We had about a couple of yards to move it, and then it rested upon the very brink, a shrinking sensation coming over me as I saw Tom stand, candle in hand, with one foot resting upon the rock ready to thrust it over.
“Now, then, Mas’r Harry,” he said, “this’ll find the bottom if anything will. We shall soon know now. Say when!”
I did not speak, for I was wondering whether that rough block was going down where that I coveted had been cast, and for a moment I was about to restrain Tom; but I thought that the fall of that stone would teach me whether the bottom was at an attainable depth or no, and I signed to Tom to thrust the fragment off.
“Over, Mas’r Harry?”
“Over!” I said in a whisper; and the next moment there was a grating noise and the stone had been thrust off to fall—fall—fall in silence, while with awe-stricken countenances we leaned over the gulf and listened, second after second, without avail, for no sound came up.
“It’s gone bang through to the other side of the world, Mas’r Harry!” whispered Tom. “There ain’t no end to this place, for if it had been ever so deep you must have heard it touch bottom some time. Ain’t it awful!”
It was awful, and a hand seemed clutching my heart as I thought of falling, ever falling like that, or of some enemy dashing me over into the fearful gulf. There seemed to be indeed no bottom within ordinary range, and the idea of descending by rope in search there of treasure was absurd.
How long the stone had been falling I cannot say; but just as we had given up all thought of hearing of it more there came from the depths below a faint whisper of a splash, or of some pebble falling in water, but only for that whisper to be echoed and re-echoed from distant parts till it increased to a fearful roar that was some seconds in dying away.
It was impossible to help a shudder upon hearing those horrible reverberations, each one telling of the awful profundity of the place—one which, without extensive mining apparatus, I felt that any fathoming for search was out of the question.