almost convulsively to the rough wall against which he leaned, and waiting for the stone to be swung so low that Josh could give it a regular pendulum motion, and pretty well land it in the gallery.

It seemed darker than ever, and to Will it was as if some horrible sensation of dread was creeping up his limbs to his brain, unnerving him more and more. For he had been already somewhat unnerved, and, in a manner quite different to his usual habit, he had stepped quite close to the mouth of his prison, felt about with his left hand till he found a niche, into which he could partly insert his fingers. Then, leaning forward, he was able to get his head clear, turn it, and glance upwards towards the light.

It was so risky a thing to do that he shrank back directly with a shudder, and closed his eyes for a moment or two, seeming to realise for the first time the terrible danger of his venture.

He collected himself a little, though, and waited, seeing the rope at last very faintly, after hearing its descent and splash in the water at the bottom.

But though he could see it, as he said it was beyond his reach.

Then it seemed to disappear, and come into sight again like a dark thread or the shadow of a cord. Now it seemed near, now afar off, and after waiting a few moments he made a snatch at it. As he did so he felt the fingers of his left hand gliding from the wet slippery niche into which he had driven them, and but for a violent spasmodic jerk of his body he would have been plunged headlong down to the bottom of the shaft.

Shivering like one in an ague he half threw himself upon the rock, and crept back from the entrance to the gallery, hardly able to answer the demands of his companion at the mouth above.

He forced himself, though, to answer, fighting all the time with the nervous dread that was growing upon him; and at last he knew, though he could hardly see it, that the great stone was being swung to and fro.

“Now, lad, can’t you get it?” cried Josh; and once more the hoarse reply “No,” came up to him.

“Try now!” cried Josh; and the stone was agitated more and more, striking the sides of the shaft, sometimes swinging into the gallery a foot as it seemed, but Will was as if in a nightmare—he could not stir.

“Are you trying?” came down the shaft now in quite a sharp tone, to echo strangely from the sides.

“No,” said Will faintly; and just then the stone struck against the opposite wall, the rope hung loose, and at the end of a moment or two there was once more the hollow sullen splash in the water at the bottom.

“Here! hullo there!” cried Josh; “what’s up with you, lad?”

“I—I don’t know!” cried Will hoarsely. “I shall be better soon.”

“Better!” shouted Josh. “What! aren’t you all right?”

Will did not answer, but sat there chained, as it were, to his place.

Josh let fall the rope and stood upright, giving vent to a loud expiration of the breath, and then wiping the perspiration from his face.

He was thinking, and when Josh thought he closed his eyes tightly, as if he could think better in the dark. He was not quick of imagination, but when he had caught at an idea he was ready to act upon it.

The idea came pretty quickly now, and opening his eyes he looked sharply round, picked up a great stone, and drove the iron bar a little more tightly into the crevice of the rock.

Then he threw down the stone, stooped and tried the bar to find it perfectly fast, and once more stopped to think.

An idea came again, and he pulled off his black silk neckerchief, a very old weather-beaten affair, but tolerably strong, and kneeling down he bound it firmly round the bar above the rope, passing it through the loop at last, and knotting it securely below, so that the rope should not be likely to slip off the smooth iron.

This done, Josh stood upright once more, gazing down into the black shaft.

“Phew!” he said, with a fresh expiration of the breath; “it’s a gashly unked place, and the more you look the unkeder it gets, so here goes.”

He went down on his hands and knees, took hold of the iron bar with one hand, then with the other, and shuffled his legs over the shaft, an act of daring ten times greater than that of Will, for he had no friend to leave who had strength of arm to drag him up.

He held on by both hands for a few moments, then by one, as he took fast hold of the rope with, his short deformed hand, and twisted one leg in the rope, pressing his foot against it to have an additional hold; and then, without the slightest hesitation he loosed his grasp of the iron bar, placed the free hand above the other, and began to slide slowly down.

If Josh Helston felt nervous he did not show it, but slid gently down, his hands being too horny from constant handling of ropes to be injured by the friction; neither did the task on hand seem difficult, as he went down and down, swaying more and more as the length of rope between him and the iron bar increased, and gradually beginning to turn as the hard rope showed a disposition to unwind.

“He said she were strong enough to bear anything,” he muttered; “and I hope she be, for p’r’aps she’ll have to carry two.”

How this was to happen did not seem very clear; but the idea was in Josh Helston’s not over clear head that it might be so, and the fact was that it took all his powers of brain to originate the idea of going down to help his companion—he had not got so far as the question of how they were to get out. Even if he had thought of it, there was the rope, and he would have said, “If you can climb down you can climb up.”

Down lower and lower, with the water dripping upon him here, spurting out from between two blocks of granite there; but Josh’s mind was fixed upon one thing only, and that was to reach the spot where Will was waiting to be helped.

For some distance he descended in silence. Then he began to shout:

“Coming down,” he said. “Look out!”

Will started and stared towards the mouth of the gallery, but he did not answer. He could not utter a word.

“Coming down!” shouted Josh again at the end of a few seconds. “Where are you, lad?”

There was no response for a few moments, and then, hoarse and strange from many feet below, came up the word:

“Here!”

“Right!” shouted back Josh quietly enough; “and that’s where I’ll be soon. I wish I had one o’ the boat’s lanterns here all the same.”

The rope slipped slowly through his hands, checked as it was by the twist round his right leg, and he dropped lower and lower, turning gently round the while.

“Now, then! Where?” he shouted again.

“Here!” was the answer from close below now; and Josh took one look upwards, to see that the square mouth of the shaft seemed very small.

“I’m ’bout with you now, my lad,” he said as he still glided down. “Now, where are you?”

“Here!” came from below him: and he tightened his grasp, while the rope slowly turned till his face was opposite to the mouth of the shaft.

“Right, lad!” he cried, striking his feet against the side of the shaft. “I can’t see very well,” he added as he swung to and fro more and more, “but I’m ’bout doing it, ain’t I?”

“Yes—I think so,” faltered Will. “Take care.”

“Sha’n’t let go o’ the rope, lad,” said Josh, striking his feet again on the shaft-wall, and giving himself such impetus that they rested, as he swung across, on the floor of the gallery, into which he was projected a foot; but the rope, of course, caught on the roof of the place, and he was jerked back and swept over to the opposite wall.

The next time he approached the gallery backwards, and his feet barely touched; but he swung round again, gave himself a fresh impetus, shot himself forward, and as he entered the opening he let the rope slide through his hands for a few feet, the result being that when he tightened his grasp he was landed safely, and he drew a long breath.

“Where are you?” he said sharply as he drew up more of the rope; and, making a running loop, passed it over his head and round his waist, so as there should be no danger of its getting free.

“Here!” cried Will, whose nerve seemed to return now that he had a companion in his perilous position; and, starting up, he caught the rough fisherman tightly by the arm.

Chapter Seven.“I say, my lad, what’s going to be done?”“Why, what’s the matter with you?” cried Josh angrily.“I don’t know. Nothing,” replied Will. “I could not reach the rope.”“Ah! well, you’ve got it now,” said Josh gruffly; “and the sooner we get out of this the better.”“Get out of it?” said Will hoarsely.“Get out of it! To be sure. You didn’t mean to come here to live, did you?”“No,” said Will, “but—”He paused, for his nervous feeling was returning, and shame kept him from saying that he was afraid.He might have spoken out frankly, though, for Josh Helston, blunt of perception as he was over many things, saw through him now, and in a gruff voice he said:“Well, if anybody had told me that you could have got yourself skeered like this, Master Will, I should have told him he was a fool. But there, you couldn’t help it, I s’pose. It was that diving as upset you, lad.”“Yes, yes; perhaps it was,” cried Will, eagerly grasping at the excuse. “I’m not myself, Josh, just now.”Josh began to whistle a dreary old minor tune as they stood there in the dark, to the accompaniment of the dripping water, and for some few minutes no word was spoken.“Hadn’t we better get back?” said Josh at last.“But how?” said Will despairingly.“Rope,” replied Josh laconically. “Swarm up!”Will laid his hand upon the slight cord his companion had knotted round his waist.“I could not climb up that,” he said, “at any time. It’s impossible now.”Josh whistled again and remained silent.“Well, it is gashly thin to swarm up,” he said. “I never thought of that till now.”“You did not think of getting back?” cried Will.Josh rubbed the side of his nose with a bit of the rope.“Well, no,” he said slowly; “can’t say as I did, lad. Seemed to me as you was in trouble, and I’d better come to you, and so I come.”“Josh!” cried the lad.“Yes, my son. Well, what’s going to be done? We can’t stop down here. We shall be wanted aboard, and there ain’t a bit o’ anything to eat.”“Do you think when we are missed that they will come and look for us?”“Well,” said Josh slowly, “they might or they mightn’t; but if they did they wouldn’t find us.”“I don’t know,” said Will thoughtfully.“Well, I think I do, lad,” said Josh, after another scrub at his nose. “I don’t s’pose anybody in Peter Churchtown knows that this gashly old hole is here, and it ain’t likely they’d come up here to look for us.”“But they would hunt for us surely, Josh.”“Dunno. When they missed us they’d say we’d took a boat and gone out somewheres to fish, and happened on something—upset or took out to sea by the current.”“Yes,” said Will thoughtfully.“Seems to me, lad, as it’s something like a lobster-pot—easy enough to get in, and no way out.”“Shall we shout for help?”“You can if you like,” said Josh quietly. “I sha’n’t. It makes your throat sore, and don’t do no good.”“Don’t be cross with me, Josh,” cried Will excitedly.“Oh! I arn’t cross with you, lad; I’m cross with myself. It’s allus my way: I never did have no head. Think o’ me walking straight into a corner like this, and no way hardly out. Well, anyhow, it’s being mate-like to you, my lad, and it won’t be so dull.”“But, Josh, you could climb out and go for help.”“Why, of course I could,” he replied. “I never thought of that.”“Then go at once. Bring a couple of men; and then if you left me the rope you could haul me up.”“Why I could haul you up myself, couldn’t I? and then nobody need know anything about it. Here goes.”Will could not help a shudder as his companion proceeded to haul up the portion of the rope that hung down in the shaft, coiling it in rings in the gallery till it was all there.“Now, then, you mind as that don’t fall while I go up again,” said Josh. “I wish it warn’t so gashly dark.”As he spoke he untied the loop from about his waist and drew the rope tight from above.“Just like me,” he grumbled. “If I’d had any head I should have made knots all down the rope, and then it would have been easy to climb; but here goes; and mind when I’m up you make a good hitch and sit in it, I’ll soon have you up.”“Yes, I see,” said Will, who was fighting hard against the nervous dread that began once more to assail him; “pray take care.”“Take care! why, of course I shall. Don’t catch me letting go of the rope in a place like this. Here goes!”He reached up as high as he could, holding the rope firmly, and then swung himself out of the gallery over the black void, becoming visible to Will as the faint light from above fell upon his upturned face. Then with legs twined round the rope, Josh began to draw himself up a little bit at a time, the work being evidently very laborious, while Will held the rope and saw him disappear as he ascended beyond the gallery; but the rope the lad held was like an electric communication, the efforts of the climber being felt through the strong fibres as he went up and up.Then there was a pause, and as Josh rested it was evident that he could not keep himself quite stationary, but slipped a few inches at a time.Then he started once more, and as the cord jerked and swung, the loud expirations of the climber’s breath kept coming down to where, with moist palms and dewy forehead, Will listened.How high was he now? How much farther had he got by this? Josh’s arms were like iron, and the strength in that deformed wrist and hand was tremendous.Up he went; Will could feel it; and he longed to gaze up and see how he progressed; but somehow that horrible shrinking sensation came over him, and he could only wait.How long it seemed, and how the rope jerked! Was it quite strong enough? Suppose Josh were to fall headlong into the black water below!Will shuddered, and tried to keep all these coward fancies out of his mind; but they would come as he stood listening and holding the rope just tight enough to feel the action of his friend.What a tremendous effort it seemed; and how long he was! Surely he must be at the top by now.“Nearly up, Josh?” he shouted.“Up! No: not half-ways,” replied the fisherman. “She’s too thin, and as wet as wet. I can’t get a hold.”Will’s heart sank, for he felt that there was failure in his companion’s words; and with parched lips and dry throat he listened to the climber’s pantings and gaspings as he toiled on, paused, climbed again, and then there was a strange hissing noise that made Will hold his breath. The rope, too, was curiously agitated, not in a series of jerks, but in a continuous vibrating manner, and before Will could realise what it all meant Josh was level with the gallery once more, swinging to and fro in the faint light.“Haul away, young un, and let’s come in,” he panted; and somehow he managed to scramble in as Will held the rope taut.“It ain’t to be done,” said Josh, sitting down and panting like a dog. “If it were a cable I could go up it like a fly, but that there rope runs through your legs and you can’t get no stay.”“How far did you get, Josh?” whispered Will.“Not above half-ways,” grumbled Josh, “and I might have gone on trying; but it was no good, I couldn’t have reached. I say, my lad, what’s going to be done?”

“Why, what’s the matter with you?” cried Josh angrily.

“I don’t know. Nothing,” replied Will. “I could not reach the rope.”

“Ah! well, you’ve got it now,” said Josh gruffly; “and the sooner we get out of this the better.”

“Get out of it?” said Will hoarsely.

“Get out of it! To be sure. You didn’t mean to come here to live, did you?”

“No,” said Will, “but—”

He paused, for his nervous feeling was returning, and shame kept him from saying that he was afraid.

He might have spoken out frankly, though, for Josh Helston, blunt of perception as he was over many things, saw through him now, and in a gruff voice he said:

“Well, if anybody had told me that you could have got yourself skeered like this, Master Will, I should have told him he was a fool. But there, you couldn’t help it, I s’pose. It was that diving as upset you, lad.”

“Yes, yes; perhaps it was,” cried Will, eagerly grasping at the excuse. “I’m not myself, Josh, just now.”

Josh began to whistle a dreary old minor tune as they stood there in the dark, to the accompaniment of the dripping water, and for some few minutes no word was spoken.

“Hadn’t we better get back?” said Josh at last.

“But how?” said Will despairingly.

“Rope,” replied Josh laconically. “Swarm up!”

Will laid his hand upon the slight cord his companion had knotted round his waist.

“I could not climb up that,” he said, “at any time. It’s impossible now.”

Josh whistled again and remained silent.

“Well, it is gashly thin to swarm up,” he said. “I never thought of that till now.”

“You did not think of getting back?” cried Will.

Josh rubbed the side of his nose with a bit of the rope.

“Well, no,” he said slowly; “can’t say as I did, lad. Seemed to me as you was in trouble, and I’d better come to you, and so I come.”

“Josh!” cried the lad.

“Yes, my son. Well, what’s going to be done? We can’t stop down here. We shall be wanted aboard, and there ain’t a bit o’ anything to eat.”

“Do you think when we are missed that they will come and look for us?”

“Well,” said Josh slowly, “they might or they mightn’t; but if they did they wouldn’t find us.”

“I don’t know,” said Will thoughtfully.

“Well, I think I do, lad,” said Josh, after another scrub at his nose. “I don’t s’pose anybody in Peter Churchtown knows that this gashly old hole is here, and it ain’t likely they’d come up here to look for us.”

“But they would hunt for us surely, Josh.”

“Dunno. When they missed us they’d say we’d took a boat and gone out somewheres to fish, and happened on something—upset or took out to sea by the current.”

“Yes,” said Will thoughtfully.

“Seems to me, lad, as it’s something like a lobster-pot—easy enough to get in, and no way out.”

“Shall we shout for help?”

“You can if you like,” said Josh quietly. “I sha’n’t. It makes your throat sore, and don’t do no good.”

“Don’t be cross with me, Josh,” cried Will excitedly.

“Oh! I arn’t cross with you, lad; I’m cross with myself. It’s allus my way: I never did have no head. Think o’ me walking straight into a corner like this, and no way hardly out. Well, anyhow, it’s being mate-like to you, my lad, and it won’t be so dull.”

“But, Josh, you could climb out and go for help.”

“Why, of course I could,” he replied. “I never thought of that.”

“Then go at once. Bring a couple of men; and then if you left me the rope you could haul me up.”

“Why I could haul you up myself, couldn’t I? and then nobody need know anything about it. Here goes.”

Will could not help a shudder as his companion proceeded to haul up the portion of the rope that hung down in the shaft, coiling it in rings in the gallery till it was all there.

“Now, then, you mind as that don’t fall while I go up again,” said Josh. “I wish it warn’t so gashly dark.”

As he spoke he untied the loop from about his waist and drew the rope tight from above.

“Just like me,” he grumbled. “If I’d had any head I should have made knots all down the rope, and then it would have been easy to climb; but here goes; and mind when I’m up you make a good hitch and sit in it, I’ll soon have you up.”

“Yes, I see,” said Will, who was fighting hard against the nervous dread that began once more to assail him; “pray take care.”

“Take care! why, of course I shall. Don’t catch me letting go of the rope in a place like this. Here goes!”

He reached up as high as he could, holding the rope firmly, and then swung himself out of the gallery over the black void, becoming visible to Will as the faint light from above fell upon his upturned face. Then with legs twined round the rope, Josh began to draw himself up a little bit at a time, the work being evidently very laborious, while Will held the rope and saw him disappear as he ascended beyond the gallery; but the rope the lad held was like an electric communication, the efforts of the climber being felt through the strong fibres as he went up and up.

Then there was a pause, and as Josh rested it was evident that he could not keep himself quite stationary, but slipped a few inches at a time.

Then he started once more, and as the cord jerked and swung, the loud expirations of the climber’s breath kept coming down to where, with moist palms and dewy forehead, Will listened.

How high was he now? How much farther had he got by this? Josh’s arms were like iron, and the strength in that deformed wrist and hand was tremendous.

Up he went; Will could feel it; and he longed to gaze up and see how he progressed; but somehow that horrible shrinking sensation came over him, and he could only wait.

How long it seemed, and how the rope jerked! Was it quite strong enough? Suppose Josh were to fall headlong into the black water below!

Will shuddered, and tried to keep all these coward fancies out of his mind; but they would come as he stood listening and holding the rope just tight enough to feel the action of his friend.

What a tremendous effort it seemed; and how long he was! Surely he must be at the top by now.

“Nearly up, Josh?” he shouted.

“Up! No: not half-ways,” replied the fisherman. “She’s too thin, and as wet as wet. I can’t get a hold.”

Will’s heart sank, for he felt that there was failure in his companion’s words; and with parched lips and dry throat he listened to the climber’s pantings and gaspings as he toiled on, paused, climbed again, and then there was a strange hissing noise that made Will hold his breath. The rope, too, was curiously agitated, not in a series of jerks, but in a continuous vibrating manner, and before Will could realise what it all meant Josh was level with the gallery once more, swinging to and fro in the faint light.

“Haul away, young un, and let’s come in,” he panted; and somehow he managed to scramble in as Will held the rope taut.

“It ain’t to be done,” said Josh, sitting down and panting like a dog. “If it were a cable I could go up it like a fly, but that there rope runs through your legs and you can’t get no stay.”

“How far did you get, Josh?” whispered Will.

“Not above half-ways,” grumbled Josh, “and I might have gone on trying; but it was no good, I couldn’t have reached. I say, my lad, what’s going to be done?”

Chapter Eight.How Will would not promise not to do the “gashly” thing again.It seemed that all they could do was to sit and think of there being any likelihood of their being found, and Will asked at last whether anyone knew where Josh was about to take the new rope.“Nobody,” he said gruffly. “I knowed you didn’t want it known, so I held my tongue.”“But who lent you the rope, Josh?”“Nobody.”“Nobody?”“Nobody. Folk won’t lend noo ropes to a fellow without knowing what they’re going to do with ’em. I bought it.”“You bought it, Josh—with your own money?”“Ain’t got anybody else’s money, have I?” growled Josh. “Here, I know. What stoopids we are!”“You know what?” cried Will.“Why, how to get out o’ this here squabble.”“Can you—find a way along this gallery, Josh?” said Will eagerly.“Not likely; but we can get down to the water and go along the adit.”“Adit!” said Will; “is there one?”“Sure to be, else the water would be up here ever so high. They didn’t bring all the earth and stones and water up past here, I know, when they could get rid of ’em by cutting an adit to the shore.”Will caught the fisherman’s arm in his hands. “I—I never saw it,” he cried.“Well, what o’ that? Pr’aps it’s half hid among the stones. I dunno: but there allus is one where they make a shaft along on the cliff.”“But what will you do?”“Do, lad? Why, go down and see—or I s’pose I must feel; it’ll be so dark.”As Josh spoke he rose and got hold of the rope once more.“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. Nobody 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 shore: 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 breasts; 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 seagrass 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 débris, 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, passed 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.”

It seemed that all they could do was to sit and think of there being any likelihood of their being found, and Will asked at last whether anyone knew where Josh was about to take the new rope.

“Nobody,” he said gruffly. “I knowed you didn’t want it known, so I held my tongue.”

“But who lent you the rope, Josh?”

“Nobody.”

“Nobody?”

“Nobody. Folk won’t lend noo ropes to a fellow without knowing what they’re going to do with ’em. I bought it.”

“You bought it, Josh—with your own money?”

“Ain’t got anybody else’s money, have I?” growled Josh. “Here, I know. What stoopids we are!”

“You know what?” cried Will.

“Why, how to get out o’ this here squabble.”

“Can you—find a way along this gallery, Josh?” said Will eagerly.

“Not likely; but we can get down to the water and go along the adit.”

“Adit!” said Will; “is there one?”

“Sure to be, else the water would be up here ever so high. They didn’t bring all the earth and stones and water up past here, I know, when they could get rid of ’em by cutting an adit to the shore.”

Will caught the fisherman’s arm in his hands. “I—I never saw it,” he cried.

“Well, what o’ that? Pr’aps it’s half hid among the stones. I dunno: but there allus is one where they make a shaft along on the cliff.”

“But what will you do?”

“Do, lad? Why, go down and see—or I s’pose I must feel; it’ll be so dark.”

As Josh spoke he rose and got hold of the rope once more.

“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. Nobody 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 shore: 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 breasts; 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 seagrass 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 débris, 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, passed 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 thePretty 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!”Josh looked up very deliberately, saw that the eyes of the stranger were fixed upon Will, and looked down again.“He’s hailing o’ you, my lad,” he said in a gruff voice, just as the stranger shouted again:“Hi! Do you hear?”Will looked up, took in the new-comer’s appearance at a glance, and said:“Well, what is it?”The new-comer frowned at this cool reply from a lad in canvas trousers and blue jersey, which glittered with scales. The fisher-boy ought to have said “Yes, sir,” and touched his straw hat. Consequently his voice was a little more imperious of tone as he said sharply:“What are you doing?”Will looked amused, and there was a slight depression at each corner of his mouth as he said quietly:“Baiting the line.”No “sir” this time, but the new-comer’s curiosity was aroused, and he said eagerly:“Where’s your rod?”“Rod!” said Will, looking up once more, half puzzled. “Rod! Oh, you mean fishing-rod, do you?”“Of course—”stupidthe stranger was about to say, but he refrained. “You don’t suppose I mean birch rod, do you?”“No,” said Will, and he went on baiting his hooks. “We don’t use fishing-rods.”“Why don’t you?”“Why don’t we!” said Will, with the dimples getting a little deeper on either side of his mouth. “Why, because this line’s about quarter of a mile long, and it would want a rod as long, and we couldn’t use it.”“Hor—hor—hor!” laughed Josh, letting his head go down between his knees, and so disgusting the stranger that he turned sharply upon his heel and strutted off, swinging a black cane with a silver top and silk tassels to and fro, and then stopping in a very nonchalant manner to take out a silver hunting watch and look at the time, at the same moment taking care that Will should have a good view of the watch, and feel envious if enviously inclined.He walked along the pier to the very end, and Josh went on slowly turning the staff, while Will kept baiting his hooks.The next minute the boy was back, looking on in an extremely supercilious way, but all the while his eyes were bright with interest; and at last he spoke again in a consequential manner:“What’s that nasty stuff?”“What nasty stuff?” replied Will, looking up again.“That!” cried the stranger, pointing with his cane at the small box containing Will’s bait.Before the latter could answer there was a shout at the end of the pier.“Ahoy! Ar—thur! Taff!” and a boy of the age and height of the first stranger came tearing along the stones panting loudly, and pulling up short to give Will’s questioner a hearty slap on the back.“Here, I’ve had a job to find you, Taff. I’ve been looking everywhere.”“I wish you would not be so rough, Richard,” said the one addressed, divine his shoulders a hitch, and frowning angrily as he saw that Will was watching them intently. “There’s no need to be so boisterous.”“No, my lord. Beg pardon, my lord,” said the other boy with mock humility; and then, with his eyes twinkling mirthfully, he thrust his stiff straw hat on to the back of his head, and plumped himself down in a sitting position on the edge of the pier, with his legs dangling down towards the bulwark of the lugger, and his heels softly drubbing the stone wall.For though to a certainty twin brother of the first stranger, he was very differently dressed, having on a suit of white boating flannels and a loose blue handkerchief knotted about his neck.“Why, Taff,” he cried, “this chap’s going fishing.”“I wish you wouldn’t call me out of my name before this sort of people,” said his brother, flushing and speaking in a low voice.“All right, old chap, I won’t, if you’ll go back to the inn and take off those old brush-me-ups. You look as if you’d come out of a glass case.”The other was about to retort angrily and walk away, but his curiosity got the better of him, for just then the boy in the flannels exclaimed in a brisk way:“I say: going fishing?”“Yes,” said Will, looking up, with the smile at the corner of his lips deepening; and as the eyes of the two lads met they seemed to approve of each other at once.“May I come aboard?”“Yes, if you like,” said Will; and the boy leaped down in an instant, greatly to his brother’s disgust, for he wanted to go on board as well, but held aloof, and whisked his cane about viciously, listening to all that was going on.“How are you?” said the second lad, nodding in a friendly way to Josh.“Hearty, thanky,” said the latter in his sing-song way; “and how may you be?”“Hearty,” said the boy, laughing. “I’m always all right. He isn’t,” he added, with a backward nod of his head, which nearly made him lose his straw hat; but he caught it as it fell, clapped it on the back of his head again, and laughingly gave his trousers a hitch up in front and another behind, about the waist, kicking out one leg as he did so. “That’s salt-water sort, isn’t it? I say,” he added quickly, “are you the skipper?”“Me!” cried Josh, showing two rows of beautifully white teeth. “Nay, my lad, I’m the crew. Who may you be?”“What? my name? Dick—Richard Temple. This is my brother Arthur. We’ve come down to stay.”“Have you, though?” said Josh, looking from one to the other as if it was an announcement full of interest, while the lad on the pier frowned a little at his brother’s free-and-easy way.“Yes, we’ve come down,” said Dick dreamily, for he was watching Will’s busy fingers as he baited hook after hook. “I say,” he cried, “what’s that stuff—those bits?”“These?” said Will. “Squid.”“Squid? What’s squid?”Josh ceased winding the wire round his staff.“Here’s a lad as don’t know what squid is,” he said in a tone of wondering pity.“Well, how should I know? Just you be always shut-up in London and school and see if you would.”“What? Don’t they teach you at school what squid is?” said Josh sharply.“No,” cried the boy.“A mussy me!” said Josh in tones of disgust. “Then they ought to be ashamed of themselves.”“But they don’t know,” said the boy impatiently. “I say, what is it?”“Cuttle-fish,” said Will.“Cut-tle-fish!” cried Dick. “Oh! I know what that is—all long legs and suckers, and got an ink-bag and a pen in its body.”“Yes, that’s it,” said Will, laughing. “We call it squid. It makes a good tough bait, that don’t come off, and the fish like it.”“Well, it is rum stuff,” cried Dick, picking up a piece and turning it over in his fingers. “Here, Taff, look!”His brother screwed up his face with an aspect of disgust, and declined to touch the fishes’bonne-bouche; but he looked at it eagerly all the same.“I say, what do you catch?” said Dick, seating himself tailor-fashion on the deck opposite Will.“What? on this line? Nothing sometimes.”“Oh! of course. I often go fishing up the river when we’re at home, and catch nothing. But what do you catch when you have any luck?”“Lots o’ things,” said Josh; “skates, rays, plaice, brill, soles, john-dories, gurnets—lots of ’em—small conger, and when we’re very lucky p’r’aps a turbot.”“Oh! I say,” cried the boy, with his eyes sparkling, “shouldn’t I like to see conger too! They’re whopping great chaps, arn’t they, like cod-fish pulled out long?”“Well, no,” said Will, “they’re more like long ling; but we can’t catch big ones on a line like this—only small.”“But there are big ones here, arn’t there?”“Oh, yes!” said Will; “off there among the rocks sometimes, six and seven foot long.”“But why don’t you catch big ones on a line like that?”“Line like that!” broke in Josh; “why, a conger would put his teeth through it in a moment. You’re obliged to have a single line for a conger, with a wire-snooded hook and swivels, big hooks bound with wire, something like this here.”As he spoke he held out the hook, just finished as to its binding on.“And what’s that for?” cried the boy, taking the hook.“Gaffing of ’em,” said Josh; but he pronounced it “gahfin’of ’em.”“Oh, I do want to go fishing!” cried the boy eagerly. “What are you going to do with that long-line?”“Lay it out in the bay,” said Will, “with a creeper at each end.”“A what?”“A creeper.”“What’s a creeper?”“I say, young gentleman, where do you go to school?” said Josh in indignant tones.“London University,” said the boy quickly. “Why?”“And you don’t know what a creeper is?”“No,” said the boy, laughing. “What is it?”“Oh! we call a small kind of grapnel, or four-armed anchor, a creeper,” said Will.“Oh!”“Then when we’ve let down the line with one creeper we pay out the rest.”“Pay out the rest?”“A mussy me!” said Josh to himself.“Well, run it out over the side of the boat we’re in, and row away till we’ve got all the line with the baited hooks in.”“Yes,” said the boy eagerly; “and then you put down the other anchor. I see.”“That’s her,” said Josh approvingly.“Well,” said the boy excitedly, “and how do you know when you’ve got a bite?”“Oh! we don’t know.”“Then how do you catch your fish?”“They catch themselves,” said Will. “We row then to the other end of the line and draw it up.”“How do you know where it is?”“Why, by the buoy, of course,” said Josh. “We always have a buoy, and you think that’s a boy like you, I know.”“Oh no! I don’t,” said Dick, shaking his head and laughing. “Come, I’m not such a Cockney as not to know what a b-u-o-y is. But, I say, what do you do then?”“Why, we get up the end of the line, and put fresh baits on when they’re taken off, and take the fish into the boat when there are any.”“Oh, I say, what fun! Here, when are you going to put in that line?”“Sundown,” said Josh.“Here, I want to go,” said our friend on the pier. “I’ll give you a shilling if you’ll take me.”“No; we can’t take you,” said Josh grimly. “We should make you in such a mess you’d have to be washed.”“There, Taff, I told you so,” cried Dick. “Why don’t you put on your flannels. I hate being dressed up at the sea-side!” he added to himself as his brother stalked impatiently away.“There, now, he’s chuffy,” said Dick, half to himself. “Oh! I do wish he wasn’t so soon upset! Hi, Taff, old man, don’t go, I’m coming soon. He had a bad illness once, you know,” he said confidentially to Will; but his brother did not stop, walking slowly away along the pier, to be met by a tall, dark, keen-looking man of about forty who was coming from the inn.“I say,” said Dick, who did not see the encounter at the shore end of the pier, “Ishouldlike to come with you to-night.”“Why, you’d be sea-sick,” said Josh, laughing.“Oh, no! I shouldn’t. I’ve been across the Channel eight times and not ill. I say, you’ll let me come?”Will looked at Josh, who was turning the new wire binding of the gaff-hook into a file for the gentle rubbing of his nose.“Shall we take him, Josh?” said Will.“I don’t mind,” replied that worthy, “only he’ll get in a gashly mess.”“I don’t mind,” said Dick. “Flannels will wash. I’ll put on my old ones, and—”“Why, Dick, what are you doing there?” cried the keen-looking man, who had come down the pier.“Talking to the fishermen, father,” cried the boy, starting up. “I say, they’re going out to lay this line. May I go with them?”His father hesitated a moment and glanced quickly to seaward before turning to Josh.“Weather going to be fine?” he said in a quick way that indicated business more than command, though there was enough of the latter in his speech to make Josh answer readily:“Going to be fine for a week;” and then confidentially, “We’ll take care on him.”The stranger smiled.“Yes, you can go, Dick; but take care of yourself. It does not take you long to make friends, young man. Come, Arthur, I’m going for a walk along the beach.”“Can’t I go with Dick, papa?” said the boy addressed, in an ill-used tone.“No; I should think three will be enough in a small boat; and besides—”He said no more, but glanced in a half-amused way at his son’s costume, being himself in a loose suit of tweeds.Arthur coloured and tightened his lips, walking off with his father, too much hurt to say more to his brother, whom he left talking to Will.“There,” said the latter, impaling the last bit of squid on a hook and then laying it in its place, “that’s ready. Now you’d better do as I do: go home and get some tea and then come back.”“But it’s too soon,” replied Dick, “I can’t get tea yet—”“Come home and have some with me then,” said Will.“All right!” said Dick. “I say, does he live with you? Is he your brother?”“Hor—hor—hor—hor!” laughed Josh. “That is a good one. Me his brother! Hor—hor—hor!”“Well, I didn’t know,” said Dick colouring. “I only thought he might be, you know.”“Oh, no, youngster! I ain’t no brother o’ him,” said Josh, shaking his head. “There, don’t you mind,” he continued, clapping his strong hand on the boy’s shoulder, and then catching hold of him with his short deformed limb, an act that looked so startling and strange that the boy leaped back and stared at him.Josh’s deformity was his weakest as well as his strongest point, and he looked reproachfully, half angrily, at the boy and then turned away.With the quick instinct of a frank, generous nature, Dick saw the wound he had inflicted upon the rough fisherman, and glanced first at Will, who was also touched on his companion’s account. Then stepping quickly up to Josh he touched him on the arm and held out his hand.“I—I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn’t know. I was surprised. I’m very sorry—”Josh’s weather-tanned face lit up directly with a pleasant smile, and grasping the boy’s hand he wrung it so hard that Dick had hard work to keep from wincing.“It’s all right, my lad,” he said. “Of course you didn’t know! It be gashly ugly, bean’t it? Fell off the cliff when I was quite a babby, you know, and soft. Fifty foot. Yonder, you know;” and he pointed to the steep cliff and its thin iron railing at the end of the village.“How shocking!” said Dick.“Oh! I dunno,” said Josh cheerily. “I was such a little un, soft as one of our bladder buoys, you see, and I never knowed anything about it. Bent it like, and stopped it from growing; but thank the Lord, it grew strong, and I never mind. There, you be off along o’ Will there and get your tea, and we’ll have such a night’s fishing, see if we don’t!”

“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 thePretty 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!”

Josh looked up very deliberately, saw that the eyes of the stranger were fixed upon Will, and looked down again.

“He’s hailing o’ you, my lad,” he said in a gruff voice, just as the stranger shouted again:

“Hi! Do you hear?”

Will looked up, took in the new-comer’s appearance at a glance, and said:

“Well, what is it?”

The new-comer frowned at this cool reply from a lad in canvas trousers and blue jersey, which glittered with scales. The fisher-boy ought to have said “Yes, sir,” and touched his straw hat. Consequently his voice was a little more imperious of tone as he said sharply:

“What are you doing?”

Will looked amused, and there was a slight depression at each corner of his mouth as he said quietly:

“Baiting the line.”

No “sir” this time, but the new-comer’s curiosity was aroused, and he said eagerly:

“Where’s your rod?”

“Rod!” said Will, looking up once more, half puzzled. “Rod! Oh, you mean fishing-rod, do you?”

“Of course—”stupidthe stranger was about to say, but he refrained. “You don’t suppose I mean birch rod, do you?”

“No,” said Will, and he went on baiting his hooks. “We don’t use fishing-rods.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Why don’t we!” said Will, with the dimples getting a little deeper on either side of his mouth. “Why, because this line’s about quarter of a mile long, and it would want a rod as long, and we couldn’t use it.”

“Hor—hor—hor!” laughed Josh, letting his head go down between his knees, and so disgusting the stranger that he turned sharply upon his heel and strutted off, swinging a black cane with a silver top and silk tassels to and fro, and then stopping in a very nonchalant manner to take out a silver hunting watch and look at the time, at the same moment taking care that Will should have a good view of the watch, and feel envious if enviously inclined.

He walked along the pier to the very end, and Josh went on slowly turning the staff, while Will kept baiting his hooks.

The next minute the boy was back, looking on in an extremely supercilious way, but all the while his eyes were bright with interest; and at last he spoke again in a consequential manner:

“What’s that nasty stuff?”

“What nasty stuff?” replied Will, looking up again.

“That!” cried the stranger, pointing with his cane at the small box containing Will’s bait.

Before the latter could answer there was a shout at the end of the pier.

“Ahoy! Ar—thur! Taff!” and a boy of the age and height of the first stranger came tearing along the stones panting loudly, and pulling up short to give Will’s questioner a hearty slap on the back.

“Here, I’ve had a job to find you, Taff. I’ve been looking everywhere.”

“I wish you would not be so rough, Richard,” said the one addressed, divine his shoulders a hitch, and frowning angrily as he saw that Will was watching them intently. “There’s no need to be so boisterous.”

“No, my lord. Beg pardon, my lord,” said the other boy with mock humility; and then, with his eyes twinkling mirthfully, he thrust his stiff straw hat on to the back of his head, and plumped himself down in a sitting position on the edge of the pier, with his legs dangling down towards the bulwark of the lugger, and his heels softly drubbing the stone wall.

For though to a certainty twin brother of the first stranger, he was very differently dressed, having on a suit of white boating flannels and a loose blue handkerchief knotted about his neck.

“Why, Taff,” he cried, “this chap’s going fishing.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me out of my name before this sort of people,” said his brother, flushing and speaking in a low voice.

“All right, old chap, I won’t, if you’ll go back to the inn and take off those old brush-me-ups. You look as if you’d come out of a glass case.”

The other was about to retort angrily and walk away, but his curiosity got the better of him, for just then the boy in the flannels exclaimed in a brisk way:

“I say: going fishing?”

“Yes,” said Will, looking up, with the smile at the corner of his lips deepening; and as the eyes of the two lads met they seemed to approve of each other at once.

“May I come aboard?”

“Yes, if you like,” said Will; and the boy leaped down in an instant, greatly to his brother’s disgust, for he wanted to go on board as well, but held aloof, and whisked his cane about viciously, listening to all that was going on.

“How are you?” said the second lad, nodding in a friendly way to Josh.

“Hearty, thanky,” said the latter in his sing-song way; “and how may you be?”

“Hearty,” said the boy, laughing. “I’m always all right. He isn’t,” he added, with a backward nod of his head, which nearly made him lose his straw hat; but he caught it as it fell, clapped it on the back of his head again, and laughingly gave his trousers a hitch up in front and another behind, about the waist, kicking out one leg as he did so. “That’s salt-water sort, isn’t it? I say,” he added quickly, “are you the skipper?”

“Me!” cried Josh, showing two rows of beautifully white teeth. “Nay, my lad, I’m the crew. Who may you be?”

“What? my name? Dick—Richard Temple. This is my brother Arthur. We’ve come down to stay.”

“Have you, though?” said Josh, looking from one to the other as if it was an announcement full of interest, while the lad on the pier frowned a little at his brother’s free-and-easy way.

“Yes, we’ve come down,” said Dick dreamily, for he was watching Will’s busy fingers as he baited hook after hook. “I say,” he cried, “what’s that stuff—those bits?”

“These?” said Will. “Squid.”

“Squid? What’s squid?”

Josh ceased winding the wire round his staff.

“Here’s a lad as don’t know what squid is,” he said in a tone of wondering pity.

“Well, how should I know? Just you be always shut-up in London and school and see if you would.”

“What? Don’t they teach you at school what squid is?” said Josh sharply.

“No,” cried the boy.

“A mussy me!” said Josh in tones of disgust. “Then they ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

“But they don’t know,” said the boy impatiently. “I say, what is it?”

“Cuttle-fish,” said Will.

“Cut-tle-fish!” cried Dick. “Oh! I know what that is—all long legs and suckers, and got an ink-bag and a pen in its body.”

“Yes, that’s it,” said Will, laughing. “We call it squid. It makes a good tough bait, that don’t come off, and the fish like it.”

“Well, it is rum stuff,” cried Dick, picking up a piece and turning it over in his fingers. “Here, Taff, look!”

His brother screwed up his face with an aspect of disgust, and declined to touch the fishes’bonne-bouche; but he looked at it eagerly all the same.

“I say, what do you catch?” said Dick, seating himself tailor-fashion on the deck opposite Will.

“What? on this line? Nothing sometimes.”

“Oh! of course. I often go fishing up the river when we’re at home, and catch nothing. But what do you catch when you have any luck?”

“Lots o’ things,” said Josh; “skates, rays, plaice, brill, soles, john-dories, gurnets—lots of ’em—small conger, and when we’re very lucky p’r’aps a turbot.”

“Oh! I say,” cried the boy, with his eyes sparkling, “shouldn’t I like to see conger too! They’re whopping great chaps, arn’t they, like cod-fish pulled out long?”

“Well, no,” said Will, “they’re more like long ling; but we can’t catch big ones on a line like this—only small.”

“But there are big ones here, arn’t there?”

“Oh, yes!” said Will; “off there among the rocks sometimes, six and seven foot long.”

“But why don’t you catch big ones on a line like that?”

“Line like that!” broke in Josh; “why, a conger would put his teeth through it in a moment. You’re obliged to have a single line for a conger, with a wire-snooded hook and swivels, big hooks bound with wire, something like this here.”

As he spoke he held out the hook, just finished as to its binding on.

“And what’s that for?” cried the boy, taking the hook.

“Gaffing of ’em,” said Josh; but he pronounced it “gahfin’of ’em.”

“Oh, I do want to go fishing!” cried the boy eagerly. “What are you going to do with that long-line?”

“Lay it out in the bay,” said Will, “with a creeper at each end.”

“A what?”

“A creeper.”

“What’s a creeper?”

“I say, young gentleman, where do you go to school?” said Josh in indignant tones.

“London University,” said the boy quickly. “Why?”

“And you don’t know what a creeper is?”

“No,” said the boy, laughing. “What is it?”

“Oh! we call a small kind of grapnel, or four-armed anchor, a creeper,” said Will.

“Oh!”

“Then when we’ve let down the line with one creeper we pay out the rest.”

“Pay out the rest?”

“A mussy me!” said Josh to himself.

“Well, run it out over the side of the boat we’re in, and row away till we’ve got all the line with the baited hooks in.”

“Yes,” said the boy eagerly; “and then you put down the other anchor. I see.”

“That’s her,” said Josh approvingly.

“Well,” said the boy excitedly, “and how do you know when you’ve got a bite?”

“Oh! we don’t know.”

“Then how do you catch your fish?”

“They catch themselves,” said Will. “We row then to the other end of the line and draw it up.”

“How do you know where it is?”

“Why, by the buoy, of course,” said Josh. “We always have a buoy, and you think that’s a boy like you, I know.”

“Oh no! I don’t,” said Dick, shaking his head and laughing. “Come, I’m not such a Cockney as not to know what a b-u-o-y is. But, I say, what do you do then?”

“Why, we get up the end of the line, and put fresh baits on when they’re taken off, and take the fish into the boat when there are any.”

“Oh, I say, what fun! Here, when are you going to put in that line?”

“Sundown,” said Josh.

“Here, I want to go,” said our friend on the pier. “I’ll give you a shilling if you’ll take me.”

“No; we can’t take you,” said Josh grimly. “We should make you in such a mess you’d have to be washed.”

“There, Taff, I told you so,” cried Dick. “Why don’t you put on your flannels. I hate being dressed up at the sea-side!” he added to himself as his brother stalked impatiently away.

“There, now, he’s chuffy,” said Dick, half to himself. “Oh! I do wish he wasn’t so soon upset! Hi, Taff, old man, don’t go, I’m coming soon. He had a bad illness once, you know,” he said confidentially to Will; but his brother did not stop, walking slowly away along the pier, to be met by a tall, dark, keen-looking man of about forty who was coming from the inn.

“I say,” said Dick, who did not see the encounter at the shore end of the pier, “Ishouldlike to come with you to-night.”

“Why, you’d be sea-sick,” said Josh, laughing.

“Oh, no! I shouldn’t. I’ve been across the Channel eight times and not ill. I say, you’ll let me come?”

Will looked at Josh, who was turning the new wire binding of the gaff-hook into a file for the gentle rubbing of his nose.

“Shall we take him, Josh?” said Will.

“I don’t mind,” replied that worthy, “only he’ll get in a gashly mess.”

“I don’t mind,” said Dick. “Flannels will wash. I’ll put on my old ones, and—”

“Why, Dick, what are you doing there?” cried the keen-looking man, who had come down the pier.

“Talking to the fishermen, father,” cried the boy, starting up. “I say, they’re going out to lay this line. May I go with them?”

His father hesitated a moment and glanced quickly to seaward before turning to Josh.

“Weather going to be fine?” he said in a quick way that indicated business more than command, though there was enough of the latter in his speech to make Josh answer readily:

“Going to be fine for a week;” and then confidentially, “We’ll take care on him.”

The stranger smiled.

“Yes, you can go, Dick; but take care of yourself. It does not take you long to make friends, young man. Come, Arthur, I’m going for a walk along the beach.”

“Can’t I go with Dick, papa?” said the boy addressed, in an ill-used tone.

“No; I should think three will be enough in a small boat; and besides—”

He said no more, but glanced in a half-amused way at his son’s costume, being himself in a loose suit of tweeds.

Arthur coloured and tightened his lips, walking off with his father, too much hurt to say more to his brother, whom he left talking to Will.

“There,” said the latter, impaling the last bit of squid on a hook and then laying it in its place, “that’s ready. Now you’d better do as I do: go home and get some tea and then come back.”

“But it’s too soon,” replied Dick, “I can’t get tea yet—”

“Come home and have some with me then,” said Will.

“All right!” said Dick. “I say, does he live with you? Is he your brother?”

“Hor—hor—hor—hor!” laughed Josh. “That is a good one. Me his brother! Hor—hor—hor!”

“Well, I didn’t know,” said Dick colouring. “I only thought he might be, you know.”

“Oh, no, youngster! I ain’t no brother o’ him,” said Josh, shaking his head. “There, don’t you mind,” he continued, clapping his strong hand on the boy’s shoulder, and then catching hold of him with his short deformed limb, an act that looked so startling and strange that the boy leaped back and stared at him.

Josh’s deformity was his weakest as well as his strongest point, and he looked reproachfully, half angrily, at the boy and then turned away.

With the quick instinct of a frank, generous nature, Dick saw the wound he had inflicted upon the rough fisherman, and glanced first at Will, who was also touched on his companion’s account. Then stepping quickly up to Josh he touched him on the arm and held out his hand.

“I—I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn’t know. I was surprised. I’m very sorry—”

Josh’s weather-tanned face lit up directly with a pleasant smile, and grasping the boy’s hand he wrung it so hard that Dick had hard work to keep from wincing.

“It’s all right, my lad,” he said. “Of course you didn’t know! It be gashly ugly, bean’t it? Fell off the cliff when I was quite a babby, you know, and soft. Fifty foot. Yonder, you know;” and he pointed to the steep cliff and its thin iron railing at the end of the village.

“How shocking!” said Dick.

“Oh! I dunno,” said Josh cheerily. “I was such a little un, soft as one of our bladder buoys, you see, and I never knowed anything about it. Bent it like, and stopped it from growing; but thank the Lord, it grew strong, and I never mind. There, you be off along o’ Will there and get your tea, and we’ll have such a night’s fishing, see if we don’t!”

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