Home > Authors Index > George Manville Fenn > Sappers and Miners; The Flood beneath the Sea > This page
Sappers and Miners; The Flood beneath the Sea, a novel by George Manville Fenn |
||
Chapter 8. The Mine Fever |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER EIGHT. THE MINE FEVER "You'll have to tell them at home, Ydoll," said Joe as they reached the rough stone-wall which enclosed the Colonel's estate. "What shall you say?" "Oh, just what happened," replied Gwyn; "but the job is how to begin. It's making the start." "Pst! Look out!" whispered Joe. "Here is your father." "Good-morning, Hardock," said the Colonel, coming upon the group suddenly. "I hope you haven't been filling my boy's head with more stuff about mining. Why, halloa, Gwyn; how did you get in that state? Where's your cap?" "Down the mine-shaft, father," replied the lad; and he found no difficulty about beginning. In a few minutes the Colonel knew all. "Most reckless--most imprudent," he cried. "You ought to have known better, sir, than to lead these boys into such a terrible position; and how dare you, sir--how dare you begin examining my property without my permission!" "Well you see, Colonel," began Hardock, "I thought--be doing you good, like, and as a neighbour--" "A neighbour, indeed! Confounded insolence! Be off, sir! How dare you! Never you show yourself upon my land again. There, you, Gwyn, come home at once and change your clothes; and as for you, Jollivet, you give my compliments to your father and tell him I say he ought to give you a good thrashing, and if he feels too ill to do it, let him send you down to me, and I will. Now, Gwyn; right face. March!" The Colonel led off his son, and Hardock and Joe stood looking at each other. "Made him a bit waxy," said the miner; "but he'll come round to my way of thinking yet; and it strikes me that he'll be ordering me on to his land again, when he knows all. I say, young Jollivet, mean to go down to him to be thrashed with the young Colonel?" "Oh, he wouldn't thrash me," said Joe, quietly. "I know the Colonel better than that. I feel all stretched and aching like. I wish he hadn't taken Gwyn home, though." "I don't feel quite square myself, lad," said the mining captain; "but you see if the Colonel don't go looking at the mine." Hardock's prophecy was soon fulfilled, for that evening the Colonel was rowing in his boat with his son, who had a mackerel line trailing astern, and when they came opposite to the great buttress the Colonel lay on his oars, and let his boat rise and fall on the clear swell. "Now, then; whereabouts is the mouth of the adit?" "I can't quite make it out from down here, father," replied Gwyn. "Yes I can; there it is, only it doesn't look like an opening, only a dark shadowy part of the cliff. No one could tell it was a passage in, without being up there." "Quite right; they could not," said the Colonel, thoughtfully. "And you were drawn up from there, and right over the top of the cliff?" "Yes, father." "Horribly dangerous, boy--hideous. There, your mother knows something about it, but she must never be shown how frightful a risk you ran. Come, let's get back." Gwyn only caught one fish that evening, and his father was very thoughtful and quiet when they returned. "Here, Gwyn," he said next morning; "come along with me, I want to have a look at the old pit-shaft, and the bit of cliff over which you were drawn." "Yes, father," said Gwyn, and he led the way over their own ground; but before they reached the dwarf mine wall, he was conscious of the fact that they were observed; for, at the turn of the lane, Hardock's oilskin cap could be seen as if the man were watching there, and the next moment Joe Jollivet's straw hat was visible by his side. Gwyn felt disposed to point out that they were not alone; but the next moment his father began talking about the slow progress made by the belt of pines he had planted between there and the house, so as to take off something of the barrenness of the place. "Want of shelter, Gwyn," he said; "the great winds from the west catch them too much. I'm afraid they will always be stunted. Still, they would hide the mine buildings." "The mine buildings, father?" said the boy, looking at his father inquiringly. "Yes; I mean if I were to be tempted into doing anything of the kind-- opening the mine again. Seems a pity, if it does contain wealth, to let it lie there useless. Money's money, my boy." "But you don't want money, father, do you?" said Gwyn. The Colonel stopped short, and faced round to gaze in his son's face before bursting into a merry fit of laughter. "Have I said something very stupid, father?" "No, not stupid--only shown me how inexperienced you are in the matters of everyday life, Gwyn. My dear boy, I never knew an officer on half-pay who did not want money." "But I thought you had enough." "Enough, boy? Someone among our clever writers once said that enough was always a little more than a man possessed." "But you will not begin mining, father?" "I don't know, my boy. Let's have a look at the place. Here have we been these ten years, and I know no more about this hole than I did when I came. I know it is an old mine-shaft half full of water, just like a dozen more about the district, and I should have gone on knowing no more about it if that man had not begun talking, and shown me, by the great interest he takes in the place, that he thinks it must be rich. Be rather a nice thing to grow rich, my boy, and have plenty to start you well in the world." "But I don't want starting well in the world, father; it's nice enough as it is." "What, you idle, young dog! Do you expect to pass all your life fishing, bathing, and bird's-nesting here?" "No, father; but--" "'No, father; but--' Humph! here's the place, then. Dear me, how very unsafe that stone-wall is. A strong man could push it down the shaft in half-an-hour." As he spoke the Colonel strode up to the piled-up stones, and looked over into the fern-fringed pit. "Ugh! horrible! Pitch one of those stones down, boy." Gwyn took a piece of the loose granite, raised it over his head with both hands, and threw it from him with force enough to make it strike the opposite side of the shaft, from which it rebounded, and then went on down, down, into the darkness for some moments before there was a dull splash, which came echoing out of the mouth, followed by a strange swishing as the water rose and fell against the sides. "Horrible, indeed!" muttered the Colonel. Then aloud: "And you let them lower you down by a rope, it came undone, and you fell headlong into that water down below, rose, swam to the side and then crept along a horizontal passage to where it opened out on the sea yonder?" "Yes, father," said the boy, recalling his sensations as his father spoke. "Bless my heart!" exclaimed the Colonel. "Well, Gwyn, you're a queer sort of boy. Not very clever, and you give me a good deal of anxiety as to how you are going to turn out. But one thing is very evident--with all your faults, you are not a coward." "Oh, yes, I am, father," said Gwyn, shaking his head. "You don't know what a fright I was in." "Fright! Enough to frighten anybody. I've faced fire times enough, my boy, and had to gallop helter-skelter with a handful of brave fellows against a thousand or more enemies who were thirsting for our blood! But I dared not have gone down that pit hanging at the end of a rope. No, Gwyn, my boy, you are no coward. There, show me now where you were drawn up." Gwyn led the way to the foot of the granite ridge, fully expecting to hear his father say that he could not climb up there; but, to his surprise, the Colonel mounted actively enough, and walked along the rugged top to where it ended in the great buttress, and there he stood at the very edge gazing down. "Where were you, Gwyn?" he said at last; and the boy pointed out the projection beneath which the adit opened out. "To be sure. Yes, I couldn't quite make it out," said the Colonel, coolly, as he turned away; but Gwyn noticed that he took out his handkerchief to pass it over his forehead, and then wiped the insides of his hands as if they were damp. "Let's go back by the road," said the Colonel, after shading his eyes and taking a look round; "but I want to pass the mouth of the mine." Upon reaching the latter, the Colonel drew a hammer from his pocket, and after routing out a few grey pieces of stone from where they lay beneath the furze bushes, he cracked and chipped several, till one which looked red in the new cleavage, and was studded with little blackish-purple, glistening grains, took his fancy. "Carry this home for me, Gwyn," he said. "I wonder whether that piece ever came out of the mine?" "I think all that large sloping bank covered with bushes and brambles came out of the mine some time, father," said the boy. "It seems to have been all raised up round about the mouth there." "Eh? You think so?" "Yes, father; and as the pieces thrown out grew higher, they seem to have built up the mouth of the mine with big blocks to keep the stones from rolling in. I noticed that when I was being let down. The ferns have taken root in the joints. Lower down, fifteen or twenty feet, the hole seems to have been cut through the solid rock." "Humph! you kept your eyes open, then?" Crossing the wall where the lane ran along by the side of the Colonel's property, they turned homeward, and in a few minutes Gwyn caught sight of Joe Jollivet's cap gliding in and out among the furze bushes, as he made his way in the direction of his own house, apparently not intending to be seen. But a few hundred yards farther along the lane there was some one who evidently did intend to be seen, in the shape of Sam Hardock, who rose from where he was sitting on a grey-lichened block, and touched his hat. "That's a nice specimen you've got there, Master Pendarve," he said, eyeing the block the boy carried. "It's a very heavy one, Sam," replied Gwyn; and his father strode on, but stopped short and turned back frowning, unable, in spite of his annoyance, to restrain his curiosity. "Here, you Hardock," he cried, tapping the block his son carried, with his cane. "What is it? What stone do you call that?" "Quartz, sir," said the man, examining the piece, "and a very fine specimen." "Eh? Good for breaking up to repair the roads with, eh?" "No, sir; bad for that; soon go to powder. But it would be fine to crush and smelt." "Eh? What for?" "What for, sir?" said the man with a laugh; "why, that bit o' stone's half tin. I dunno where you got it, o' course; but if it came from the spoil bank of that old mine, it just proves what I thought." "Tin? Are you sure?" "Sure, sir? Yes," said the man, laughing. "I ought to know tin when I see it. If it comes out of the old Ydoll mine, you've only got to set men at work to go down and blast it out, sir, and in a very short time you'll be a rich man." "Come along, Gwyn," said the Colonel, hastily; "it's time we got back. Hang the fellow!" he muttered, "he has given me the mining fever, and badly, too, I fear." _ |
||