"A rope ladder," said the captain.
"Ay," said Job. "Get down."
Job closed the door carefully, and stepped on to the ladder, following close upon the captain.
"Careful!" he warned. "Some of the steps be gone."
The warning was not unneeded, for as he spoke the captain's feet slipped through one of the missing links, and the ladder swayed to and fro.
After a silent descent for some moments he felt his feet touch the ground once more. He waited until Job came with the light, and then saw that he was standing in a small apartment cut out of the solid rock, and with only two means of egress apparent—the one by the ladder down which he had descended, and the other by a round hole just large enough to admit the body of a full-grown man.
"We are now just under the house, captain," said Job, turning the lantern. "Up above us they be comfortably asleep in their beds—rum, bean't it?"
With the lantern suspended to his neck, he commenced crawling through the hole, and the captain, whose courage was pretty severely tested, followed.
Dark and dank, the way seemed interminable.
At last the roof gradually widened.