"It does move—just a little," he said. He put all of his strength into a fresh attack. The boulder trembled slightly—that was all.
"I'll bet you my half of the loot that I've got the hang of it, Miss Betty," he announced triumphantly.
"Wait and see."
He began looking about him for something.
"If I only dared slip outside for a minute," he said. Then his eye fell on the rifle. "We'll have to make this do. I run a risk of jamming the front sight but I guess we can fix that."
He protected the sight as well as he could by wrapping his handkerchief about it. The muzzle of the gun he thrust down into the hole in the rock.
"Get it now?" he asked. "If that hole wasn't made to allow a lever to be inserted, then tell me what it was made for. And here's even the place to stand while a man uses it! I'll double the bet!"
That excitement which always gets into any man's blood when he believes that he is on the threshold of a golden discovery, already shone in his eyes. He stepped to a sort of shelf in the cavern wall close to the boulder, so that now his feet were on a level with the top of the rock he meant to move. So he could just reach out and grasp the butt of the rifle. Betty stood by, watching with an eagerness no less than his own. Gradually he set his force at work on his lever, trying this way and that. And then—
"It's moving!" cried Betty. "The rock is turning!"
And now it turned readily, his leverage being ample to the task.