Kitabı oku: «Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines», sayfa 6

“You’d better break off a piece of ore here,” said Captain Dan.

Oliver took a chisel and hammer from the miner, and applying them to the rock, spent five minutes in belabouring it with scarcely any result.

“If it were not that I fear to miss the chisel and hit my knuckles,” he said, “I think I could work more effectively.”

As he spoke he struck with all his force, and brought down a large piece, a chip of which he carried away as a memorial of his underground ramble.

“The man is going to fire the hole,” said Captain Dan; “you’d better wait and see it.”

The hole was sunk nearly two feet deep diagonally behind a large mass of rock that projected from the side of the level. It was charged with gunpowder, and filled up with “tamping” or pounded granite, Then the miner lighted the fuse and hastened away, giving the usual signal, “Fire!” The others followed him to a safe distance, and awaited the result. In a few minutes there was a loud report, a bright blinding flash, and a concussion of the air which extinguished two of the candles. Immediately a crash followed, as the heavy mass of rock was torn from its bed and hurled to the ground.

“That’s the way we raise tin and copper,” said Captain Dan; “now, doctor, we had better return, if you would not be left in darkness, for our candles are getting low.”

“Did you ever travel underground in the dark?” inquired Oliver.

“Not often, but I have done it occasionally. Once, in particular, I went down the main shaft in the dark, and gave a miner an awful fright. I had to go down in haste at the time, and, not having a candle at hand, besides being well acquainted with the way, I hurried down in the dark. It so chanced that a man named Sampy had got his light put out when about to ascend the shaft, and, as he also was well acquainted with the way, he did not take the trouble to relight. There was a good deal of noise in consequence of the pump being at work. When I had got about half-way down I put my foot on something that felt soft. Instantly there was uttered a tremendous yell, and my legs at the same moment were seized by something from below. My heart almost jumped out of my mouth at this, but as the yell was repeated it flashed across me I must have trod on some one’s fingers, so I lifted my foot at once, and then a voice, which I knew to be that of Sampy, began to wail and lament miserably.

“‘Hope I haven’t hurt ’ee, Sampy?’ said I.

“‘Aw dear! aw dear! aw, my dear!’ was all that poor Sampy could reply.

“‘Let us go up, my son,’ said I, ‘and we’ll strike a light.’

“So up we went to the next level, where I got hold of the poor lad’s candle and lighted it.

“‘Aw, my dear!’ said Sampy, looking at his fingers with a rueful countenance; ‘thee have scat ’em all in jowds.’”

“Pray,” interrupted Oliver, “what may be the meaning of ‘scat ’em all in jowds’?

“Broke ’em all in pieces,” replied Captain Dan; “but he was wrong, for no bones were broken, and the fingers were all right again in the course of a few days. Sampy got a tremendous fright, however, and he was never known to travel underground without a light after that.”

Continuing to retrace their steps, Captain Dan and Oliver made for the main shaft. On the way they came to another of those immense empty spaces where a large lode had been worked away, and nothing left in the dark narrow void but the short beams which had supported the working stages of the men. Here Oliver, looking down through a hole at his feet, saw several men far below him. They were at work on the “end” in three successive tiers—above each other’s heads.

“You’ve seen two of these men before,” said Captain Dan.

“Have I?”

“Yes, they are local preachers. The last time you saw the upper one,” said Captain Dan with a smile, “you were seated in the Wesleyan chapel, and he was in the pulpit dressed like a gentleman, and preaching as eloquently as if he had been educated at college and trained for the ministry.”

“I should like very much to go down and visit them,” said Oliver.

“’Tis a difficult descent. There are no ladders. Will your head stand stepping from beam to beam, and can you lower yourself by a chain?”

“I’ll try,” said Oliver.

Without more words Captain Dan left the platform on which they had been walking, and, descending through a hole, led his companion by the most rugged way he had yet attempted. Sometimes they slid on their heels down places that Oliver would not have dreamed of attempting without a guide; at other times they stepped from beam to beam, with unknown depths below them.

“Have a care here, sir,” said the captain, pausing before a very steep place. “I will go first and wait for you.”

So saying, he seized a piece of old rusty chain that was fastened into the rock, and swung himself down. Then, looking up, he called to Oliver to follow.

The young doctor did so, and, having cautiously lowered himself a few yards, he reached a beam, where he found the captain holding up his candle, and regarding him with some anxiety. Captain Dan appeared as if suspended in mid-air. Opposite to him, in the distance, the two “local preachers” were hard at work with hammer and chisel, while far below, a miner could be seen coming along the next level, and pushing an iron truck full of ore before him.

A few more steps and slides, and then a short ascent, and Oliver stood beside the man who had preached the previous Sunday. He worked with another miner, and was red, ragged, and half-clad, like all the rest, and the perspiration was pouring over his face, which was streaked with slime. Very unlike was he at that time to the gentlemanly youth who had held forth from the pulpit. Oliver had a long chat with him, and found that he aspired to enter the ministry, and had already passed some severe examinations. He was self-taught, having procured the loan of books from his minister and some friends who were interested in him. His language and manners were those of a gentleman, yet he had had no advantages beyond his fellows.

“My friend there, sir, also hopes to enter the ministry,” said the miner, pointing, as he spoke, to a gap between the boards on which he stood.

Oliver looked down, and there beheld a stalwart young man, about a couple of yards under his feet, wielding a hammer with tremendous vigour. His light linen coat was open, displaying his bared and muscular bosom.

“What! is he a local preacher also?”

“He is, sir,” said the miner, with a smile.

Oliver immediately descended to the stage below, and had a chat with this man also, after which he left them at their work, wondering very much at the intelligence and learning displayed by them; for he remembered that in their sermons they had, without notes, without hesitation, and without a grammatical error, entered into the most subtle metaphysical reasoning (rather too much of it indeed!), and had preached with impassioned (perhaps too impassioned) eloquence, quoting poets and prose writers, ancient and modern, with the facility of good scholars—while they urged men and women to repent and flee to Christ, with all the fervour of men thoroughly in earnest. On the other hand, he knew that their opportunities for self-education were not great, and that they had to toil in the meantime for daily bread, at the rate of about 3 pounds a month!

Following Captain Dan, Oliver soon reached the ladder-way.

While slowly and in silence ascending the ladders; they heard a sound of music above them.

“Men coming down to work, singing,” said the captain, as they stood on a cross-beam to listen.

The sounds at first were very faint and inexpressibly sweet. By degrees they became more distinct, and Oliver could distinguish several voices singing in harmony, keeping time to the slow measured tread of their descending steps. There seemed a novelty, and yet a strange familiarity, in the strains as they were wafted softly down upon his ear, until they drew near, and the star-like candles of the miners became visible. Their manly voices then poured forth in full strength the glorious psalm-tune called “French,” which is usually sung in Scotland to the beautiful psalm beginning, “I to the hills will lift mine eyes.”

The men stopped abruptly on encountering their captain and the stranger. Exchanging a few words with the former, they stood aside on the beams to let them pass. A little boy came last. His small limbs were as active as those of his more stalwart comrades, and he exhibited no signs of fatigue. His treble voice, too, was heard high and tuneful among the others as they continued their descent and resumed the psalm. The sweet strains retired gradually, and faded in the depths below as they had first stolen on the senses from above; and the pleasant memory of them still remained with the young doctor when he emerged from the mine through the hole at the head of the shaft, and stood once more in the blessed sunshine!

Chapter Nine.
Treats of Difficulties to be Overcome

One afternoon a council—we may appropriately say of war—was held in St. Just. The scene of the council was the shop of Maggot, the blacksmith, and the members of it were a number of miners, the president being the worthy smith himself, who, with a sledge-hammer under his arm in the position of a short crutch, occupied the chair, if we may be allowed so to designate the raised hearth of the forge.

The war with poverty had not been very successfully waged of late, and, at the time of which we write, the enemy had apparently given the miners a severe check, in the way of putting what appeared to be an insuperable obstacle in their path.

“Now, lads,” said Maggot, with a slap on the leathern apron that covered his knees, “this is the way on it, an’ do ’ee be quiet and hould yer tongues while I do spaik.”

The other men, of whom there were nearly a dozen, nodded and said, “Go on, booy; thee’s knaw tin, sure;” by which expression they affirmed their belief that the blacksmith was a very knowing fellow.

“You do tell me that you’ve come so close to water that you’re ’fraid to go on? Is that so?”

“Iss, iss,” responded the others.

“Well, I’ll hole into the house, ef you do agree to give un a good pitch,” said Maggot.

“Agreed, one and all,” cried the miners.

In order that the reader may understand the drift of this conversation, it is necessary to explain that the indefatigable miner, David Trevarrow, whom we have already introduced in his submarine workshop, had, according to his plan, changed his ground, and transferred his labour to a more hopeful part of the mine.

For some time previous the men had been at work on a lode which was very promising, but they were compelled to cease following it, because it approached the workings of an old part of the mine which was known to be full of water. To tap this old part, or as the miners expressed it, to “hole into this house of water,” was, they were well aware, an exceedingly dangerous operation. The part of the mine to which we allude was not under the sea, but back a little from the shore, and was not very deep at that time. The “adit”—or water-conducting—level by which the spot was reached commenced at the cliffs, on a level with the seashore, and ran into the interior until it reached the old mine, about a quarter of a mile inland. Here was situated the “house,” which was neither more nor less than a number of old shafts and levels filled with water. As they had approached the old mine its near proximity was made disagreeably evident by the quantity of moisture that oozed through the crevices in the rocks—moisture which ere long took the form of a number of tiny rills—and at last began to spirt out from roof and sides in such a way that the miners became alarmed, and hesitated to continue to work in a place where they ran the most imminent risk of being suddenly drowned and swept into the sea, by the bursting of the rocks that still withstood the immense pressure of the confined water.

It was at this point in the undertaking that David Trevarrow went to examine the place, and made the discovery of a seam—a “keenly lode”—which had such a promising appearance that the anxiety of the miners to get rid of this obstructive “house” was redoubled.

It was at this point, too, that the council of which we write was held, in order to settle who should have the undesirable privilege of constituting the “forlorn hope” in their subterranean assault.

Maggot, who was known to be one of the boldest, and, at the same time, one of the most utterly reckless, men in St. Just, was appealed to in the emergency, and, as we have seen, offered to attack the enemy single-handed, on condition that the miners should give him a “pitch” of the good lode they had found—that is, give him the right to work out a certain number of fathoms of ore for himself.

They agreed to this, but one of them expressed some doubt as to Maggot’s courage being equal to the occasion.

To this remark Maggot vouchsafed no other reply than a frown, but his friend and admirer John Cock exclaimed in supreme contempt,—“What! Maggot afear’d to do it! aw, my dear, hould tha tongue.”

“But he haven’t bin to see the place,” urged the previous speaker.

“No, my son,” said Maggot, turning on the man with a look of pity, “but he can go an’ see it. Come, lads, lev us go an’ see this place of danger.”

The miners rose at once as Maggot threw his forehammer on a heap of coals, put on his hat, and strode out of the forge with a reckless fling. A few minutes sufficed to bring them to the beach at the mouth of the adit.

It was a singularly wild spot, close under those precipitous cliffs on which some of the picturesque buildings of Botallack mine are perched—a sort of narrow inlet or gorge which from its form is named the Narrow Zawn. There was nothing worthy of the name of a beach at the place, save a little piece of rugged ground near the adit mouth, which could be reached only by a zigzag path on the face of the almost perpendicular precipice.

Arrived here, each man lighted a candle, wrapped the customary piece of wet clay round the middle of it, and entered the narrow tunnel. They advanced in single file, James Penrose leading. The height of the adit permitted of their walking almost upright, but the irregularity of the cuttings rendered it necessary that they should advance carefully, with special regard to their heads. In about a quarter of an hour they reached a comparatively open space—that is to say, there were several extensions of the cutting in various directions, which gave the place the appearance of being a small cavern, instead of a narrow tunnel. Here the water, which in other parts of the adit flowed along the bottom, ran down the walls and spirted in fine streams from the almost invisible crevices of the rock, thus betraying at once the proximity and the power of the pent-up water.

“What think’ee now, my son?” asked an elderly man who stood at Maggot’s elbow.

After a short pause, during which he sternly regarded the rocks before him, the smith replied, “I’ll do it,” in the tone and with the air of a man who knows that what he has made up his mind to do is not child’s play.

The question being thus settled, the miners retraced their steps and went to their several homes.

Entering his cottage, the smith found his little girl Grace busily engaged in the interesting process of nursing the baby. He seated himself in a chair by the fireside, smoked his pipe, and watched the process, while his wife busied herself in preparing the evening meal.

Oh! but the little Maggot was a big baby—a worthy representative of his father—a true chip of the old block, for he was not only fat, riotous, and muscular, but very reckless, and extremely positive. His little nurse, on the contrary, was gentle and delicate; not much bigger than the baby, although a good deal older, and she had a dreadful business of it to keep him in order. All her efforts at lifting and restraining him were somewhat akin to the exertion made by wrestlers to throw each other by main force, and her intense desire to make baby Maggot “be good” was repaid by severe kicks on the shins, and sundry dabs in the face with, luckily, a soft, fat pair of fists.

“Sit ’ee quiet, now, or I’ll scat oo nose,” said the little nurse suddenly, with a terrible frown.

It need scarcely be said that she had not the remotest; intention of carrying out this dreadful threat to smash the little Maggot’s nose. She accompanied it, however, with a twist that suddenly placed the urchin in a sitting posture, much to his own surprise, for he opened his eyes very wide, drew his breath sharply, and appeared to meditate a roar. He thought better of it, however, and relapsed into goodness just as the door opened, and David Trevarrow entered.

“Oh, uncle David,” cried little Grace, jumping up and running towards him, “do help me nuss baby.”

“What’s the matter with the cheeld—bad, eh? Fetch un to me and I’ll cure him.”

There was no necessity to fetch baby, for that obstreperous individual entertained an immense regard for “Unkil Day,” and was already on his fat legs staggering across the floor to him with outstretched arms. Thereafter he only required a pair of wings to make him a complete cherub.

Little Grace, relieved of her charge, at once set to work to assist her mother in household matters. She was one of those dear little earnest creatures who of their own accord act in a motherly and wifely way from their early years. To look at little Grace’s serious thoroughgoing face, when she chanced to pause in the midst of work, and meditate what was to be done next, one might imagine that the entire care of the household had suddenly devolved upon her shoulders. In the matter of housewifery little Grace was almost equal to big Grace, her respected mother; in downright honesty and truthfulness she greatly excelled her.

The description of Maggot’s household, on that evening, would be very incomplete were we to omit mention of Zackey Maggot. That young man—for man he deemed himself, and man he was, in all respects, except the trifling matters of years, size, and whiskers—that young man entered the room with his uncle, and, without deigning to change his wet red garments, sat him down at his father’s feet and caught hold of a small black kitten, which, at the time, lay sound asleep on the hearth, and began to play with it in a grave patronising way, as though his taking notice of it at all were a condescension.

That black kitten, or Chet, as it was usually styled, was accustomed to be strangled the greater part of the morning by the baby. Most of the afternoon it was worried by Zackey, and, during the intervals of torment, it experienced an unusually large measure of the vicissitudes incident to kitten life—such as being kicked out of the way by Maggot senior, or thrown or terrified out of the way by Mrs Maggot, or dashed at by stray dogs, or yelled at by passing boys. The only sunshine of its life (which was at all times liable to be suddenly clouded) was when it slept, or when little Grace put it on her soft neck, tickled its chin, and otherwise soothed its ruffled spirit, as only a loving heart knows how. A bad memory seemed to be that kitten’s chief blessing. A horror of any kind was no sooner past than it was straightway forgotten, and the facetious animal would advance with arched back and glaring eyes in defiance of an incursive hen, or twirl in mad hopeless career after its own miserable tail!

“’Tis a keenly lode,” said Maggot, puffing his pipe thoughtfully.

“Iss,” assented David Trevarrow, also puffing his pipe, at the clouds issuing from which baby gazed with endless amazement and admiration; “it’s worth much, but it isn’t worth your life.”

“Sure, I ain’t goin’ to give my life for’t,” replied Maggot.

“But you’re goin’ to risk it,” said David, “an’ you shouldn’t, for you’ve a wife an’ child’n to provide for. Now, I tell ’ee what it is: you lev it to me. I’ll hole to the house. It don’t matter much what happens to me.”

“No, ’ee won’t,” said Maggot stoutly; “what I do promise to do I will do.”

“But if you die?” said David.

“Well, what if I do? we have all to come to that some day, sooner or later.”

“Are you prepared to die?” asked Trevarrow earnestly.

“Now, David, don’t ’ee trouble me with that. ’Tis all very well for the women an’ child’n, but it don’t suit me, it don’t, so lev us have no more of it, booy. I’ll do it to-morrow, that’s fixed, so now we’ll have a bit supper.”

The tone in which Maggot said this assured David that further conversation would be useless, so he dropped the subject and sat down with the rest of the family to their evening meal.