“What are you going to do?”
“Drop this piece of stone in that I am touching. It is quite loose.”
“No, no; don’t!” cried Mark excitedly. “It will raise up all those horrible echoes again.”
“Well, let it. Who’s afraid?”
Plosh!
“There!” cried Dean. “Why, I don’t believe it’s six feet below where I’m standing. What a queer whispering echo it does make, though. I wonder whether there is any kind of fish down here. Eels or newts, perhaps. Now then, what’s to be done next?”
Mark was silent for a few moments, and then beginning to be more imbued with his cousin’s coolness and matter-of-fact way of treating his position, he exclaimed, “I can’t think as clearly as you do, Dean. I want to see what’s best, and all that I can come to is that I must go for help. If you dare hold on there till I come back with the others, and ropes or halters—”
“Dare?” cried Dean. “There’s no dare about it. I must. But I say, what a pair of guffins we are!”
“Oh, don’t talk like that,” said Mark. “It is very brave and good of you, but I know it is only done to try to cheer me up. I wish I wasn’t such a coward, Dean.”
“I don’t,” said Dean, with quite a laugh. “You are just the sort of coward I like—sticking to your comrade like this. Think I want you to be one of those brave fellows who would run away, calling murder? But I say, arn’t we a pair of guffins?”