“Quit your pessimism and find the chisel!” snapped Moran. “I’m going down.”
They watched the bubbles that marked his progress rise to the surface in a wavy line and then stop and break in a fixed patch. Rather sooner than they expected the bubbles moved back; and Moran looked crestfallen when they took off his diving dress.
“Did you cut out much stuff?” Bethune asked.
“No,” said Moran, holding up the chisel; “this is what I did. Came across a blamed big spike at the second cut.”
Bethune giggled. Even Jimmy grinned. There was a deep notch in the edge of the tool.
“Your philosophy isn’t much good,” Moran said grumpily. “It helps you to prophesy troubles, but not to avoid them. We’ll have to spend some time in rubbing that nick out.”
“I’ll try the engineer’s cold-chisel,” Bethune replied. “With good luck, I might cut the spike.”
He took the tool and an ordinary carpenter’s chisel down with him; and the edge of the chisel was broken when he returned.
“I’ve cut the spike, and dug out about an inch of the wood,” he reported. “Why are you frowning, Jimmy?”
“It looks as if we may spend a week over that timber. These confounded preliminaries sicken me!”