There were plenty of heads thrust out of the granite cottages on either
side of the steep way as Geoffrey strode on, ready to give back frank,
open look for curious gaze, and to take notice that the people were dark
and swarthy; that there were plenty of brown fishing-nets, and blackened
corks, and swollen bladders, hanging from the walls, in company with a
pair or two of sculls, a hitcher and a mast from some small boat, with
now and then what seemed to be a human being split and hung up to dry
after the fashion of a haddock, but which proved to be only an oilskin
fishing-suit.
At one cottage door a huge pair of fisher's boots stood out in the sun,
as if they were being worn by some invisible prince or Cornish giant.
At another door sat a woman cleaning a long, snaky-looking hake,
opposite to a neighbour who was busily counting pilchards, which had
evidently been brought up from one of the boats by a big, brown,
bluff-looking man, who, from top to toe, seemed as if he had some idea
of going into the harlequin profession, so spangled was he with silver
scales.
"Can I get down to the beach this way?" Geoffrey asked of the latter.
"Can 'ee get down to ba-ach this way! Iss my son," said the man, in a
sing-song tone; and, after a very steep descent, Geoffrey found himself
where he desired to go.
Not upon a soft, sandy, or pleasant shingly beach, but upon one
literally paved with great masses of rock--black shale, granite, and
gneiss--over which the huge Atlantic waves came foaming in stormy
weather, rolling and polishing the surface with the rounded boulders,
which seemed to average the size of a goodly cheese. Even now the rocky
promontory that ran out and sheltered the little place and its tiny
harbour was fringed with foaming water as the blue waves came slowly
rolling in, to break on the black rocks, run up and fall back in silvery
cascades to the heaving sea.
Geoffrey's keen eyes scanned the rocks, with their great white veins of
milky quartz; running through the beautiful sea-scape on his left, the
piled-up rocks upon his right, and then they rested on the grey
engine-house upon the promontory--the mark of the great disused
unsuccessful mine that had been pointed out to him as Wheal Carnac.
This place had a sort of fascination for him, and, clambering up, as he
drew nearer he noticed every thing--the roughly blasted-out road, the
furnace-house, so arranged that its chimney trailed over the ground like
a huge serpent along the slope of the cliff, and higher and higher,
till, quite a hundred and fifty yards away, it ended in a masonry shaft,
towering up on the very summit of the cliff.
"What a blast they could get up here!" muttered Geoffrey, as he leaped
from rock to rock, till, quite breathless, he reached the great tongue
of land, and found that by clambering laboriously up a rough path he
could stand on the chine of the promontory and look down upon the deep
blue sea upon the other side, quite a mile away, and where the rugged
shore was one mass of foam.
But though the sight was grand it was not practical, and, soon
descending, he made his way towards the great engine-house, to find
everywhere traces of wasted enterprise, followed by ruin and neglect. A
deep mine shaft had been sunk close to the edge that sloped down to the
shore, and from a platform of rock where he stood he could see quite a
vast embankment of the _debris_ that had been toilsomely dug out and
allowed to run down into the sea.
There were granite buildings, but they were windowless, and a glance
showed that the machinery had been torn out, to leave the place a ruin.
"I wonder how many thousands were sunk here," said Geoffrey, half aloud,
"before the heart-sick proprietors gave it up, perhaps just on the eve
of a great discovery. What a chance now, if there are good tin-bearing
strata, for a fresh set of proprietors to take up the others' work and
carry it on to success."
"It looks tempting!" he muttered, as he went on from place to place,
picking up specimens of the rock that had been chipped out and thrown
from the shaft, and examining each piece attentively with a pocket-lens.
"That's antimony; yes, that's tin," he continued, as he examined a
piece of reddish quartz, on one side of which sparkled some black
grains, looking as unlike tin as can be imagined.
"Dash of copper there," he said, after a time, as he went on and on,
till he stopped at the edge of the profound square shaft, which went
down into darkness, right below where the waves beat upon the shore.
"How deep, I wonder?" he said, as he gazed down into the pitchy
blackness, and then threw in one of the fragments of rock which he held
in his hand, listening attentively for some considerable time till there
came up a weirdly strange, hollow, echoing plash, full of strange
whisperings, each telling of the terrible depth down to where the water
lay, filling up the profundities of the awe-inspiring place.
"Thousands upon thousands of pounds must have gone down that hole?"
mused Geoffrey, seating himself on the very edge, with his legs hanging
down into the shaft, into which he gazed as if it fascinated him and
something was drawing him downward to his death.
"What a pit for a fellow to fall into!" he said, with a shudder. "He
might slip or jump in, or throw in his enemy or any one he wanted to get
rid of, and not a soul would be the wiser. It's a regular gateway into
the other world.
"What stuff!" he said directly after, with a half-laugh. "Why, I'm
turning morbid. It's a gateway to the golden land of success, and if I
had a chance I'd make it pay."
He rose directly after, and with each wave as it broke below making his
steps inaudible even to himself, he went on, peering first into one
building and then into another, all seeming to be built on a goodly, if
not extravagant, scale, which he noted at once for future purposes.
He crossed a patch of heathery turf next, and had nearly reached the
doorway of a low shed-like place, probably the stables for the horses
that had been used in connection with the mine, when he stopped short,
for mingled with the low roar of the sea he seemed to hear voices.
He stopped short and listened, but heard nothing more.
"Ghosts of dead and gone disappointed shareholders, or the noises of the
Kobolds of the mine," he said laughingly, and stepping forward he
entered the doorway to find that to him, coming out of the full blaze of
the sun, the place was very dark. He stretched out his hands to avoid
running against any thing, and hardly knowing why, only that he seemed
to be drawn on to investigate the place, he went forward, with the
darkness growing lighter, when he stopped short again.
This time there was no mistake, for he heard a sob, and before he could
make up his mind what to do, he heard a woman's voice speaking in tones
of appeal.