Without words the men set to work and Daniel expressed increasing impatience.
“Lord! to see you chaps with spades! But, of course, you haven’t been educated to it. You’ll be all night. I wish I could help you; but I can’t.”
“We’ll shift it,” declared Corder. “Wait till the moon’s a thought higher; then we’ll see what we’re at easier.”
He toiled mightily and cast huge masses of earth out of a growing hole; but the ground was full of great stones; and sometimes all three officers had to work together to drag a mass of granite out of the earth.
“You chaps wouldn’t have made your fortunes at spade work—that’s a fact,” said Daniel. “I wish you’d let me help. If you freed my hands, there’d be no danger in it so long as you tied my legs.”
Bartley stopped a moment to rest his aching back.
“’Tis a fair offer,” he said. “If you make fast the man’s legs, he couldn’t give us the slip. I can’t do no more of this labour, anyway. I’ve earned my living with my brains all my life, an’ I ban’t built to do ploughboy’s work now I’m getting up in years. I be sweating my strength out as ’tis.”
Gregory agreed.
“Time’s everything,” he said. “If you take that there rope an’ tie him by the leg to this stone what we’ve moved, he’s just as safe as if he was handcuffed. Then he can dig for us, as he well knows how.”
Mr Corder considered this course, and then agreed to it. The rope was knotted round Daniel’s leg, and he found himself tied fast to the great rock that had been recently moved; then Mr Corder took off the handcuffs.