After gaining the bottom of the quarry, Jacker led the way to the deepest end. Here the bottom, covered with scrub growth, sloped rather suddenly for a few feet up to the abrupt wall. Going on his hands and knees under the thick odorous peppermint saplings, Jacker ran his head into a niche in the rock amongst climbing sarsaparilla, and remained so, like some strange geological specimen half embedded in the rock. Within, where his head was hidden, the darkness was impenetrable. Jacker blew a strange note on a whistle manufactured from the nut of an apricot, and after a few moments a light appeared below him, a feeble flame, far down in the rock. This was waved twice and then withdrawn.
'Righto!' said Jacker in a hoarse piratical tone. 'Gimme the tucker,
Black Douglas; I'll go down. You coves keep watch, an' no talkin', mind.'
Phil grumbled inarticulately, and Jacker's tone became hoarser and more piratical still.
'Who's commandin' here?' he growled. 'D'ye mean mutiny?
'Oh, shut up!' said Doon, bitterly. 'No one's goin' t' mutiny, but there ain't no fun campin' here.'
McKnight relented.
'All right,' he said, 'come down if you wanter. S'pose you'll on'y be makin' some kind of a row 'f I leave you.'
Jacker put the growth aside carefully, and going feet first gradually disappeared. Within there in the formless darkness he stood upon a ladder made of the long stem of a sapling to which cleats were nailed. The sapling was suspended in a black abyss. The boy, with his bundle hanging from his shoulder, started down fearlessly. Presently he came to where a second prop was fastened to the first with spikes and strong rope. Here he paused a moment, and called:
'Hello, be-e-low there!'
Jacker's character had undergone a rapid change; he was now quite an innocent and law-abiding person, a working shareholder in the Mount of Gold Quartz-mining Company.