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Devon Boys: A Tale of the North Shore, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 24. Down The Silver Mine |
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_ CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. DOWN THE SILVER MINE I left Sam picking out the touch-holes with a piece of wire, walked across the high ground of the wind-swept moor and descended into the Gap, a well-beaten track now marking the way. It was too rough for wheels, but filled with the heavy hoof-marks of donkeys, which were used largely for carrying wood, charcoal, and sea-coal to the mine; and as I stood up by the spot where years before Bob Chowne, Bigley, and I had blown up the big stone and set it rolling down into the valley, it was wonderful what a change had taken place. Where we had swept the side of the ravine clear with an avalanche of rock, there had now sprung up quite a tiny village built of the rough stones dug from the mine. There was a large water-wheel slowly turning and sending down the water led to it from above, in company with that which it pumped out of the mine, all thick and discoloured, in quite a torrent to the beautiful little stream below, which now ran turbid and in which the trout were all dead. There was a row of stoutly-built sheds, and a big place with a high chimney where the ore was smelted. Then there were offices, and a building where the purified metal was passed through another furnace, and in addition a place where the metal was kept. There seemed a total alteration in the place till I directed my eyes towards the sea, where all appeared to be unchanged. There were the two cottages--Binnacle Bill's, with some newly washed white garments hanging over the rocks; and Jonas Uggleston's, with its stone sheds and outbuildings bristling with spars and wreck-wood that had been thrown up, and with nets and sails spread out to dry. Beyond lay his lugger; and the boat drawn up on the beach, suggesting to my mind the horrors of that night when we were blown off the shore. I stood looking at the scene, with the bare sea beyond and the vast cliff towering up a thousand feet on my left, and then began to descend the rugged slope, making straight for the building which my father used as his counting-house and office. "Well, Sep," he said, smiling, "I'm glad to see you." I noticed that he looked care-worn and anxious, and his aspect reproached me, for I felt as if it was too bad of me to be making holiday while he was working so hard. "Can I help you, father?" I said. "Help me! Yes, my boy, I hope so--a good deal; but I don't want to be too hard upon you. Take a good look round for a few days, so as to rest a little while, and then you shall come and help me here; for, Sep, an affair like this is not without plenty of anxiety." "Oh, father!" I said, "I shall have plenty of time for amusement; let's see if I can't help you now." He looked more and more pleased as he heard my words. "No," he said, "not yet. You shall have a look round first for a few days, and perhaps you may be able quietly to pick up the cause of something that is troubling me a great deal." "Troubling you, father!" I said. "Yes, my lad, troubling me, for things are not going as I could wish. 'Tis just as if, as fast as I get a few steps forward, someone pulls me back." "But I thought the mine was very prosperous, father?" I said. "So it is, my boy, and I am getting it better and better; but there is always mischief being done, or else some accident occurs, and I can't tell how." "Do you suspect anybody?" "Well, er--no!" he said emphatically. "But, there--never mind now. I'm busy with some calculations; go and have a look round." I left his office and had "a look round," the place seeming to have far more interest for me than it had before. Men were busy wheeling broken ore and taking it from one heap to another; the great pump was hard at work sucking out water; and the wheel was winding up buckets of produce from out of the deep shaft. I went and had a look there and shrank back, it seemed so repulsive and dark; but as I did so I saw one of the men smiling, and this made me turn red. "Look here," I said sharply, "can I go down there?" "Oh, yes, if you like, master," he replied, staring at me wonderingly now. "Then I will," I said. "I'll have a look at the furnace first, and then I'll go down." "Ay, do," he said; "and you're just in time. They're going to run off the metal in a few minutes." I recalled our experiment at home with the little built-up furnace, when the ore was first tried, as I walked to the stone-built house, where from out of the centre came a low dull roar; from cracks and chinks and crannies blindingly bright rays of light shot out and seemed to cut the darkness, which, after the sunshine of out of doors, seemed to be black and terrible. Now and then there came a peculiar crackling, as if something were snapping and flying to pieces under the great heat, and it was some time before I could see anything but the brilliant pencils of light that cut the gloom. By degrees, though, I made out that a couple of men were moving here and there, and that each of them carried a long black rod of iron. The flames seemed to flutter and burn and to be rushing upward with tremendous force, while I could fancy that I heard the metal bubbling in its bed, where it was seething and throwing off wonderful flames, as I could judge by the gleams I saw. "Stand back, young master," said one of the men roughly--"there, right up in the corner here. You won't hurt now. Just going to run her off." I backed into the corner he pressed me to, where there was a broad shutter or screen, and I was getting so accustomed to the darkness now that I could see just below, and in front of a place where golden tears seemed to be dropping from a chink at the bottom of the furnace, several long square trenches in the black charcoal floor, and the next minute I made out that these trenches were all connected together by a little channel. "The moulds," I thought to myself, and I looked eagerly now at one of the men, who shouted something by way of warning to his fellow-worker; and then, as the man stepped behind a similar screen of wood-work to that which sheltered me, the one who uttered his words of warning thrust and hammered with his long iron rod at the foot of the furnace. I did not quite see what he did afterwards, but he seemed to dart out of the way, and then a stream of what looked like liquid gold came gushing out, sputtering, snapping, and sending into the air myriads of glorious firework-like sparks of blue and orange and scarlet and gold, and so brilliant that they lit up the whole building and made my eyes ache and my cheeks tingle. Where a minute before there were so many black trenches were now so many dazzling ingots, over which played and fluttered many-tinted flames that kept on waving and undulating as if they were liquid, and swayed from side to side, giving forth with the molten metal a glow that scorched my face. For the first few seconds the molten metal had run off quickly and filled the moulds; now what came was sluggish and not half so brilliant; and I noticed that by a quick movement of a long iron rake one of the men drew some of the earth and charcoal which formed the floor on one side, so as to alter the course of the running molten contents of the furnace, and instead of its passing into moulds it seemed to settle down in a patch. This, too, was most brilliant to the eye; and from it endless dazzling coruscations darted up and played about, but for a much shorter period; and in place of the ruddy glow of the metal, which rapidly cooled down to look like silver, this last melting grew sombre and stony, ending by looking of a blackish-grey. I was still watching the fading away of the brilliant display, when there was a familiar voice at the door of the building, and my father stepped in to make inquiries about the running off of the molten ore, and as he examined the result, he expressed his satisfaction. "Mind!" he cried to me, as I was about to touch one of the ingots of lead with my toes. "My good boy, these will not be cool enough to touch yet. They retain the heat for a long while." He stopped talking to me for some time, and explained how the men were closing the bottom of the furnace again with fire-clay, and that they would now go on pouring in at the top barrows full of charcoal and broken-up ore. How that dark grey stuff was the molten stones and refuse which remained after the metal had been cleared, and then he laughed at what he called my innocence, as I asked him if the ingots, as he called the square masses which now looked quite white, were silver. "No, my boy," he said; "we are not so rich as that. If those pieces of coarse metal, when melted down again, and submitted to a fresh process, give us three pounds' weight of silver out of every hundred pounds of lead we shall do well. Now then, would you like to go down the mine?" He spoke as if he expected to hear me decline; but I had made up my mind to go, and he looked quite pleased when he heard me say that I was ready. "Well," he said, as we reached the top of the shaft, "I'll go down first, and you can follow. We can get candles at the bottom." If I had had any ideas of a silver mine being a cavern full of beautiful sights, I was very soon deceived, for as I stood there at the top, I saw my father step on to the top rounds of a rough-looking ladder, and begin to descend slowly till he reached a platform, when he called to me to follow. "Hold tight," he said. "But there, I needn't tell you after your cliff climbing." I was just about to descend when a voice behind me made me turn. "Going down, Sep?" I turned to confront Bigley Uggleston, who looked at me imploringly. "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. _ |
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