"Ask him if I may come down too?"
"Who's that?" said my father sharply. "Oh, I see. Yes, he can come."
Bigley flushed up with pleasure, and I let him go down next, and then
followed, to find that a gallery went off on a level with the platform;
but my father had already descended to the next platform below, and when
we followed him there, it was to find he had reached another.
To get to this we passed another gallery, and then stood by where my
father was lighting a couple of candles, as he rested upon some
wood-work, beneath which we could hear the trickle and splash of falling
water, while away from our right, down a long passage propped here and
there with pieces of timber, came the dull echoing sound of blows.
"Well, my lads, what do you think of the enchanted cave?"
I looked about me by the light of the dim candles and saw that the shaft
was divided by a wood partition, one side being reserved for the
ladders, the other for the pump to work and the stout rope to go up and
down and draw the buckets, there being openings in the wood-work
opposite each of the galleries.
"Well, you don't say anything," said my father.
"It's very dark, sir," replied Bigley.
"Yes," said my father; "and it's darker still farther in. What do you
say, will you go on?"
"If Sep does."
"Oh, yes," I said, "I shall go;" not that I wanted to go any farther,
but I felt that I could not draw back; though I would very gladly have
been up in the bright sunshine instead of in the damp gloomy hole, shut
in by ladders and wood-work, and with, the falling water seeming as if
it was gathering force, and ready to rise as it does in a well.
But there was no time for thinking. My father was leading the way along
the large square-shaped gallery, the candles casting curious shadows
which glided along the walls, as if our company had been joined by some
of the spirits of the mine.
As we went on, my father stopped from time to time to hold his light
against the wall, for us to see where the lead ore glistened, and
promised to be thick when he was disposed to work in another direction.
We could hear the water trickling still along a channel which had been
cut on one side of the gallery, and every here and there great drops
gathered on the wood-work that propped the roof, and fell with a plash
making Bigley whisper to me:
"Suppose the sea was to break in."
He spoke as I say in a whisper, but it was heard by my father, who
answered quietly:
"We should have to go down much lower before we were on a level with the
sea at high-water mark, my lads. If anything were likely to do us any
harm, it would be the brook."
He stopped soon after, for we had reached the end of the gallery, giving
way while a workman wheeled by us a barrowful of ore, similar to a heap
which two others were hewing and picking out of the wall.
"Well, my lads, what's it like?" said my father.
"Cleaner and richer and better, I should say, master," said one of the
men. "It's a wonder, but I'm thinking you'll have to put more power on
there to pump. Farther we goes, the worse the water gets."
"I've been thinking so myself," said my father quietly. "It sha'n't
stop you, my lads, I'll see to that."
My father picked up a specimen of the ore, and placed it in his pocket;
the men resumed their picking and hewing, and we two lads inspected the
lode and the walls of the mine, and then, after looking at it up, down,
and in every direction, to try and find something more interesting than
the square passage with its dripping walls and patches of black mineral
that glistened in a dull manner when the light was moved, we ended by
staring at my father.
"Well," he said smiling; "had enough?"
"Is there no more to see than this?" I said in a disappointed tone.
"There is another gallery below here, and two above, but they are just
the same. Shall we go and see them?"
"If Bigley likes," I said rather gruffly.
"No, I don't think I want to see any more," he replied.
My father laughed, and went on in front with one candle while I followed
with the other, till we reached the foot of the shaft.
"Silver mine sounds better than it looks, eh, my lads!" he said.
We neither of us answered, for it seemed like damping his enterprise.
But he did not heed our silence, for he began to climb slowly up the
ladders, and as he reached the first platform, we followed, and then on
and on with the water splashing and the pump going, and now and then the
creaking sound of the windlass coming down to us as the men over the
bucket shaft wound up each heavy load of ore.
"There, I'm going back into my office," said my father. "You, lads,
have had enough mining for to-day. I shall not want you, Sep."
"Don't the open air look clear and fresh?" I said as soon as we were
alone, and I gazed round at the patches of green upon the hills, and the
bright sea out at the end of the Gap.
"Yes," said Bigley, with a shiver. "I shouldn't like to work in a mine.
I say, I suppose your father's getting very rich now, isn't he?"
"I suppose so," I said.
"That's what the people say. Binnacle Bill says he has got heaps of
silver locked up in the strong place below the office under iron doors.
Have you seen it?"
"No," I said; "and I shouldn't think it's true. Hallo! Look yonder.
Why, there's Bob Chowne!"
Bob it was, and the mine, the coming of the French, and everything else
was forgotten, as we went down to the beach, ready enough for a ramble
beneath the rocks, after six months' absence from home.