"Her name be Susan."
"Quite a common name."
"She's as nice a female as ever I've seed."
The pilchard fishing was for several days so engrossing an occupation that the villagers had no time for fostering their grievance against the Towers. Dick and Sam, who had formerly been in the thick of it, sometimes as spectators merely, occasionally as participators, kept away, and spent the greater part of their time in fishing quietly some few miles up the coast. One day Dick reverted to the project of hunting seals, which he had temporarily abandoned, partly through the diversion afforded by the discovery of the well, partly because he did not care to kill the parent seals while their offspring were so young. Now, however, the prospect of sport, and the practical wish to obtain a sealskin for his mother, made him resolve to try his luck in the cave, and he laid his plans in consultation with the ever-ready Sam.
He guessed that the seals left the cave at low tide to find food in the deep, and returned when the sea flowed in. Since the cave was at such times inaccessible from the sea, he decided that it must be approached from the well, of which neither he nor Sam had now any remaining dread. One evening they sallied towards it, carrying a well-made rope-ladder, a musket apiece, a large hammer, and several torches, which would give more light than the ancient candle-lantern they had formerly carried. To one end of the rope-ladder they had attached a series of stout meat-hooks borrowed from old Reuben: they could more confidently trust their safety to a number of teeth gripping the rock than to the single fluke of their small boat anchor. They had timed their start so that they would reach the cave just as the tide turned.
It was a dull, murky evening, with a touch of autumn rawness in the air. Twilight had not quite merged into darkness when they arrived at the ruined chapel at the well-head. They looked warily around to make sure that their presence was not observed, then prepared to descend.
"'Tis rayther fearsome," murmured Sam, as he looked into the black shaft. Now that he was on the spot, the tradition of ghostliness in which he had been brought up revived something of his former fears.
"Nonsense," said Dick, "we have laid the ghost for ever, Sam. I will go down first. Don't follow until I come to the door. I will whistle for you. When you hear me, fling down the ladder and the hammer. At a second whistle, come yourself."
Sticking a lighted candle-end into his hatband, and slinging the musket over his shoulder, he stepped backward into the well, and began the descent. He found the successive staples entirely by the sense of touch, the candle throwing a deep shadow below him. At first he felt a little nervous, but gathered confidence after a few steps, and made the latter part of the descent very quickly.
Sam, waiting above, heard a whistle, curiously prolonged by its reverberations from the walls. He threw down the hammer, and gave an involuntary start when he heard it thud upon the bottom. The ladder followed, and the unkindled torches; then, without lighting a candle for his own hat, he stepped over the brink, muttering to himself: