“What is it—water?” asked Nic.
“Yes; it’s a deep bit of a pool as the master dammed up, and this here’s a tree felled to lie acrost it like a bridge. You won’t like it by daylight p’raps, but it’s quite safe, and you can’t see how deep it is in the dark.”
Nic hesitated for a moment, then lightly grasped the man’s hand, but only for a moment. The next the bony hand had clutched his wrist like a vice.
“That’s better,” said the old man. “Now you can slip if you like, and I can hold you if you do.”
There was nothing else for Nic to hold but his tongue and his breath, as he stepped on to the rugged wood in the black darkness, for the moonbeams were shut out now by the rocks, overhead, and then, as he took step for step behind his companion, so close to him that he kept kicking his heels, he felt the difference underfoot for a few paces and the tree trunk yield and give a little in an elastic way. Then all at once the character of the path was changed, and Nic felt the hard rock beneath his feet.
“Is that deep?” he said, rather huskily.
“Well, with what we’ve got not far away we don’t call that deep. It’s on’y a sort o’ crack like. ’Bout hundred and fifty foot, say.”
“A hundred and fifty feet!” cried Nic, with an involuntary shiver.
“Somewheres about that,” said Samson coolly. “But you wouldn’t hurt yourself if you went down, for there’s a good depth o’ water in the pool. But you’d get strange and wet.”
Nic drew in a deep breath.