“Who’d have thought of there being a hole like that?” said Scarlett, as soon as he was safe. “But I don’t suppose it’s very deep, after all. Got a stone?”
“No. Listen.”
Fred had thrown himself upon his breast, and craned his neck over the place, trying to peer down, but only into darkness, the hole evidently not going down straight; it being, in fact, a narrow crack, such as he had described in telling of the Derbyshire cavern.
Scarlett, who looked rather white from the shock he had received, joined his companion, and bent down to listen.
“Hear that?” said Fred in a whisper.
“Yes; water.”
“Water! Yes, of course; but listen again.”
They kept silence, and there ascended from below, through the almost hidden crevice, a low whisper of an echoing roar, which died away in a peculiar hissing sound that was thrilling in its strange suggestiveness.
“There must be a waterfall somewhere below there,” said Scarlett at last.
“Why, don’t you know what it is?”