“Yes, where are they?” cried Vores.
“How should I know?” growled Dinass. “Aren’t they up here?”
“Here? No; we haven’t seen them since they went down with you,” cried Vores.
“More aren’t I, hardly; I thought they’d come up again.”
“Come up again!” cried the miner, as a low murmur arose from the men around. “You don’t mean to say that you’ve come up and left them two poor boys in the lurch!”
“Lurch be hanged!” cried Dinass, fiercely, and now subsiding with a groin, as it he were in pain. “It’s them left me in the lurch. They started a game on me; I saw ’em whispering together, but I didn’t think it meant anything till we’d got some ways in, and my candle wanted a bit o’ snuffing to make it burn; so I kneels down and opens the lanthorn, and it took a bit o’ time, for I wetted my thumb and finger to snuff it, and the wick spluttered after, and the light went out. Course I had my box o’ matches, but it took ever so long to light the damp wick. At last, though, I got it to burn, but it went out again; and I turns to them, where they was waiting for me when I see ’em last. ‘Give’s a fresh candle, sir,’ I says, ‘for this here one won’t burn.’ But there was no answer. So I spoke louder, never thinking they was playing me any larks, but there was no answer; and I shouted, and there was no answer; and last of all I regularly got the horrors on me, for I was all alone.”
“Well?” said Vores, scornfully, “what then?”
“Oh, then I begun wandering about in the dark banks and lanes, shouting and hollering, and going half mad. It’s a horrid place, and I must have gone about for miles before I found my way back to the sumph, and nearly fell into it. But haven’t they come up again?”
“No,” said Vores, who had stepped up and opened the lanthorn as the man went on talking. “But how was it, when your candle wouldn’t light again, that it’s all burnt down in the socket?”
“Oh, I did get it to light at last of all,” said Dinass; “but I had to burn all my matches first, and hadn’t one left for a pipe.”