He took hold of the prize more cautiously, disengaged the hook, and then laid the fish before his father--a fine salmon bass of eight or nine pounds. "Bravo, my boy!" said Mr Temple; "but is your hand much cut?" "Oh, no! it's nothing," said Dick, hastily twisting his handkerchief round his hurt. "I say, isn't it a beauty? But what is the use of that fin?" "Means of defence, I suppose," said his father, raising the keen perch-like back fin of the fish.--"But there, we are close inshore now. Run her in, my men." The next minute the boat was grating upon the rocks. Will leaped out and held it steady, for the waves rocked it about a good deal; and the party landed close to the adit, the boat being moored with a grapnel; and then they all walked up to the hole in the foot of the rock, through which Josh and Will had made their escape after their adventure in the mine-shaft a short time before. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. ARTHUR TEMPLE CATCHES HIS LARGEST FISH--AN ODD ONE--AND EVEN THEN IS NOT AT REST. Mr Temple took a small flat lantern from his pocket, struck a match inside, and lit the lamp, which burned with a clear, bright flame. "Is the shaft belonging to this open at the top?" he said to Will. "Yes, sir--quite." "Ah! then there's no foul air. Now, Arthur, come along and you shall see what a mine adit is like." "I--er--I'd rather not come this time, papa," said Arthur in a rather off-hand way; "the knees of my trousers are so wet." "Oh! are they?" said Mr Temple quietly. "You will come, I suppose, Dick?" "Yes, father. May I carry the lamp?" "Yes; and go first. Slowly, now. Rather hard to get through;" and after a little squeezing the whole party, save Arthur, crept into the low gallery, the light showing the roof and sides to be covered with wet moss of a glittering metallic green. There was not much to reward the seekers,--nothing but this narrow passage leading to a black square pool of water, upon which the light of the lamp played, and seemed to be battling with a patch of reflected daylight, the image of the square opening, a hundred and fifty feet above. "Hah!" said Mr Temple after a few minutes' inspection of the adit and the shaft, whose walls, as far as he could reach, he chipped with a sharp-pointed little hammer formed almost like a wedge of steel. "A good hundred years since this was worked, if ever it got beyond the search. Copper decidedly." "And you think it is very rich?" said Will excitedly, for he had been watching Mr Temple with the greatest eagerness. "Rich! No, my lad. What, have you got the Cornish complaint?" "Cornish complaint, sir?" said Will wonderingly. "The longing to search for mineral treasures?" "Yes, sir," said Will bluntly after a few moments' pause. "Then you need not waste time here, my lad." "But there's copper here. I proved it; and now you say there is." "Yes; tons of it," said Mr Temple. "There, Josh!" cried Will triumphantly.