Clive Reed stood up like a statue on a natural pedestal, high on the
precipitous slope. It was a great ponderous block of millstone grit,
which had become detached just at the spot where, high up, mountain
limestone and the above-named formation joined. And as he looked about
him, it seemed wonderful to a man fresh from London that he could find
so great a solitude in central England. Look where he would, the
various jumbled together eminences of the termination of the Pennine
range met his eye; there was hardly a tree in sight, but everywhere hill
and deeply cut dale, the down-like tops of the calcareous, and the
roughly jagged crags of the grit, while, with the exception of a few
white dots on a green slope far away, representing a flock of sheep,
there was no sign of life, neither house, hut, nor church spire.
"Yes, there is something alive," said the young man, "for there goes a
bee wild-thyme hunting, and whir-r-r-r! Think of that now, as somebody
says; who would have expected to see grouse out here in these hills?"
There they were, sure enough, a pair which skimmed by him as he stood at
the very edge of the great gash in the mountain-side, at the bottom of
which the track ran right into the mine he had come down to inspect for
the third time, after walking across from the town twelve miles distant,
where he had left the train on the previous evening.
"Wild, grand, solitary, on a day like this," said Reed to himself; "but
what must it be when a western gale is blowing. Come, Master Sturgess,
you're behind your time again."
He glanced at his watch.
"No; give the devil his due," he muttered. "I'm half an hour too soon,
and, by George, not so solitary as I thought. Behold! two travellers
wending their way across the desolate waste, as the novel-writers say.
Now what can bring a pair of trousers and a petticoat there?"
The young man shaded his eyes and looked across the gap to where, far
away, the two figures he had seen moved so slowly that they seemed to be
stationary. Then they separated a little, and the man stooped and then
knelt down.
"Can't be flower-gatherers out here. I know: after mushrooms. But
let's see."
Clive Reed dragged the strap which supported a tin case slung from his
shoulder, forced it aside, and tugged at another strap so as to bring a
little binocular into reach; and adjusting this, he followed his natural
instinct or some strange law of affinity, and brought the little lenses
to bear upon the female in place of the male.
"Not a gentle shepherdess fair, with tously locks and grubby hands and
face, though she has a dog by her side," he said to himself. "Looks
like a lady--at a distance. Phyllis and Corydon, eh? No," he added,
after an alteration of the glass; "long white hair and grey beard, and--
hullo! old chap's got a candle-box. Botanist or some other -ist. Hang
it, he's after minerals for a pound, and the lady--in white? Humph, it
can't be the `White Virgin' who gave the name to the mine. Let's--Hands
off, old gentleman, or keep your own side. Hah! there goes the dog:
after a rabbit, perhaps."
Clive Reed was ready to ask himself directly after, why he should stand
there taking so much interest in these two figures, so distant that even
with the help of the glass he could not distinguish their features. But
watch them he did till they disappeared round a shoulder of the hill.
"Tourists--cheap trippers, I suppose," said the young man, replacing the
glass in its sling case. "I wonder where they have come from?" and then
with a half laugh, as he took out a cigarette-case and lit up, "I wonder
why I take so much interest in them?"
"Answer simple," he continued, with a half laugh; "because they are the
only living creatures in sight. Man is a gregarious beast, and likes to
greg. I feel ready to go after them and talk. Hallo! here we are!
Master Sturgess and two men with a stout ladder, coils of rope, and--if
he hasn't brought a crowbar and a lanthorn, woe."
He shaded his eyes again to watch a party of three men toiling up a
slope, half a mile away, and began to descend from his coign of vantage
to reach the pathway at the entrance to the gap, seeing as he did that
he would not arrive there long before the others.
A glance at his watch showed him that it was still only ten o'clock, for
he had started on his mountain tramp at daybreak, and as he walked and
slid downward, he calculated that he would have time after the mine
examination to make for one of the villages in the neighbourhood of
Matlock to pass the night, so as to see as much of the country as he
could.
"Morning, Sturgess; you got my letter then?"
"Oh, yes, sir, yesterday morning," said the man, as Reed nodded at his
two sturdy followers--rough-looking men of the mining stamp, both of
whom acknowledged his salute with a half-sneering smile.
"Brought two different chaps this time. Got enough tackle?"
"Oh, yes, sir; ropes, hammer, spikes, and crowbar."
"Lanthorn?"
"Oh, yes, sir. Shouldn't come on a job like this without a light."
"Then come along."
He led the way through the narrow entrance, where the rock had once upon
a time been picked away to allow room for the passage of horses or rough
trucks, but now all covered with lichen and the marks of the eroding
tooth of Time; and then up and down and in and out along the side of the
chasm, which grew more gloomy at every step, deeper into the
mountain-side, while the bottom of the gully grew narrower and closer,
till it resembled the dried-up bed of a stream which had become half
blocked up with the great masses of stone, which had fallen from above.
Clive Reed's eyes were everywhere as they went on--now noticing spots
where the sloping walls of rock had been worked for ore, others where
trials had been made, honeycombing the rock with shallow cells, but
always suggesting that this working must have been ages ago, and in a
very superficial primitive fashion. This suggested plenty of prospect
for the engineer who would attack the ancient mine with the modern
appliances and forces which compel Nature to yield up her hidden
treasures, buried away since the beginning of the world.
Clive Reed saw pretty well everything on his way to the dark end, and,
after making a few short, sharp, business-like remarks, he said
suddenly--
"The plans say there is no way out whatever, beside the entrance."
He turned to Sturgess as he spoke, and a curious look came over the
countenance of the guardian of the mine, but before he could speak one
of the men behind said--
"Man as didn't mind breaking his neck might get up yonder," and he
nodded towards the precipitous side.
"Which means that a rough staircase might easily be made if wanted,
and--"
He did not finish speaking, but sprang up on to a block of stone,
climbed to another, drew himself on to a third, and extricated something
from a niche which had caught his observant eye, and with which he
sprang down.
It was a fine cambric handkerchief, which he turned over as Sturgess
looked on stolidly and with the same peculiar look in his countenance.
"Here, somebody may make inquiries about this. You had better take it,
Sturgess. Visitors to the old mine perhaps, but they have no business
here now. You will keep the place quite private for the present."
The man took the handkerchief, and a keen observer would have thought
that he put it out of sight rather hurriedly.
"Blowed in," said one of the others with a laugh. "Wonderful windy up
here sometimes."
Reed had started again, and plunging farther and farther into the
natural cutting in the mountain-side, soon after reached the end of the
_cul de sac_, where, partly obliterated by time, there were abundant
traces of the old workings, notably the shafts with their crumbling
sides, one going down perpendicularly, and into which the young engineer
pushed over a stone. This fell down and down for some time before it
struck against a projection with such force that it sent up a hollow
reverberating roar, and directly after came the dull, sullen sound of
its plunge into the water which had gathered in the huge well-like
place.
"She's pretty deep, sir," said one of the men, with a laugh.
"Yes," said Reed, with a nod, and he went on climbing over the blocks of
stone fallen from above, and which cumbered the place, to one of the
other two shafts, both of which had been made following a lode running
raggedly down at an angle of about seventy degrees.
"We'll try this," said Reed sharply.
"Want me to go down and chip off a few bits that seem most likely?" said
Sturgess roughly.
"No. Now, my lads, drive the crowbar well in here," said the engineer,
indicating a rift close to where they stood, a crevice between two
immense blocks of limestone.
"This here one's handier," said one of the men, pointing to a crack
close to the opening.
"Yes, and when you have loosened it by driving in that bar, more likely
to be pulled down into the shaft. In here, please."
The man inserted the sharp edge of the bar, and his companion made the
great chasm echo as he began to drive the iron in with strokes of the
heavy hammer he carried, till it was deemed safe.
"Hold a ridgement o' sojers now, sir," said the hammerman.
"Yes, that's safe enough," said Reed; and after carefully examining the
ropes, he knotted two together, and formed a loop at the end of one.
"Shall we two go down, sir?"
"No; I am going," replied Reed quietly.
"Find it precious dirty and wet, sir. Best let us."
"No, thank you. Let me down. How far is it to the first level?"
"'Bout two hundred foot, I should say, p'raps more; but I dare say it
don't go down so straight far, but works out'ard like. I d'know,
though. I've never been down, and nobody as I ever heard of ever did
go."
"No," said the other with a laugh, "and strikes me as you won't find
nothing worth your while when you do go. The old folks got out all the
good stuff from here hundreds o' years ago."
"You will be ready to haul up when I signal," said Reed quietly.
"Oh, yes, sir. You may trust us. We don't want to make an inquess on
you."
"Light the lanthorn," said Reed to Sturgess, and taking off the flat tin
case he carried slung under his left arm, he took from it a cold chisel
and a geologist's hammer; stripped off his coat, rolled up his sleeves
over his white muscular arms, and then secured the lanthorn to his waist
with the strap of his binocular.
"You'll be careful about the loose stones, my men," he said in quick,
decisive tones. "You, Sturgess, will follow me as soon as I have sent
up the rope."
The men nodded as Reed slipped the loop over his head, and then sat in
it, and without a moment's hesitation, after the men had passed the rope
round the upright bar, he lowered himself over the rugged side of the
shaft, and was rapidly allowed to descend past the rough stones which
formed the bottom of the slope, and showed traces still of how it had
been ground away for ages by the passage over it of the freshly
extracted ore.
It was a primitive way of descending, but in all probability the old
manner had been as rough, and there was little to trouble a cool man
with plenty of nerve, one accustomed to depend upon mine folk, and make
explorations in shaft, tunnel, and boring, deep down in the earth.
Besides, Clive Reed's brain was too busy as he looked around him, noting
some fifty feet down that a great vein of lead ore had been extracted
from the solid rock, leaving a narrow passage going off at right angles.
Another ran in an opposite direction, and soon after he passed another,
just as if they were branches of some great root which he was tracing to
its end.
About a hundred feet down, where the light shone now clearly, he
dislodged a loose stone, which went on before him with a rushing,
rumbling sound, ending in a sullen plunge into the water far below.
"All right?" came from above, the words descending the shaft, and
sounding like a strange whisper magnified and uttered close to his ear.
"Yes; lower away."
The rope glided on round the bar; and Reed went on down and down, noting
the differences in the formations as well as the crumbling, dripping
stone would allow, and mentally planning out fresh drifts here and
there, where he expected to find paying ore, till he found himself
opposite to a great cavernous opening, black and forbidding-looking
enough to repel any one wanting in nerve, while from far below came a
gleam of light, apparently reflected from the water.
"Hold hard! Haul up four feet!"
Reed's words went echoing to the surface, and were promptly attended to.
"Now hold fast!"
The next minute he gave himself a swing, and obtained foothold in the
great cave whose bottom was worn hollow by the trickling of a tiny
stream which drained into the lower part of the shaft, and after
throwing off the rope and shouting to the men to haul up, he stood
holding the light above his head, examining the roof and sides, while he
waited for the descent of his companion; but here the ore seemed to have
been chipped and picked out to the last fragment.
Sturgess joined him at the end of a few minutes, took the lanthorn,
opened it so as to get as much light as possible, and then turned to
Reed.
"Same way again, sir?"
"No; we'll try that gallery off to the left. That third one I noticed
last time."
"Why, that's right half a mile away, and goes to nowhere. That's never
been worked."
Reed faced round to him sharply.
"Do you object to your job, my man?" he said; "because if so, speak at
once, and send down one of the others."
"Oh, I don't object," said the man surlily. "I'll go where you won't
get them to venture. I was thinking about you."
"Then don't think about me, but about your duties."
"That's all right enough, sir; only if a regular consulting engineer
came down, he'd chip off a bit here, and a bit there, and know directly
what a mine's worth. I took stock of this old place last time, and can
tell you now without your troubling yourself to go a step farther.
'Sides, I've been down since."
"Indeed!"
"Oh yes. I'd nothing to do, so it was natural I should come down and
have a look of the property I was to take care of."
"Well, and what estimate did you set on it--as to value?" said Reed,
with a smile.
"Oh, about the usual figure," said the man, with a peculiar laugh.
"It's worth just as much as you can get out of your shareholders."
"Yes?"
"That's it, sir; I've not been busy over mines ten years for nothing.
Not a penny more. The old folks cleared it out clean enough, all but
the patch to the right down yonder."
"Then you think the whole thing is a swindle, Mr Sturgess, eh?"
"Oh no, sir. I don't say that," replied the man, with a chuckle. "I
only say it's a mine as will show up well when it has got all its new
machinery. Ought to make a good job for a couple of years for a few
people. Shall I show you where you can get a few good specimens? I
know of some bits as are pretty rich."
"No, thank you," said Reed quietly. "I'm not a regular consulting
engineer, my man, and we came down to do a good day's exploring. I want
to see the whole of the workings."
"Then it'll take you a week, sir."
"Very well, then, let it take me a week. Now, then, let's waste no more
time."
Michael Sturgess uttered a sound something like a grunt, and holding the
lantern before him led on along the rocky cavernous passage, which was
wonderfully free from fallen stones, the rock having formed endless
pillar buttresses and arch-like processes of stalactitic growth,
cementing and holding all firmly together.
But there was a wonderful sameness as they went on, following the course
of what had once been a lode of ore, which had finally been cleared out,
leaving its shape in the rock, and forming a tunnel as the ancient
miners worked their way.
Far down the main gallery of the mine Sturgess paused by a narrow rift
four or five feet across, and running up to nothing some fifteen feet
overhead. The rock was different here, being a mass of cemented
together fragments of the old geological stone lilies, and looked as if
some modern shock had riven the place in two, for the lines on either
side suggested that if compressed they would still fit together.
"Mean to go along here, sir?" said Sturgess, holding up the lanthorn, so
as to display the stone of which the sides were formed.
"Yes; go on," said Reed shortly.
"There's been no working here, sir; this is all natural split in the
rock."
"I am perfectly aware of that, and we are wasting time."
"Oh, all right, sir," said the man surlily, and he strode in through the
opening, walking as fast as he could, like a sulky, offended schoolboy,
for a few dozen yards; but this soon came to an end, for in place of a
regular beaten well-used way, they were now compelled to pick their path
over broken marble, loose angular masses, and the accumulated debris
which had fallen from above, while in places they had to stride from
side to side of a narrow crevice which ran straight down.
But the place attracted Clive Reed as they went on and on, with the rift
they traversed growing wider, and opening out into a cavern now, or
contracting again, till in places their passage was so narrow that they
had to squeeze through into curious-looking chambers in the rock. Then
the way split and branched off into different passages, suggestive of
endless labyrinths leading right away through the untrodden bowels of
the earth. Below them in one place ran a good-sized stream, unseen as
it threaded its way among the broken stones, but making its presence
known by its musical gurgling, till, after they had been walking above
it for about ten minutes, Sturgess stood still, holding up the light at
the edge of a gulf, down which the water plunged with a dull, hissing
roar.
"Won't go no farther this way, I suppose, sir?" he said, rather
mockingly.
Reed made no reply, but stepped forward close to the man's side, shaded
his eyes, and peered into darkness, which he could not pierce.
He stooped to pick up a stone and hurl it outward, and listened till it
fell and splintered, and the fragments went rattling down for some
distance, before the noise they made was overcome by the roar of the
water.
"Along here," said Reed at last, and he pointed to his left.
Sturgess hesitated for a few moments, and then began to move cautiously
along the side of the vast cavern, a place apparently untouched, and
very rarely, if ever, visited by man.
At last he stopped short.
"I don't want to show no white feathers, Mr Reed, sir," he said, "but
our candles'll only last a certain time, and we've got to get back."
"I have matches and three candles in my pocket," said the young engineer
quietly.
"But I don't know whether I can find my way back, sir, now; whilst if we
go any farther, I'm sure I can't."
"I have it all perfectly impressed on my brain," said Reed quietly.
"But I do not want to go much farther. I only want to examine the rock
here and there. Take care, man: mind!"
He darted out his right hand, caught the miner by the coat and saved him
from plunging down into the black abyss beneath them, for in taking a
step forward, Sturgess had trodden on a piece of loose shell marble,
which gave way and one foot went down.
He dropped the lanthorn, though, and it went below, to hang in a crevice
upon its side, threatening to go out; but as soon as Sturgess had a
little recovered himself and sat down to start wiping his forehead, Reed
began to descend.
"Don't do that, sir," cried Sturgess hoarsely. "Light your candle."
"No; I can get the lanthorn," said Reed quietly; and he went on
descending cautiously till, getting well hold of the nearest projecting
fragment with his left hand, he bent down lower and lower to try and
reach the handle of their lamp.
But, try how he would, it was always a few inches beyond his reach; and
at last, with the candle within guttering, flaring, and blackening the
glass, threatening to crack it and then go out, Reed drew himself up
again to try and get a fresh footing upon the side of the chasm.
He looked up to see, faintly, a white face gazing down at him, and, as
their eyes met, the man said hoarsely--
"Don't do that, sir. Come up and light a fresh bit. If you slip, I
shall be all in darkness. It's horrid to have to come to one's end in a
place like this."
"Sympathy for himself, and not for me," thought Reed. "I have the
lights."
Just at that moment he noted something just level with where he stood,
where there was a plain demarcation between two kinds of stone; and,
whereas on the left all was shelly fossil, on his right it was
limestone; and again, with a sparkling and gem-like vein of quartz full
of great crystals of galena.
"Do you hear, sir? Come back here, and let's get out of this," cried
Sturgess again. "It arn't fair to a man to bring him into such a hole.
This isn't a mine."
"My good fellow," said Reed quietly, "you are alarming yourself about
nothing. I can get the lanthorn directly, and it is a pity to leave it
here."
The miner uttered a hoarse sigh which was almost a groan, and crouched
on the rugged shelf, looking down with starting eyes, as Reed glanced
quickly once more at the face of the rock, and then, taking fast hold of
another projection, he tried again to get a little lower, and had looked
beyond the lanthorn, to see that he was on a very rapid slope, going
down to unknown depths for aught that he could tell; for all below the
dim light was black--a terrible void, out of which came the splash and
roar of falling water.
He could not help a shudder as his mind raised up horrors in connection
with that black darkness, and the possibility of his falling and going
down and down into some rushing water which was waiting to bear him
away.
But it was only a momentary nervousness. Then he smiled to himself, and
thought of home and of Janet Praed--how horrified she would be if she
could see him then.
"And nothing whatever to mind but imaginary fears," he said to himself.
"Stop a minute, sir," came in a hoarse whisper from above. "Give me the
matches and candles, and I'll strike another light."
"And then I go to perdition for aught you care," thought Clive Reed.
"No, hang me if I do."
He took no notice of the appeal, but lowered one foot, got a fresh hold,
bent towards the lanthorn, extending his arm to the utmost, touched the
handle, but it moved an inch, a stone broke from where he was standing,
to go down with a rattle, and then, to the young man's dismay, the
lanthorn began to glide.
It was all in a moment. He bent down lower and made a sudden snatch,
his left hand slipped from its hold, and he was falling, but in that
brief instant he grasped the lanthorn. The next it was beneath him, the
light was out, and with a rush of dislodged stones he felt himself
rushing rapidly down the cavern side with the water roaring loudly in
his ears, but pierced by a cry that robbed him of all power as
thoroughly | as if he had received a paralytic stroke.