“You’d have done it in half the time, of course,” said Vince, rising and slinging the creel on his back. “Now then, are you going to carry the lanthorn?”
“I may as well, as I’ve got it,” said Mike.
“All right: then you’ll have to go first.”
Mike felt disposed to alter the arrangement, but he could not for very shame.
“You take the rope, then. But, I say, you needn’t carry that creel as well,” he said.
“I don’t want to; but suppose the candle goes out?”
“Oh, you’d better take it,” said Mike eagerly. “Ready?”
“Yes, if you are.”
Mike did not feel at all ready, but he held the lanthorn up high and took a step or two forward and downward, which left the sunlit part of the place behind, and then began cautiously to descend a long rugged slope, which was cumbered with stones of all sizes, these having evidently fallen from the roof and sides, the true floor of the tunnel-like grotto being worn smooth by the rushing water which must at one time have swept along, reaching in places nearly to the roof just above the boys’ heads.
The way was very steep, and winding or rather shooting off here and there, after forming a deep, wonderfully rounded hollow, in which in several cases huge rounded stones lay as they had been left by the torrent, after grinding round and round as if in a mill, smoothing the walls of the hollow, and at the same time making themselves spherical through being kept in constant motion by the water. These pot-holes, as a geologist would call them, are common enough in torrents, where a heavy stone is borne into a whirlpool-like eddy, and goes on grinding itself a deeper and deeper bed, the configuration of the rock-walls where it lies having prevented its being swept down at the first, while every year after it deepens its bed until escape becomes impossible.