“Hark! What’s that?” said Mike, in a whisper full of awe.
A dull rushing sound smote upon their ears, but in a muffled, strange way, that puzzled them to make out what it might be.
“I know,” said Vince at last: “it’s water.”
“Think so?” said Mike dubiously.
“Yes. I’ve been puzzling ever so long to make out how it was that water could have run along here, and for there to be none now, but I see how it is. This was once the channel of the stream, till it ate its way down through the rock to a lower one, and that’s it we can hear running somewhere below.”
“Perhaps,” said Mike; but his words implied doubt, and, after once more examining the candle in the lanthorn, he led on, but very cautiously and slowly now, though the passage was easier, and the slope less broken by step-like faults in the granite, over which the water must once have flowed.
At the end of a dozen yards Mike stopped again, and Vince quite as willingly, for the dull rushing sound continued, and they looked at each other by the light of the lanthorn.
“How far down are we, do you think?” said Mike.
“I dunno. Must be a long way below the sea.”
Mike nodded, and Vince continued: