I don't believe it's six feet below where
I'm standing. What a queer whispering echo it does make, though. I
wonder whether there is any kind of fish down here. Eels or newts,
perhaps. Now then, what's to be done next?"

Mark was silent for a few moments, and then beginning to be more imbued
with his cousin's coolness and matter-of-fact way of treating his
position, he exclaimed, "I can't think as clearly as you do, Dean. I
want to see what's best, and all that I can come to is that I must go
for help. If you dare hold on there till I come back with the others,
and ropes or halters--"

"Dare?" cried Dean. "There's no _dare_ about it. I must. But I say,
what a pair of guffins we are!"

"Oh, don't talk like that," said Mark. "It is very brave and good of
you, but I know it is only done to try to cheer me up. I wish I wasn't
such a coward, Dean."

"I don't," said Dean, with quite a laugh. "You are just the sort of
coward I like--sticking to your comrade like this. Think I want you to
be one of those brave fellows who would run away, calling murder? But I
say, arn't we a pair of guffins?"

"Oh, don't talk like that! What do you mean?"

"Well, here we are in the dark."

"Yes; we had no business to come. We ought to have known that we might
be lost here after sundown, and have brought a lantern."

"Pooh! Who was going to expect that Pig and Mak were going to dodge us
like they did? But all the same we did show some gumption, only we let
ourselves get our heads full of fancies; and here have we been standing
in the dark all this time with each a box of matches in his pocket."

"Oh!" ejaculated Mark.

"You get yours," continued Dean. "I am all right now, and I don't want
to risk slithering off into the cold wet water."

_Scratch_!

There was a faint line of phosphorescence giving its pallid gleam for a
few moments; then the rattle as of matches being moved about in a tin
box, another scratch, a line of light, and then a very faint dull spark
seemed to descend and become extinct in the water beneath.

"Try again," said Dean.

_Scratch_!

The same line of light, and the phosphorescent tip of the match going
down again to expire in the water.

"Hope you have got plenty of matches," said Dean.

"Yes, plenty," cried Mark, making the rattle in the box again.

"You must have got them wet somehow."

"No, no," cried Mark impatiently. "It is my fingers that are so moist
with perspiration."