Menhardoc Part 69

"Rather startling. I did not expect that. Dropped my magnesium ribbon.

Why, where's the lantern?"

"It's underneath me, father," said d.i.c.k in a half-ashamed grumbling tone. "I tumbled back over it and knocked it out."

"Never mind, Master d.i.c.k, I've got some matches," said Will; and after a good deal of scratching, which only resulted in long lines of pale light, for every part of the boat seemed to be wet, there was a glow of light once more, and the lantern was lit; but its rays seemed pitiful in the extreme after the brilliant glare of the magnesium.

"And now where are the seals?" said Mr Temple, holding the lantern above his head.

"Out to sea long enough ago, sir," said Josh. "They went under the boat, and I felt one of 'em touch the oar as they went off. You won't see no more seals, sir, to-day."

"Ah well!" said Mr Temple, "we've seen some, boys, at all events. Now let's have a look round here."

He held up the lantern, and as the boat was thrust onward he examined the rock here and there, taking out his little steel-headed hammer and chipping about.

"Granite--quartz--gneiss--quartz," he said in a low voice, as he carefully examined each fresh fracture in the stone. "Why, boys, here's tin here," he said sharply. "This place can never have been worked."

As he was speaking these latter words he held out a fragment of the stone he had broken off to Josh.

"That's good tin, my man," he said.

Josh growled. He had more faith in a net or a bit of rope.

"What do you say to it, Will?" said Mr Temple.

Will took the piece of quartz that was sparkling with tiny black crystals and turned it over several times close to the light. "Good tin ore, and well worth working," he exclaimed readily.

"Yes," said Mr Temple, "you are right, my lad. It is well worth working. Let's look a little farther. Here, you come and stand up and hold the lantern. We can land here."

Will obeyed, and as the boys watched, and Josh solaced himself with cutting a bit of cake tobacco to shreds, Mr Temple and Will climbed from place to place, the boys seeing the dark wet pieces of rock come out clear and sparkling as the blows fell from the hammer.

Now they were here, now there, and the more Mr Temple hammered and chipped the more interested he seemed to grow.

_Click, click, click, click_ rang the hammer, and _splish, splash_ went the fragments of rock that fell in the water or were thrown into it; and thus for quite two hours Mr Temple hammered away, and after giving up a fragmentary conversation d.i.c.k and Josh grew silent or only spoke at intervals.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

HOW SEALS SOMETIMES MAKE THOSE WHO WAX EAGER STICK.

"I say, d.i.c.k," said Arthur after a long silence, "I wish we could go out now."

"Not frightened, are you?"

"Not now," said Arthur with simple truthfulness. "I was at first, but I don't mind now."

"It was _unked_, as the people here call it," said d.i.c.k, "and gashly. I wondered at first whether there were any sea-serpents or ugly things living in a place like this."

"Sea-monsters," said Arthur. "So did I, but I seem to have got used to it at last."

"Oh, I say," said d.i.c.k, "I'm getting so hungry! What a long time father is!"

"He's finding good ore," said Arthur, "he seems to be so interested.

d.i.c.k--d.i.c.k--oh! what's that?"

_Snork_!

It was not the snarl of a wild beast, but a sound that seemed to be represented by that word.

"Old Josh's fast asleep," said d.i.c.k merrily. "It's he snoring. Let's splash him. No; I'll rock the boat."

Suiting the action to the word, d.i.c.k gave the boat a rock whose result was to b.u.mp it hardly against a rock, and then there was a loud start out of the darkness a few feet away, and then the boat b.u.mped again.

"Why, halloa! what cheer--eh? What?"

"Why, you've been to sleep, Josh."

"No; on'y just closed my eyes," cried Josh; "on'y just shut 'em a moment;" though the fact was Josh had been asleep a long way over an hour. "Master 'most done?"

"I don't know," said d.i.c.k; "I know I'm precious tired of waiting."

"Tell 'ee what," said Josh suddenly, as he began to feel about with an oar as the boat swayed more up and down, and was carried a little towards where Mr Temple was standing, and then drawn back; "tide's coming in fast."

"Why, Will," said Mr Temple just at the same moment, "how's this? That ledge was bare--"

"Now it's six inches under water, sir," replied Will. "I think we ought to get out at once."

"Stop a few minutes longer," said Mr Temple; "there is evidently the outcrop of a vein here. Hold the light."

Will obeyed at once, and Mr Temple began chipping at a fresh block of quartz rock which projected from the cave wall at an angle.

"Yes; copper this time," said Mr Temple.

"Father," cried d.i.c.k, "Josh thinks we had better get out again now. The tide's rising."

"I'll be done directly," said Mr Temple. "The tide will not run so high that we cannot pull against it."

"Tide's coming in gashly fast," said Josh to himself; "but if he don't mind, I don't."

Twice more d.i.c.k spoke to his father about coming, for Josh was muttering very sourly, and seemed disposed to resent this hanging back when he suggested that it would be better to go; but Mr Temple was so deeply interested in his discovery of what seemed to be a promising and, as far as he could for the moment tell, absolutely a new vein, that he forgot everything else in his intense desire to break off as good a specimen of the rock as he could.

"There," he said at last in a tone of triumph, "I think that will do.

Steady, d.i.c.k, take these pieces. Now, you, my lad, go forward to your place. We'll hold the lanthorn, and--why, how's this? the ceiling seems to be lower."

"But it aren't," growled Josh sourly; "it's the gashly tide come in.

There," he said, as he thrust the boat round an angle which had hidden the entrance of the cavern, "the boat won't go through there."

"Through there?" cried Mr Temple, as d.i.c.k felt his heart sink at the sight of the little archway in the rock not a foot above the surface of the water and sometimes with that surface going closer still towards the rugged crown of the natural arch.