There was a second of nervous strain, and then he felt Jimmie's hands
clinging to his shoes. He called to the boy to hang on and to the
others at the top to draw the line, and both were soon on the landing
at the bottom of the shaft.
"I wonder where that hole goes?" Jimmie asked, examining his fingers,
the ends of which were torn from slipping on the rock.
"You came near finding out," Nestor replied. "Regular rabbits, these
old-timers were, to dig tunnels!" he added.
Then assisting Jimmie out of the shaft, Nestor asked the boys to get
all the rope they had in their outfits, making a line as long as
possible, and ease him down the steep incline. In five minutes all
was ready and, with a line 400 feet long attached to his waist,
Nestor started down the tunnel.
As he passed along, half sliding, with the rope holding him back,
the flashlight in hand, he saw that the passage had been cut along
the line of a natural fault in the volcanic rock. It was clear
that, during some seismic disturbance, probably hundreds of years
before, the continuity of strata, until then on the same plane,
had been broken, leaving a fissure where the drop had taken place.
There was no means of estimating the extent of the vertical
displacement, but the boy was satisfied that it was the
difference between the height of the range at the place
where the cavern opened and the height to the north,
probably three hundred feet or more. The north end of the
range had dropped down.
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