The convict smiled, bent down a little, and passed out of the boy’s sight.
“You can jump down boldly here,” came in deep, echoing tones: “there is good foothold. A little slippery, but I’ll catch you if your foot glides away.”
It requires a little effort of mind to leap down off terra firma into a black-looking hole whose bottom is invisible, and Nic hesitated for a moment or two. Then:
“Trust for trust,” he said to himself, and leaped, to feel for a brief instant or two that strange sensation experienced when rushing downward in a swing. Then splash! and his feet sent the water flying as he landed upon soft sand, while a hand grasped his shoulder, and he could dimly see the convict’s swarthy face.
“All right?”
“Yes. Did I hit you with the gun?”
“Pretty hard, boy; but, never mind—it didn’t go off.”
Nic looked round, and by the light which gleamed from above through a lovely lacework of overhanging ferns he could see rugged rocks, which looked of a glistening: metallic green, but in places of a soft rippled cream, as if the rich produce of hundreds of cows had trickled down the walls and turned to stone. Water was flowing about his feet, but only an inch or two deep, and beyond where the convict stood there was black darkness.
“I say, is this really the way down to the bottom of that great gorge, Leather—I mean Frank Mayne?” said Nic breathlessly, for his heart, in spite of his having gone through no exertion, still laboured heavily.
“Yes, and a gloriously easy way, as you will soon see.”