I was full of imaginings of horror, and I fancied the fearful splash, the darkness, the rising to the surface, and then the poor wretch—myself perhaps—striving to get my fingers in between the slippery bricks, and getting no hold, and then—“There!—what did I tell you?” said Mr Solomon.
“She’s a foul un, and no mistake,” growled Ike.
“Oh! that’s nothing,” said the plumber. “I’ve been down worse wells than that.”
I was puzzled, for it seemed to me that the candle must be bad. As I had watched it the flame grew brighter and brighter as it reached the darkness, and then it burned more palely, grew smaller, and then all at once it turned blue and went out.
He drew it up, lit it again, and lowered it once more, and it seemed to go down a little lower before it went out.
He drew it up again, relit it, and once more sent it down; and this time it went as far as the cylinder of the pump—which was fixed, I saw, on a sort of scaffold or framework where the foot of the ladder rested.
I was able to see all this before the light went out and was drawn up again.
“All right in a few minutes,” said the plumber; and he unfastened the candle, lowered down his basket of tools by means of the string, and made it lodge on a bit of a platform close by the works of the pump.
It was all very interesting to me to see how low down the pump was fixed, and that the handle worked an iron rod up and down—a rod of great length.
The plumber took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, after sticking the candle in his waist and the matches in his pocket, and prepared to descend.