The Vicar's People Part 19

Geoffrey was as brave as most men, but he could not avoid a feeling of shrinking, as he saw what he had undertaken to do. He had expected to step into a cage such as was in use at coalpits, or perhaps have had to make use of the peculiar machine which lowered the miners from platform to platform ten or a dozen feet at a time; but here, as he gazed down into the dark, misty heat, he found that he would have to trust entirely to his own nerve and strength, for the descent was by a series of wet, greasy, nearly perpendicular ladders, placed zigzag from platform to platform, and with very little to save him from a fall too awful to contemplate.

The manager watched him narrowly before asking if he was ready, and on receiving an answer in the affirmative, he went down to the first wet, rotten-looking platform, where he stopped, and on being joined by Geoffrey he struck a match, and lit the candles in their caps.

"How deep is the mine?" asked Geoffrey.

"Two hundred fathom," was the reply.

"Twelve hundred feet!" said Geoffrey. "A good long descent by ladders.

How is it you have no chain and cage?"

"Money!" was the abrupt reply, and after a warning to him to hold tight, the manager, a rough-spoken Cornishman, continued the descent, Geoffrey following, and finding every thing of the most primitive character. The ladders were clumsily made, splashed with candle grease, and terribly worn; the platforms so old and rotten that they seemed unsafe; and yet down for twelve hundred feet stretched these ladders, one after the other, in apparently interminable length.

Geoffrey Trethick's nerves were strong, but they were well put to the test, for every now and then a step of the ladder gave, or rattled beneath his weight. Now he would find a round so greasy that his foot would slip, while his candle sputtered, and several times nearly became extinguished, as they pa.s.sed some shower of water that forced itself out of a vein in the rock.

"Rather rough work," said the manager, and his voice sounded echoing and strange in the gloomy shaft, seeming to whisper past him, and die away amidst the maze of ladders overhead.

"Rather!" replied Geoffrey, who was beginning to be drenched with perspiration. "How much farther?" he continued.

"Farther! Oh, we are not half-way down yet, sir--nothing like it," was the reply. "Like to rest?"

"No. Go on."

Down--down--down--lower and lower, in one apparently endless descent, with the noise of the trickling water growing louder and louder, and ever and again a hoa.r.s.e, rattling, clanging noise as the chain bore buckets up and buckets down, and the great pump worked its mighty piston to free the mine from the water collected in the sump.

At times it was impossible not to feel that the bucket coming rushing through the darkness was descending upon the heads of those who laboriously climbed down, or that the enormous piston-rod would crush them to death at its next movement, instead of working steadily on the other side of the stout dividing boards. But the rod worked on, and the chain rattled as the buckets rose and fell, and with the trickling and plashing of the water growing louder, the ladders more wet and coated with grease, the platforms more slippery and rotten, Geoffrey st.u.r.dily kept on descending, but with the thought always forcing itself upon his brain that every ladder would have to be climbed before he could see the light of day.

But Geoffrey possessed all the stubborn determination of a true Englishman. He was truly one of those who did not know when he was beaten, and he was ready to go on with a task he had begun until brain and muscle completely gave way, and then only would he have paused and waited for strength before beginning again.

They had stopped on one of the platforms to snuff the flaring candles, a supply of which the manager carried in a tin box slung from his shoulder, when once more from the other part of the shaft came the rushing noise of the ascending and descending buckets, and so close did they sound that Geoffrey involuntarily shrank, feeling that they must strike against him and crush him on the narrow platform where he stood.

But after this his ears grew more accustomed to the sound, and he began again plodding steadily downward, the frantic desire to cling tightly to the ladder and ask for help growing weaker as he became more used to the task.

At last the manager stopped, and pointed to a black opening before him like a little arch in the side of the shaft.

"Here's one of the old galleries," he said. "Would you like to see it?"

"Are the men at work here?"

"Work? No! Nor haven't been these fifty years. But there's enough to see there to give you an idea of the mine, and it would save you from going down farther if you are sick of it."

"I'm not sick of it," said Geoffrey, stoutly. "I'm only warm. Go on down to the bottom, and let's see the workings."

"All right!" said the manager, smiling, as he gave Geoffrey a peculiar look; and a fresh start was made.

"That fellow Tregenna has done this to try me," thought Geoffrey. "He could have given me an introduction to some mine where there was a regular cage. Never mind: I'm not chicken enough to give it up!" and, regardless of the rotten, wet ladders, he steadily went on, his spirits rising and his confidence increasing--for as he kept on noting the primitive way in which every thing was done, he felt more and more satisfied that if science were brought to bear in such a mine as this the profits must be largely increased.

For instance, he reasoned, here were the miners forced to undergo a long and arduous piece of toil before they could reach their work, and when their spell was over they had a fresh task to climb patiently up at a time when they were exhausted with toil, thus spending fruitlessly many hours every week.

"I've come to the right place," he thought, with a feeling of exultation coming over him, "and if I don't make my way it is my own fault."

"Tired?" said the manager, from below.

"No," was the st.u.r.dy answer. "Are you?"

A low, chuckling laugh came up to Geoffrey as he glanced down at the descending-light in the manager's hat.

"Well, if you put it in that way, sir, I am; and we'll get a little wind here by this old lode."

He stopped on the next platform, and, Geoffrey joining him, he once more snuffed the candles. There was another opening going horizontally into the bowels of the earth, where a lode of tin had been followed until it had become worthless. The roof glistened with huge crystals, which flashed in the light of the candles as they were held inside what looked like a subterranean pa.s.sage into a castle, the abode of some giant of the nether world.

"I suppose the workings below are just like this?" said Geoffrey.

"Just the same, sir," was the eager reply; "and if you'd like to give up now, we could inspect this drive for a few hundred yards, and then go back. It's rather dangerous, though, for there have been some falls from the roof, and the galleries are like a net."

"But I don't want to give up," said Geoffrey, laughing, "and am ready as soon as ever you like."

"I never got any one to get down farther than this," said the manager, who started again, descending in silence, broken only by the occasional echoing whirr of the ascending and descending buckets, and the hiss and splash of the falling water. The heat seemed to increase, and the depth might have been miles, so endless seemed the ladders, and so tedious the descent.

"Give me a word if you feel likely to let go," said Geoffrey's guide just when they were on one of the wettest, weakest, and most slippery ladders of the descent. "There was a man once fell off this very ladder, and knocked off the man below him as well."

"Were they hurt?" said Geoffrey.

"Don't suppose as they were," was the cool reply. "They broke through platform after platform, for the woodwork was very rotten just then.

They couldn't have known any thing after they fell, for they were quite dead when they got them up. It was a gashly job."

"Pleasant incident to relate now," thought Geoffrey. Then aloud--"You don't often have accidents?"

"Well, not very. We get a fall of rock sometimes, or a ladder breaks, or a man falls down the shaft. Now and then, too, there's a bit of an accident with the powder when they are blasting. But we do pretty well.

We're not like your coal-mining folks, with their safety-lamps and gas."

"The mines are, of course, free from foul air?"

"Oh, yes; sweet as a nut."

"But how much farther is it?" said Geoffrey. "Surely we've come down a thousand feet."

"Well, yes; I suppose we have," said the man, coolly. "I don't think there's more than a half-dozen more ladders. Yes, seven," he said.

These were steadily climbed down, but seemed the longest of them all.

At last, however, they stood beside the great sump or water-cistern, which received the end of the vast pumping apparatus, all of which Geoffrey carefully examined with a look of disgust at its primitive character and clumsiness.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

PENGELLY--MINER.

"I should just like to shake hands with you, sir," said Geoffrey's guide, wiping his hand carefully upon his flannel trousers after using his fingers to snuff both candles. "I never thought you'd come down half-way--that I didn't. You're a plucked un, sir. That's about what you are, if you'll excuse me."