Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/219

Rh can carry," said Stone. "Then we'll register our location notices and arrange for developing the mine properly. It'll take a stamp mill to clean up, I suppose."

"First find your gold," said Larkin. "'Ere goes."

With the rope slung across his shoulders, he tackled the narrow chute. The strength packed into his squatty body was prodigious. With his fingers hooked in a crevice, he drew himself up, his naked feet clinging like limpets, his legs wide straddled, hanging with one hand while he drove in a spike.

"Hey!" he shouted down. "I know 'ow Lyman made it. Syme w'y I am. They's old spikes 'ere but they're rusted hout, most of 'em." In an incredibly short space of time he mounted to the first ledge, stood on it, and called down again.

"It's four or five foot wide," he said. He rolled a cigarette and lit it, smoking while he got his breath, then flung the spark far out. "Goin' hup!" he cried, and started on again. From now on he progressed rapidly. He had found sockets chiselled in the rock, he told them, where masonry had once been set. Nearly a hundred feet above he reached the widened place and disappeared. They heard the sound of hammering. Presently he came swiftly down, grasping the double line with his hands, clutching the rock with his bare toes, ignoring the spikes he had driven.

"Didn't want to cut my tootsies," he announced. It'll be O. K. wiv boots on. Heasy! S'y, there's a wide ledge running round that scoop like a