Bred in the Bone; Or, Like Father, Like Son Part 47

"Has Mr. Coe been found yet?"

He listened for the answer eagerly, for if such was the case, not only was his journey useless, but had brought him into the very jaws of destruction. He would have thrown away his life for nothing.

"No, Sir, indeed--and he never will be," replied the inn-keeper. "When the sea don't give a man up in four-and-twenty hours, it keeps him for good--at least we always find it so at Gethin."

"Well, listen to me. My name is Balfour. I knew Mr. Coe, and have had dealings with him. We had arranged a partnership together in a certain mine; and it is my opinion that he came down here upon that business."

"Very like, Sir. He was much engaged that way, and made, they say, a pretty penny at it."

"I was at Plymouth, on my way to join him, when I heard this sad news. I came to-day post-haste in consequence of it. The search for him must be renewed to-night."

"Lor, Sir, it is easy to see you are a stranger in these parts! I wouldn't like to go myself where poor Mr. Coe met his end, on so dark a night as this. It's a bad path even in daylight along Turlock cliff."

"He did not take that way, at least I think not. Have you a ladder about the premises?"

"Yes, sure."

"And a lantern?"

"Now that's strange enough, Sir, that you should have inquired for a lantern; for we wanted one just now to see to your horses, and, though they're looking for it high and low, it can't be found nowhere."

"It doesn't strike you, then, that Mr. Coe might have taken it with him?"

"Lor, Sir," cried the inn-keeper, with admiration, "and so he must ha'

done! Of course it strikes one when the thing has been put into one's head. Well, 'twas a good lantern, and now 'tis lost. Dear me, dear me!"

Golden visions of succeeding to the management of the inn, and of taking to the furniture and fixings in the gross, had flitted across this honest gentleman's brain, and the disappearance of the lantern affected him with the acute sense of pecuniary damage. The general valuation would probably be no less because of the absence of this article.

"Send out and borrow another, as many, in fact, as you can get," said Richard, impatiently; "and get ready a torch or two besides. Pick out four of the strongest men yonder, and bid them come with me, and search Wheal Danes."

"What! that old pit. Sir? You'll not find a man to do it--no, not if they knowed as master was at the bottom of it. You wait till morning."

"Your master _is_ at the bottom of it. I feel sure he took the lantern with him to search that mine. I will give them a pound apiece to start at once. Pack up this food, and lend them a mattress to bring him home upon. Be quick! be quick!"

Richard's energy fairly overpowered the phlegmatic inn-keeper, whose conscience, perhaps, also smote him with respect to his missing master; and he set about the execution of these orders promptly. Wheal Danes, he had truly hinted, was a very unpopular spot with its neighbors after nightfall; but, on the other hand, sovereigns were rare in Gethin, and greatly prized. In less than half an hour the necessaries which Richard had indicated were procured, and a party, consisting of himself, four stalwart miners, and the inn-keeper, started for the pit. These were followed by half the inhabitants of the little village, attracted by the rumor of their purpose, which had oozed out from the bar of the _Gethin Castle_. The windy down had probably never known so strange a concourse as that which presently streamed over it, with torch and lantern, and stood around the mouth of the disused mine. The night was dark, and nothing could be seen save what the flare of the lights they carried showed them--a jagged rim of pit without a bottom. Notwithstanding their numbers there was but little talk among them; they had a native dread of this dismal place, and, besides, there might now be a ghastly secret hidden within it. A m.u.f.fled exclamation, half of admiration, half of awe, broke from the circling crowd as, the ladder planted, Richard was seen descending it torch in hand. No other man followed; none had volunteered, and he had asked for no companion. They watched him, as the countrymen of those who had formerly worked Wheal Danes might have watched Curtius when he leaped into the gulf; and as in _his_ case, when they saw the ladder removed, and the light grow dim, and finally die out before their eyes, it seemed that the pit had closed on Richard--that he was swallowed up alive. No one, unless the strange story about their missing neighbor which this man had brought was true, had ventured into Wheal Danes for these fifty years! They kept an awe-struck silence, straining eye and ear. Some thought they could still see a far-off glimmer, others that they could hear a stifled cry, when the less fortunate or the less imaginative could hear or see nothing. But after a little darkness and silence reigned supreme beneath them; they seemed standing on the threshold of a tomb.

CHAPTER XLVII.

WHAT WAS FOUND IN WHEAL DANES.

A full half hour--which to the watchers above seemed a much longer interval--had elapsed since Richard had disappeared in the depths of Wheal Danes, and not a sign of his return had reached the attentive throng.

"I thought he'd come to harm," muttered a fisherman to his neighbor; "it was a sin and a shame to let him venture."

"Ay, you may say that," returned the other, aloud. "I call it downright murder in them as sent him."

"It was not I as sent him," observed the inn-keeper, with the honest indignation of a man that has not right habitually on his own side.

"What _I_ said to the gentleman was, 'Wait till morning.' Why should _I_ send him?" Here he stopped, though his reasons for not wishing to hurry matters would have been quite conclusive.

"Why was he let to go down at all, being a stranger?" resumed the first speaker. "Why didn't somebody show him the way?"

"Because n.o.body knowed it," answered one of the four miners whose services Richard had retained, and who justly imagined that the fisherman's remark had been a reflection on his own profession. "I'd ha'

gone down Dunloppel with him at midnight, or any other mine as can be called such; but this is different."

"Ay, ay, that's so," said a second miner. "We know no more of this place than you fishermen. There may be as much water in it as in the sea, for aught we can tell."

"It's my belief they're more afraid of the Dead Hand than the water,"

observed a voice from the crowd, the great majority of which was composed of fisher folk.

No reply was given to this; perhaps because the speaker, an old cripple, the Thersites of the village, was beneath notice, perhaps because the remark was unanswerable. The miners were bold enough against material enemies, but they were superst.i.tious to a man.

"If Solomon Coe were alive," continued the same voice, "he wouldn't ha'

feared nothin'."

"That's the first word, old man, as ever I heard you speak in his favor," said a miner, contemptuously; "and you've waited for that till he's dead."

"Still, he would ha' gone, and you durstn't," observed the old fellow, cunningly, "and that's the p'int."

These allusions to the Dead Hand and to the missing Solomon were not of a nature to inspire courage in those to whom it was already lacking, and a silence again ensued. There was less light, for a torch or two had gone out, and the mine looked blacker than ever.

"Well, who's a-going down?" croaked the old cripple. "The gentleman came from your inn, Jonathan, and it's your place, I should think, to look after him."

"Certainly not," answered the inn-keeper, hastily. "These men here were hired for this very service."

"That's true," said the first miner. "But what's the use of talking when the gentleman has got the ladder with him?"

"There's more ladders in the world than one," observed the cripple.

"Here's my grandson, John; he and half a dozen of these young fellows would fetch Farmer Gray's in less than no time. Come, lads--be off with ye."

This suggestion was highly applauded, except by the miner who had so injudiciously compromised himself, and was carried out at once.

When the ladder arrived the three other miners, ashamed of deserting their comrade, volunteered to descend with him. The excitement among the spectators was great, indeed, when these four men disappeared in the levels of Wheal Danes, as Richard had done before them. The light of their combined torches lingered a little in their rear; the sound of their voices, as they halloed to one another or to the missing man, was heard for several minutes. But darkness and silence swallowed _them_ up also, and the watchers gazed on one another aghast.

It is not an easy thing, even for those accustomed to underground labor, to search an unfamiliar spot by torch-light; the fitful gleam makes the objects on which it falls difficult of identification. It is doubtful whether one has seen this or that before or not--whether we are not retracing old ground. Even to practiced eyes these objects, too, are not so salient as the tree or the stone which marks a locality above-ground; add to this, in the present case, that the searchers were momently in expectation of coming upon something which they sought and yet feared to find, and it will be seen that their progress was of necessity but slow.

They kept together, too, as close as sheep, which narrowed the compa.s.s of their researches, and caused their combined torches to distribute only as much light as one man would have done provided with a chandelier. They knew, however, that their predecessor had descended into the second level, so that they did not need to explore the first at all. The ground was hard, and gave forth echoes to their cautious but heavy tread; their cries of "Hollo!" "Are you there?" which they reiterated, like nervous children playing hide-and-seek, reverberated from roof to wall.

Presently, when they stopped to listen for these voices of the rock to cease, there was heard a human moan. It seemed to come up from a great depth out of the darkness before them. They listened earnestly, and the sound was repeated--the faint cry of a man in grievous pain.

"There must be another level," observed the miner who had volunteered the search. "This man has fallen down it."

They had therefore to go back for the ladder. Pushing this before them, the end began presently to run freely, and then stopped; it had adjusted itself by the side of the shorter ladder which Richard had brought down with him.

"He could not have fallen, then," observed a miner, answering his comrade's remark--as is the custom with this cla.s.s of great doers and small talkers--at a considerable interval.

"Yes, he could," replied the one who had first spoken. "See, his ladder was short, and he may have pitched over."