"When I tell the other fellows that I came up here they won't believe me. I tell you, it is something to have two such big fellows to look after a little shrimp like me."
"Never mind, J.W., you will grow if you will only wait," laughed Jack. "We were all little fellows once."
"What sort of place is this, anyhow?" asked the smaller boy, looking about him. "There are woods and rocks, and down there I can see that stump of a mast. I wonder if we could see more of her by——"
He was walking on, looking at the mast sticking out of water more than at the ground at his feet when suddenly Jack noticed that he was right on the edge of a hole just discernible in the tall grass.
He darted forward, and caught the boy's arm just as he was about to step into this hole without seeing it, and pulled him back.
"Look out, Jesse W., or you'll go in!" he cried. "You don't know how deep that place is nor where it will land you."
"H'm! I never noticed it. It does seem deep, doesn't it? I wonder how far down it goes, and what's at the end? Water, do you suppose?"
"I don't know, I'm sure," said Jack, "but you might have had a bad fall, my boy. You don't want to go star-gazing like that in strange places. You never know what may be in the way. Always look where you are going."
"Yes, that's good advice, but I wonder if there is anything down there anyhow? Do you suppose we could get down?"
"Possibly," returned Jack thoughtfully, "but I imagine it is a pretty good job to get down there and a bigger one to get back, and nothing down there anyhow."