then
started to climb out of the gully in which he stood, mounting
laboriously over the rugged granite masses which lay about, tangling and
scratching himself among the brambles, and at last standing high up on
the slope to gaze round and shout.

"What's the good o' that?" cried Hardock, who was following him. "Come
back."

For answer Joe gazed round about him, wondering whether by any
possibility there was another opening into the mine hidden by bramble
and heath. He had been all over the place with Gwyn scores of times,
and the walled-in mouth was familiar enough; and from the cliff edge to
the mighty blocks piled up here and there he and Gwyn had climbed and
crawled, hunting adders and lizards among the heath, chased rabbits to
their holes in the few sandy patches, and foraged for sea-birds' eggs on
the granite ledges and, by the help of a rope, over on the face of the
cliffs. But never once had they come upon any opening save the one down
into the old mine.

"But there must be--there must be," muttered Joe, with a feeling of
relief, "and I've got to find it. It's blocked up with stones, and the
blackberries have grown all over it. There!--All right. Ahoy!
Coming."

For the faint halloa came now very distinctly.

"Are you comin' back?" shouted Hardock. "Don't stand hollering there in
that mad way."

"He's here--he's here--somewhere," shouted back Joe, excitedly, and he
waved to his companion to come on.

"Yah! stuff!" growled Hardock; but he followed up the side of the gully,
while Joe went on away from the sea to where a wall of rock rose up some
twenty feet and ran onward for seventy or eighty.

Joe came back hurriedly after a few moments and met Hardock.

"Well, where is he?" said the latter.

"I don't know," panted the boy; "somewhere underneath. I keep hearing
him."

"You keep hearing o' them," said the man, with a look full of the
superstition to which he was a victim.

"Ahoy!" came faintly from behind them.

"Now, then," cried Joe, excitedly; "he's up there."

He turned and ran up toward the wall of rock once more, followed more
deliberately by Hardock, who hung the coil of rope on his shoulder.

"Well, where is he?" said the man, as he reached the spot where Joe was
hunting about among the great pieces of stone.

"I don't know, but there must be another opening here." Hardock shook
his head mysteriously.

"But you heard him shout."

"I heerd a voice," said the man; and as he