“Dock!”—the echo coming some moments after the calls in a peculiar weird way.
“Sam ’Ardock!” shouted Dinass then, with a loudness and suddenness which made the boys start.
“Dock!” came back from evidently a great distance, giving such an idea of mystery and depth that the boys could hardly repress a shudder.
“Only eckers,” said the man; “and as old Sam Hardock would say, ‘it’s a gashly great unked place,’ but I think there’s some tin in it. Look there and there!”
He held up the lanthorn he carried close to the roof, which sparkled with little purply-black grains running in company with a reddish bloom, as if from rouge, amongst the bright quartz of the tunnel.
“Oh, never mind the tin,” cried Joe. “Pray, pray go on; we’re losing time.”
“Yes, make haste,” said Gwyn. “We’d better keep straight along here, and stop and shout at every opening or turning.”
“Yes, that will be right,” said Joe. “Only do keep on. My father is so weak from his illnesses, that I’m afraid he has broken down. I ought not to have let him come.”
The words seemed strangely incongruous, and made Gwyn glance at his companion; but it was the tender nurse speaking, who had so often waited upon the Major through his campaign-born illnesses, and there was no call for mirth.
Onward they went along the rugged tunnel, which wound and zigzagged in all directions, the course of the ancient miners having been governed by the track of the lode of tin; and soon after they came to where a vein had run off to their left, and been laboriously cut out with chisel, hammer, and pick.