“I do; and you are going to manage the rope!”
“And s’pose you falls in and gets drowned, what am I to say to your uncle?”
“I’m not going to fall in, and I’m not going to be drowned,” said Will quietly. “I’m going to try and find that copper; so now come along.”
There was not a nice suitable piece of stone for Josh to use in polishing his nose, so he contented himself with a rub of the back of his hand before squeezing himself through the narrow passage between the masses of rock, and following his companion to the ledge where the old adventurers had spent their capital in sinking the shaft, and had given up at last, perhaps on the very eve of success.
“It’s all gashly nonsense,” cried Josh as they reached the mouth of the shaft once more; “if there’d been copper worth finding, don’t you think those did chaps would have found it?”
“They might or they might not,” said Will quietly; “we’re going to see.”
He went to another crevice in the face of the cliff and drew out a good-sized iron bar shaped like a marlinspike but about double the size, and throwing it down with a clang upon the rock he startled a cormorant from the ledge above their heads, and the great swarthy bird flew out to sea.
“Lay out that line, Josh,” said Will, who, after a little selection of a spot, took up the bar and began to make a hole between two huge blocks of granite, working it to and fro so as to bury it firmly half its length.
The crevice between the stones helped him in this; and he soon had it in and wedged tightly with a few sharp fragments that had been dug from the shaft.
“Going to fasten one end o’ the line to that?” sang Josh.