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Sappers and Miners; The Flood beneath the Sea, a novel by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 42. Mining Matters |
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_ CHAPTER FORTY TWO. MINING MATTERS The boys stayed there some time listening to the clinking sound, and then, feeling obliged to go, they hurried away. "Tell you what," said Gwyn, as they parted at last, "we'll wait till he has gone down the mine to-morrow morning, and then either go by the cliff or round by the cove head, and see what he has been about. I say it's a conger-line, and we may find one on." "Perhaps so," said Joe, thoughtfully. "Ydoll, old chap, I don't like Tom Dinass." "Nor I, neither. But what's the matter now?" "I'm afraid he broke poor Grip's legs." "What? Nonsense! He wouldn't be such a brute. No man would." "Well, I hope not; but I can't help thinking sometimes that he did. You see, the smelting-house door might have swung-to and shut him in with Dinass and he might have flown at him, and Dinass might have struck at him with one of the stoking-irons and broken his legs, and then been afraid and thrown him down the mine." "And pigs might fly, but they're very unlikely birds." "Well, we shall see," said Joe; and he hurried home to find his father asleep, while Gwyn, before going in, went on tiptoe to the vinery and crept in, to hear the dog snoring. Satisfied with this, he walked round the house fully prepared to receive a scolding for being so long, and feeling disposed to take refuge in the excuse that he had been to see the dog; but no lights were visible, everyone having retired to rest, the leaving of doors unfastened not being considered a matter of much moment at that secluded place. So Gwyn crept to bed unheard, and had no need to make a shuffling excuse, and slept late the next morning, to find at breakfast time his father had been out to the dog. "How is he? Oh, better than I expected to find him? He is not disposed to eat, only to sleep--and the best thing for him. The bandages are as hard as stone. Storm coming, I think, my dear." "We must not complain," said Mrs Pendarve. "We have had lovely weather." "I don't complain, and should not unless the waves washed up into the mine, and gave us a week's pumping; but we should want monsters for that." The Colonel was right, for there was nearly a month's bad weather, during which the waves came thundering in all along the coast, and no fishing-boats went out; and as no opportunity occurred for getting down to the point, which was a wild chaos of foam, the strange behaviour of Tom Dinass was forgotten. There were busy days, too, in the mine, stolen from those passed in superintending the tremendous output of tin ore. The men worked below and above, and the Colonel and Major shook hands as they congratulated themselves upon their adventure, it being evident now that a year of such prosperity would nearly, if not quite, recoup them for their outlay in machinery, they having started without the terribly expensive task of sinking the mine through the rock. All that they had had to do was to pump out the first excavation, and then begin raising rich tin ore for crushing, washing, and smelting. The stolen days were devoted to making explorations and mapping out the mine. There were no more goings astray, for gallery after gallery was marked in paint or whitewash with arrows, so that by degrees most of the intricacies, which formed a gigantic network, were followed and marked, and in these explorations abundant proof was given of the enormous wealth waiting to be quarried out. There was no wonder felt now that those who had gone down first should have lost themselves. "Wonder to me is, Mr Gwyn," said Hardock one day, "that we any on us come up again alive." So they kept on exploring, and, well furnished with lights, the lads found the great hall with its pillars of quartz veined with tin, and strange passages going in different directions, far less horrible now. There was the gallery which dipped down too, one which they found their way to now from both ends. It looked gloomy and strange, with the whispering sounds of falling water and the reflections from the candles on the shining black surface; but knowledge had robbed it of its horrors. "Go through it again?" said Gwyn, as they stood looking along it; "to be sure I would, only I don't want to get wet through for nothing. When we did wade through, Sam, one was always expecting to put one's foot in a shaft or in a well, and go down, never to come up again." "Ay, that would make you feel squirmy, sir." "It did," said Gwyn, laughing. "But, I say, wasn't Grip a splendid old fellow? and how he knew! Fancy his swimming right along here!" "Ay, he is a dog," said Sam. "How is he, sir?" "Oh, he'll soon be out again; but father wants to keep him chained up till his bones are properly grown together." "He'll have to run dot and go one, I suppose, sir?" "What, lame?" cried Gwyn. "Very little, I think. We can't tell yet, because his legs are stiff with so much bandaging. I say, Sam, you fall down the shaft and break your legs, and we'll put 'em in plaster for you." "No thank ye, sir," said the man, grinning, as he stopped to snuff his candle with Nature's own snuffers. "I never had no taste for breaking bones. Now, then, we'll go round by a bit I come to one day, if you don't mind a long walk back. Take us another two hours, but the floor's even, and I want to have a look at it." "What sort of a place is it?" said Gwyn; "anything worth seeing?" "Not much to see, sir, only it's one of the spots where the old miners left off after going along to the west. Strikes me it's quite the end that way. And I want to make sure that we've found one end of the old pit." "Does the place seem worn out?" said Joe, who had been listening in silence. "That's it, sir. Lode seems to have grown a bit narrower, and run up edge-wise like." "Why, we went there," said Joe, eagerly. "Don't you remember, Ydoll?" "Yes, I remember now. I'd forgotten it, though. I say! Hark; you can hear quite a murmuring if you put your ear against the wall." "Yes, sir, you can hear it plainly enough in several places." "Don't you remember, Ydoll, how we heard it when we were wet?" "Now you talk about it, I do, of course," said Gwyn; "but, somehow, being down here as we were, I seemed to be stunned, and it has always been hard work to recollect all we went through. I'd forgotten lots of these galleries and pools and roofs, just as one forgets a dream, while, going through them again, they all seem to come back fresh and I know them as well as can be. But what makes this faint rumbling, Sam? Is it one of the little trucks rumbling along in the distance?" "No, sir," said Hardock, with a chuckle. "What do you say it is, Master Joe?" The lad listened in silence for a few moments, and then said slowly,-- "Well, if I didn't know that it was impossible, I should say that we were listening to the waves breaking on the shore." "It aren't impossible, sir, and that's what you're doing," said Hardock; and the boys started as if to make for the foot of the shaft. "What's the matter," said Hardock, chuckling. "'Fraid of its bursting through?" "I don't know--yes," said Gwyn. "What's to prevent it?" "Solid rock overhead, sir. It's lasted long enough, so I don't see much to fear." "But it sounds so horrible," cried Joe, who suddenly found that the gallery in which they were standing felt suffocatingly hot. "Oh, it's nothing when you're used to it. There's other mines bein' worked right under the sea. There's no danger so long as we don't cut a hole through to let the water in; and we sha'n't do that." "But how thick is the rock over our heads?" "Can't say, sir, but thick enough." "But is it just over our heads here?" "Well, I should say it warn't, sir; but I can't quite tell, because it's so deceiving. I've tried over and over to make it out, but one time it sounds loudest along there, another time in one of the other galleries. It's just as it happens. Sound's a very curious thing, as I've often noticed down a mine, for I've listened to the men driving holes in the rock to load for a blast, and it's quite wonderful how you hear it sometimes in a gallery ever so far off, and how little when you're close to. Come along. No fear of the water coming in, or I'd soon say let's get to grass." The boys did not feel much relieved, but they would not show their anxiety, and followed the mining captain with the pulsation of their hearts feeling a good deal heavier; and they went on for nearly an hour before they reached the spot familiar to them, one which recalled the difficulty they had had with Grip when he ran up the passage, and stood barking at the end, as if eager to show them that it was a _cul-de-sac_. Hardock went right to the end, and spent some time examining the place before speaking. Then he began to point out the marks made by picks, hammers, and chisels, some of which were so high up that he declared that the miners must have had short ladders or platforms. "Ladders, I should say," he muttered; "and the mining must have been stopped for some reason, because the lode aren't broken off. There's plenty of ore up there if we wanted it, and maybe we shall some day, but not just yet. There's enough to be got to make your fathers rich men without going very far from the shaft foot; and all this shows me that it must have been very, very long ago, when people only got out the richest of the stuff, and left those who came after 'em to scrape all the rest. There, I think that will do for to-day." The boys thought so, too, though they left this part rather reluctantly, for it was cooler, but the idea of going along through galleries which extended beneath the sea was anything but reassuring. That evening the Major came over to the cottage with his son, and the long visit of the boys underground during the day formed one of the topics chatted over, the Major seeming quite concerned. "I had no idea of this," he said. "Highly dangerous. You had not been told, Pendarve, of course." "No," said the Colonel, smiling, "I had not been told; but I shrewdly suspected that this was the case, especially after hearing the faint murmuring sound in places." "But we shall be having some catastrophe," cried the Major--"the water breaking in." The Colonel smiled. "I don't think we need fear that. The galleries are all arch-roofed and cut through the solid rock, and, as far as I have seen, there has not been a single place where the curves have failed. If they have not broken in from the pressure of the millions of tons of rock overhead, why should they from the pressure of the water?" "Oh, but a leak might commence from filtration, and gradually increase in size," said the Major. "Possibly, my dear boy," replied the Colonel; "but water works slowly through stone, and for the next hundred years I don't think any leakage could take place that we should not master with our pumping gear. Oh, absurd! There is no danger. Just try and think out how long this mine has been worked. I am quite ready to believe that it was left us by the ancient Britons who supplied the Phoenicians." "May be, we cannot tell," said the Major, warmly; "but you cannot deny that we found the mine full of water." "No, and I grant that if we leave it alone for a hundred years it will be full again." "From the sea?" "No; from filtration through the rock. The water we pumped out was fresh, not salt. There, my dear Jollivet, pray don't raise a bugbear that might scare the men and make them nervous. They are bad enough with what they fancy about goblins and evil spirits haunting the mine. Even Hardock can't quite divest himself of the idea that there is danger from gentry of that kind. Don't introduce water-sprites as well." The subject dropped; but that night, impressed as they had been by what they had heard, and partly from partaking too liberally of a late supper, both Gwyn and Joe had dreams about the sea breaking into and flooding the mine, Gwyn dreaming in addition that he behaved in a very gallant way. For he seemed to find the hole through which the water passed in, and stopped it by thrusting in his arm, which stuck fast, and, try how he would, he could not extricate it, but stood there with the water gradually stifling him, and preventing him from calling aloud for help. The heat and darkness at last rescued him from his perilous position-- that is to say, he awoke to find himself lying upon his back with his face beneath the clothes; and these being thrown off, he saw that the morning sunshine was flooding the bedroom, and the memory of the troublous dream rapidly died away. _ |
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