“Nay,” he said to the remaining men present; “none o’ that, my lads: slow and steady’s my motter for this job. One reg’lar rate and no other.”
In due time the other skep came to the surface, and Hardock, with a lump of bread in his hand and a fresh supply of candles and matches, stepped in, to be followed by five more, ready to dare anything in the search for the two lads; but once more poor Grip was left behind howling dismally, while Tom Dinass nursed his leg and glared at him with an evil eye.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
Down in the Depths.
“You lead with the lanthorn, Hardock,” said the Colonel, as the man and his companions stepped out of the second skep and had to wade knee-deep for a few yards from the bottom of the shaft, the road lying low beneath the high, cavernous entrance to the mine, at one side of which a tiny stream of clear water was trickling. There the bottom began to rise at the same rate as the roof grew lower; and soon they were, if not on dry land, walking over a floor of damp, slimy rock.
“Keep straight on, sir?” said the captain.
“Yes, right on. They would not have entered the side gallery, or we should have met them as we came out.”
The first side gallery, a turning off to the left, was reached, and, but for the fact that the Colonel’s party had strayed into that part by accident, it would have been passed unseen, as it was by the boys and Dinass, for the entrance was so like the rock on either side, and it turned off at such an acute angle, that it might have been passed a hundred times without its existence being known.