The straighter of these two was slipped out by Scarlett and shouldered, and they hastened on, attracted by the discovery they had made, but recalling, as they went on, that they had been told before about the existence of this opening by more than one person, though it had slipped from their memory for the time.
“Who’s going down first?” said Fred, as they slowly climbed the last hundred yards of the slope.
“I will.”
“No; I think I ought to go first.”
“Long bent, short bent,” said Scarlett, picking a couple of strands of grass, breaking them off so that one was nearly double the length of the other, and then, after placing two ends level and hiding the others, offering them to his companion to draw one out.
Fred drew the shorter, and Scarlett had the right to go down first—a right which but for the look of the thing he would willingly have surrendered. For as they reached the long, narrow, grass-grown crack, the strange whispering and plashing sounds which came from below suggested unknown dangers, which were more repellent than the attractions of the mysterious hole.
Fred looked curiously at Scarlett, who noted the look, and tightened himself up, assuming a carelessness he did not feel.
“Doesn’t go down quite straight, seemingly,” he said.
“All the better. I say, shall I go down first?”
“What for? I won the choice, and I’m going,” said Scarlett, sharply, as he took one end of the rope and tied it to the middle of the pole, which proved to be of ample length to go well across the opening.