“Lower me down quite slowly, and stop whenever I shout. You’re sure you can haul me up?”
“Ha, ha! haw, haw!” laughed Josh. “Can I haul you? What do you take me for—a babby?”
As he spoke he caught the lad by the waistband with one hand, lifted him from the ground, and stiffening his muscles held him out at arm’s-length for a few seconds before setting him down.
“That will do, Josh,” said Will quietly; and taking the end of the line he made a good-sized loop, round part of which he twisted a piece of sailcloth to make it thicker; then stepping through the loop as though it had been one prepared for an ordinary swing, he turned to Josh:
“Ready?”
“Ay, ay!” was the laconic answer as the fisherman passed the line over the round iron bar, which seemed perfectly safe, took a good grip of the rope, and then stood looking at his young companion.
“I tried to stop you when you wanted to dive down,” he said, “and I s’pose I ought to try and stop you now. It looks a gashly sort of a hole. S’pose I was to let go?”
“But you would not, Josh,” said Will confidently, as he lowered himself slowly over the edge as calmly as if only about to descend a few feet, with perfect safety in the shape of solid earth beneath him, though, as he moved, he set free a little avalanche of fragments of granite, that seemed to go down into the shaft with a hiss, which was succeeded by the strange echoing splashes—weird whispers of splashes—as they reached, the water below.
It would have daunted many a strong man; but so intent was the lad upon his task that he paid no heed to the sounds, and directly after, taking the candle from its niche, he began to scan the walls of the shaft.
“Lower away, Josh, steadily and slowly,” he said, as his head disappeared from the fisherman’s sight. “I’ll shout to you when I want to stop.”