of rock, checked himself for a few moments, and looked back, to see
the four men, nearly breast-deep, a dozen yards behind, waiting for him
to be swept down to their grasp.

"There, give up!" cried another, "for you're drownded. You don't know
the waters here, like we do. Some o' that goes right down into the
mine."

To the astonishment of the men, who did not dare to venture farther, the
lad did not surrender, but looked sharply about to try and fully grasp
his position and his chances of escape. Ahead the water certainly
appeared deeper, for it glided on towards him, looking black, oily, and
marked with sinuous lines. There was no ripple to indicate a shallow,
and he could feel, from the pressure against him, that it would be
impossible to stem it in swimming; while most ominous of all, right in
the centre, a little way ahead, there was a spot where the water was a
little depressed. It kept circling round every now and then, forming a
funnel-shaped opening about a foot across, showing plainly enough that
the men were right, and that a portion of the stream passed down there
into some hole in the rock, to form one of the subterranean courses of
which there were several in the district, as he knew both where rivulets
disappeared, and also suddenly gushed out into the light of day.

Ralph grasped then at once that it would be impossible to escape by
swimming against such a stream; that if he could have done so, there was
the horrible risk of being sucked down into some awful chasm to instant
death; that he could not climb up the wall of rock where he hung on
then; and that, if he let go, he would be borne along in a few moments
to the men's hands; and then, that he would be bound, and dragged away a
prisoner, to his shame, and all through trying to get those unfortunate
fish.

"It's of no use," he muttered despairingly, as he looked above him
again, and, as he did so, saw that the men were laughing at his
predicament, for, as Touchstone the clown told the shepherd, he was "in
a parlous case."

But hope is a fine thing, and gives us rays of light even in the darkest
places. Just when Ralph felt most despondent, it occurred to him that
there was another way out of the difficulty, and he proceeded to put it
in force by looking straight ahead, along the wall of rock, which ran
down into the water, and there, just beyond the tuft by which he held
on, and certainly within reach, was one of the perpendicular cracks