Will obeyed at once, and Mr Temple began chipping at a fresh block of quartz rock which projected from the cave wall at an angle.
“Yes; copper this time,” said Mr Temple.
“Father,” cried Dick, “Josh thinks we had better get out again now. The tide’s rising.”
“I’ll be done directly,” said Mr Temple. “The tide will not run so high that we cannot pull against it.”
“Tide’s coming in gashly fast,” said Josh to himself; “but if he don’t mind, I don’t.”
Twice more Dick spoke to his father about coming, for Josh was muttering very sourly, and seemed disposed to resent this hanging back when he suggested that it would be better to go; but Mr Temple was so deeply interested in his discovery of what seemed to be a promising and, as far as he could for the moment tell, absolutely a new vein, that he forgot everything else in his intense desire to break off as good a specimen of the rock as he could.
“There,” he said at last in a tone of triumph, “I think that will do. Steady, Dick, take these pieces. Now, you, my lad, go forward to your place. We’ll hold the lanthorn, and—why, how’s this? the ceiling seems to be lower.”
“But it aren’t,” growled Josh sourly; “it’s the gashly tide come in. There,” he said, as he thrust the boat round an angle which had hidden the entrance of the cavern, “the boat won’t go through there.”
“Through there?” cried Mr Temple, as Dick felt his heart sink at the sight of the little archway in the rock not a foot above the surface of the water and sometimes with that surface going closer still towards the rugged crown of the natural arch.
“Well, there aren’t no other way,” said Josh, whose long sleep had been the cause of the mishap, for had he been awake he would have known that they were staying longer than was safe.