"That's hard lines," said Emu Bill, stepping forward. "It might have shifted that chunk o' iron out o' the road, anyway. Now we'll need to begin all over again."
"I'm no so sure o' that," answered Mackay, waving his hat in the rent created in order to dispel the clinging white fumes, which obscured all vision.
Then it was made apparent that it was no mere crack in the formation they gazed upon. The force of explosion has not only cleft the rock, but had thrust it almost a yard forward in one unbroken mass, and at the bottom of the chasm thus made a vague blackness appeared, the blackness of a void. Mackay bent down his head eagerly, but hastily withdrew it again; a rush of heavy damp air, stifling and odorous, had come with a gust in his face.
"I reckon them powder fumes'll make you feel pretty bad," sympathized Emu Bill. "Just give the smoke time to clear, Mac, an' then we'll put in another shot."
"There's no need to do any more work here, Bill," answered Mackay, recovering himself. "We've broken right into the tunnel first pop! There it is, too, as natural-looking an entrance as you could wish to see, wi' a door—if we could move it—that weighs five tons if it weighs a pound."
Eagerly they all clustered round to look; and now that the atmosphere had grown less clouded, the dark shadows of the cavern below were plainly discernible. Bob gave a sigh of relief. At last the secret of the mountain was to be revealed.
"Well, I reckon I'd better get down an' prospect round a bit," said Emu Bill, hitching up his nether garments preparatory to scrambling down into the uncertain depths.
"Let me go first," urged the Shadow. "I'm the lightest, and it wouldn't hurt me much if I did go down a bit further than I expected when I let go the edge."
"We'll lower a rope wi' a stone on the end o' it before any one goes down," said Mackay, firmly. "We've got to engineer this funeral vera cautiously, my lad, an' mustna go bouncing ourselves into difficulties, as if there was a good fairy waiting by us every time to pull us out o' them."