If Josh said at once what was the matter, there would be a crowd up at the head of the shaft directly with a score of lines; but he did not wish for that. Even in his awkward, if not perilous, position he did not want the village to be aware of his investigations. He had been carrying them on in secret for some time, and he hoped when they were made known to have something worth talking about.
How long Josh seemed, and how dark it was! Perhaps he was being asked for at home, and he would be in disgrace.
That was not likely, though. He had chosen his time too well.
“I wonder how far it is down to the water?” he said at last; and feeling about, his hand came in contact with a large thin piece of stone, as big as an ordinary tile.
He hesitated for a moment or two, and then threw it from him with such force that it struck the far side of the shaft and sent up a series of echoes before, from far below, there came a dull sullen plash, with a succession of whishing, lapping sounds, such as might have been given out if some monster had come to the top and were swimming round, disappointed by what had fallen not being food.
“It’s all nonsense!” said Will. “I don’t believe any fish or eel would be living in an old shaft.”
Some of the mining people were in the habit of saying that each water-filled pit, deep, mysterious, and dark, held strange creatures, of what kind no one knew, for individually they had never seen anything; but “some one” had told them that there were such creatures, and “some one else” had been “some one’s” authority: for the lower orders of Cornish folk, with all their honest simplicity and religious feeling, are exceedingly superstitious, and much given to a belief in old women’s tales.