“I have it all perfectly impressed on my brain,” said Reed quietly. “But I do not want to go much farther. I only want to examine the rock here and there. Take care, man: mind!”
He darted out his right hand, caught the miner by the coat and saved him from plunging down into the black abyss beneath them, for in taking a step forward, Sturgess had trodden on a piece of loose shell marble, which gave way and one foot went down.
He dropped the lanthorn, though, and it went below, to hang in a crevice upon its side, threatening to go out; but as soon as Sturgess had a little recovered himself and sat down to start wiping his forehead, Reed began to descend.
“Don’t do that, sir,” cried Sturgess hoarsely. “Light your candle.”
“No; I can get the lanthorn,” said Reed quietly; and he went on descending cautiously till, getting well hold of the nearest projecting fragment with his left hand, he bent down lower and lower to try and reach the handle of their lamp.
But, try how he would, it was always a few inches beyond his reach; and at last, with the candle within guttering, flaring, and blackening the glass, threatening to crack it and then go out, Reed drew himself up again to try and get a fresh footing upon the side of the chasm.
He looked up to see, faintly, a white face gazing down at him, and, as their eyes met, the man said hoarsely—
“Don’t do that, sir. Come up and light a fresh bit. If you slip, I shall be all in darkness. It’s horrid to have to come to one’s end in a place like this.”
“Sympathy for himself, and not for me,” thought Reed. “I have the lights.”
Just at that moment he noted something just level with where he stood, where there was a plain demarcation between two kinds of stone; and, whereas on the left all was shelly fossil, on his right it was limestone; and again, with a sparkling and gem-like vein of quartz full of great crystals of galena.