“Much obliged to you, boys,” he said, coming over to Bob and Jerry. “I might have stayed there forever if you hadn’t come along. Seems as though I am always getting into trouble. Do you remember the day I fell over the cliff with Broswick and Nestor, and you pulled us up with the auto?”
“I would say we did,” replied Jerry. “But now we must pull Ned up.”
Once more the rope was lowered down the shaft and in a few minutes Ned was hauled up safely.
“It’s almost as deep as our mine shaft,” he said, as he brushed the dirt from his clothes, “but I didn’t see any gold there, for it’s as dark as a pocket. How did you come to go down, professor?”
“I suspected I might get some specimens in such a place,” replied the naturalist, “so I just went down, and I had excellent luck, most excellent!”
“It’s a good thing you think so,” put in Jerry. “Most people would call it bad to get caught at the bottom of a mine shaft.”
“Oh, it wasn’t so bad,” went on the professor, casting his eyes over the ground in search of any stray specimens of snakes or bugs. “I had my candle with me until I lost it, just after I caught the lizard and bat. I could have come up all right if the ladder hadn’t broken. It was quite a hole, for a fact. It reminds me of another big hole I once heard about.”
“What hole is that?” asked Ned.