Josh growled. He had more faith in a net or a bit of rope.
“What do you say to it, Will?” said Mr Temple.
Will took the piece of quartz that was sparkling with tiny black crystals and turned it over several times close to the light. “Good tin ore, and well worth working,” he exclaimed readily.
“Yes,” said Mr Temple, “you are right, my lad. It is well worth working. Let’s look a little farther. Here, you come and stand up and hold the lantern. We can land here.”
Will obeyed, and as the boys watched, and Josh solaced himself with cutting a bit of cake tobacco to shreds, Mr Temple and Will climbed from place to place, the boys seeing the dark wet pieces of rock come out clear and sparkling as the blows fell from the hammer.
Now they were here, now there, and the more Mr Temple hammered and chipped the more interested he seemed to grow.
Click, click, click, click rang the hammer, and splish, splash went the fragments of rock that fell in the water or were thrown into it; and thus for quite two hours Mr Temple hammered away, and after giving up a fragmentary conversation Dick and Josh grew silent or only spoke at intervals.