Neither of the boys answered, but the same thought came to them both—“that their companion was singing to make a show of his courage.”
“I didn’t want to fight,” continued Dinass; “but I could have knocked that fellow Harry Vores into the middle of next week if I’d liked. I’d have come down, too, without any fuss if they’d asked me properly; but I’m not going to be bullied and driven, so I tell ’em.”
Still neither Gwyn nor Joe spoke, but stood listening to the dripping water, and wondering at the easy way in which the skep went down past platform and beam, whose presence was only shown by the gleam of the wet wood as the lanthorns passed. And still down and down for what seemed to be an interminable length of time.
They knew that they must have passed the openings of several horizontal galleries, but they saw no signs of them, as they stood drawing their breath hard, till all at once the skep stopped, and Dinass shouted boisterously,—
“Here we are; bottom. Give’s hold o’ one o’ them lanthorns, or we shall be in the sumph.”
He snatched the lanthorn Joe carried, held it down, and stepped off the skep.
“It’s all right,” he said; “there’s some planking here.”
The two boys followed, and looked down into the black thick water of the sumph, a great tank into which the drainings of the mine ran ready for being pumped up; and now Gwyn held up his light to try and penetrate the gloom, but could only dimly trace the entrance of what appeared to be a huge, arch-roofed tunnel, and as they stepped over the rough wet granite beneath it, Dinass placed a hand to the side of his mouth and uttered a stentorian hail, which went echoing and rolling along before them, to be answered quite plainly from somewhere at a distance.
A load fell from Gwyn’s breast, and he uttered a sigh of relief.
“It’s all right, Joe,” he said. “There they are, but some distance in. Come on.”