A Case of Lost Nerve, and the Help that came.
It must have been quite an hour of painful waiting before Josh’s voice was heard from above.
Will had been sitting there in the dark passage listening to every noise, though scarcely anything met his ear but the incessant drip and trickle of the water that oozed from the shaft sides, when all at once there was a faint sound from above, and his heart leapt with excitement.
Was it Josh at last?
“Bellow—er!” came down the shaft.
“Ahoy!” shouted back Will. “Got a rope?”
“Ay, lad; I’ve got un, a strong noo un as’ll hold us both, a good thirty fathom!”
“Make it fast to the iron bar, Josh!” cried Will, whose hands now felt hot with excitement.
“Ay, I won’t lose this gashly thing!” cried Josh, whose words came down the shaft-hole wonderfully distinctly, as if a giant were whispering near the lad’s ear.
Will listened, and fancied he could hear his companion knotting the end of the rope and fastening it round the iron bar; but he could not be sure, and he waited as patiently as he could, but with a curious sensation of dread coming over him. He had felt courageous enough when he came down, indifferent, or thoughtless perhaps, as to the danger; but this accident with the rope had, though he did not realise it, shaken his confidence in Josh; and in addition, the long waiting in that horrible hole had unnerved him more than he knew, full proof of which he had ere long.