“‘You must cut a way down, Ike,’ says the ganger. ‘I’m too stout, or I’d go down myself.’
“‘Nay,’ I says, ‘if they’re down there, and you get digging, you’ll bury ’em. P’r’aps I could squeedge myself down. Let’s try.’
“So they ties the rope round me, and I lets myself into the hole, which was all sand, and roots to hold it a bit together.
“‘It’s a tight fit,’ I says, as I wriggled myself down with my face to the ganger, but I soon found that wouldn’t do, and I dragged myself out again and took off my boots, tightened my strap, and went down the other way.
“That was better, but it was a tight job going all round a corner like a zigger-me-zag, as you calls it, or a furnace chimney; and as I scrouged down with my eyes shut, and the sand and stones scuttling down after me, I began to wonder how I was going to get up again.
“‘Here!’ I shouts, ‘I shall want two ropes. See if you can reach down the other.’
“I put up my hand as far as I could reach, and the thin boy put a loop round his foot and come down, shutting out the light, till he could reach my hand, and I got hold of the second rope, and went scuttling farther, till all at once I found it like the boy had said—my legs was hanging and kicking about.
“‘Here’s in for it now,’ I says to myself; and I wondered whether I should be buried; but I shouts out, ‘Lower away,’ and I let myself slide, and then there was a rush of falling sand and I was half smothered as I swung about, but they lowered down, and directly after I touched bottom with my feet, and Juno was jumping about me and barking like mad.
“‘Found ’em?’ I heard the ganger shout from up in daylight, and I began to feel about for you; and, Lor’! there has been times when I’ve longed for a match, when I’ve wanted a pipe o’ tobacco; but nothing like what I longed then, so as to see where I was, for it was as black as pitch.
“But I felt about with the dog barking, and followed to where she was, and feeling about, I got hold of you two boys cuddled up together as if you was asleep, and nearly covered up with sand.