"Told you so," rang in his ears, as he struck out and rose, to find himself being borne back; but a few strokes took him to the right side, where he snatched at some overhanging ferns rooted in the perpendicular wall 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."