Deep Down - Robert Michael Ballantyne (digital book reader .TXT) 📗

a thick felt hat, which was extremely dirty, on the front especially, where the candle was wont to be fixed with wet clay. "Now, then, attach these two candles to that button in your breast, and you are complete.--Not a bad miner to look at," said Captain Dan with a smile of approval.

The captain was already equipped in underground costume, and the dirty disreputable appearance he presented was, thought Oliver, a wonderful contrast to his sober and gentlemanly aspect on the evening of their first meeting at his uncle's table.

"I'll strike a light after we get down a bit--so come along," said Captain Dan, leaving the office and leading the way.

On reaching the entrance to the shaft, Oliver Trembath looked down and observed a small speck of bright light in the black depths.

"A man coming up--wait a bit," said the captain in explanation.

Presently a faint sound of slow footsteps was heard; they grew gradually more distinct, and ere long the head and shoulders of a man emerged from the hole. Perspiration was trickling down his face, and painting him, streakily, with iron rust and mud. All his garments were soaking. He sighed heavily on reaching the surface, and appeared to inhale the fresh air with great satisfaction.

"Any more coming?"

"No, Captain Dan," replied the man, glancing with some curiosity at the tall stranger.

"Now, sir, we shall descend," said the captain, entering the shaft.

Oliver followed, and at once plunged out of bright sunshine into subdued light. A descent of a few fathoms brought them to the bottom of the first ladder. It was a short one; most of the others, the captain told him, were long ones. The width of the shaft was about six feet by nine. It was nearly perpendicular, and the slope of the ladders corresponded with its width--the head of each resting against one side of it, and the foot against the other, thus forming a zigzag of ladders all the way down.

At the foot of the first ladder the light was that of deep twilight. Here was a wooden platform, and a hole cut through it, out of which protruded the head of the second ladder. The Captain struck a light, and, applying it to one of the candles, affixed the same to the front of Oliver's hat. Arranging his own hat in a similar way, he continued the descent, and, in a few minutes, both were beyond the region of daylight. When they had got a short way down, probably the distance of an ordinary church-steeple's height below the surface, Oliver looked up and saw the little opening far above him, shining brightly like a star. A few steps more and it vanished from view; he felt that he had for the first time in his life reached the regions of eternal night.

The shaft varied in width here and there; in most places it was very narrow--about six feet wide--but, what with cross-beams to support the sides, and prevent soft parts from falling in, and other obstructions, the space available for descent was often not more than enough to permit of a man squeezing past.

A damp smell pervaded the air, and there was a strange sense of contraction and confinement, so to speak, which had at first an unpleasant effect on Oliver. The silence, when both men paused at a ladder-foot to trim candles or to rest a minute, was most profound, and there came over the young doctor a sensation of being buried alive, and of having bid a final farewell to the upper earth, the free air, and the sunshine, as they went down, down, down to the depths below.

At last they reached a "level" or gallery, by which the ladder-shaft communicated with the pump-shaft.

Here Captain Dan paused and trimmed Oliver's candle, which he had thrust inadvertently against a beam, and broken in two.

"You have to mind your head here, sir," said the captain, with a quiet smile; "'tis a good place to learn humility."

Oliver could scarce help laughing aloud as he gazed at his guide, for, standing as he did with the candle close to his face, his cheeks, nose, chin, forehead, and part of the brim of his hat and shoulders were brought into brilliant light, while the rest of him was lost in the profound darkness of the level behind, and the flame of his candle rested above his head like the diadem of some aristocratic gnome.

"How far down have we come?" inquired Oliver.

"About eighty fathoms," said the captain; "we shall now go along this level and get into the pump-shaft, by which we can descend to the bottom. Take care of your feet and head as you go, for you'll be apt to run against the rocks that hang down, and the winzes are dangerous."

"And pray what are winzes?" asked Oliver as he stumbled along in the footsteps of his guide, over uneven ground covered with debris.--"Ah! hallo! stop!"

"What's wrong?" said the captain, looking back, and holding up his candle to Oliver's face.

"Candle gone again, captain; I've run my head on that rock. Lucky for me that your mining hats are so thick and hard, for I gave it a butt that might have done credit to an ox."

"I told you to mind your head," said Captain Dan, relighting the candle; "you had better carry it in your hand in the levels, it will light your path better. Look out now--here is a winze."

The captain pointed to a black yawning hole, about six or seven feet in diameter, which was bridged across by a single plank.

"How deep does it go?" asked the youth, holding up his candle and peering in; "I can't see the bottom."

"I dare say not," said the captain, "for the bottom is ten fathoms down, at the next level."

"And are all the winzes bridged with a single plank in this way?"

"Why, no, some of 'em have two or three planks, but they're quite safe if you go steady."

"And, pray, how many such winzes are there in the mine?" asked Oliver.

"Couldn't say exactly, without thinkin' a bit," replied the captain; "but there are a great number of 'em--little short of a hundred, I should say--for we have a good many miles of levels in Botallack, which possesses an underground geography as carefully measured and mapped out as that of the surface."

"And what would happen," asked Oliver, with an expression of half-simulated anxiety, "if you were to fall down a winze and break your neck, and my candle were to get knocked or blown out, leaving me to find my way out of a labyrinth of levels pierced with holes sixty feet deep?"

"Well, it's hard to say," replied Captain Dan with much simplicity.

"Go on," said Oliver, pursing his lips with a grim smile, as he followed his leader across the narrow bridge.

Captain Dan continued his progress until he reached the pump-shaft, the proximity of which was audibly announced by the slow ascent and descent of a great wooden beam, which was styled the "pump-rod." Alongside, and almost touching it, for space was valuable there, and had to be economised, was the iron pipe--nearly a foot in diameter--which conveyed the water from the mine to the "Adit level."

The slow-heaving plunge, of about ten feet in extent, and the sough or sigh of the great beam, with the accompanying gurgle of water in the huge pipe, were sounds that seemed horribly appropriate to the subterranean scene. One could have imagined the mine to be a living giant in the last throes of death by drowning. But these were only one half of the peculiarities of the place. On the other side of the shaft an arrangement of beams and partially broken boards formed the traversing "ways" or tube, up which were drawn the kibbles--these last being large iron buckets used for lifting ore to the surface.

In the present day, machinery being more perfect, the ancient kibble has been to some extent supplanted by skips, or small trucks with wheels (in some cases iron boxes with guiding-rods), which are drawn up smoothly, and without much tear and wear; but in the rough times of which we write, the sturdy kibble used to go rattling up the shaft with deafening noise, dinting its thick sides, and travelling with a jovial free-and-easy swing that must have added considerably to the debit side of the account of working expenses. Between the pump-rod and the kibble-way there was just room for the ladders upon which Captain Dan, followed by Oliver, now stepped. This shaft was very wet, water dropped and spirted about in fine spray everywhere, and the rounds of the ladders were wet and greasy with much-squeezed slime.

It would seem as though the kibbles had known that a stranger was about to descend and had waited for him, for no sooner did Oliver get on the ladder than they began to move--the one to ascend full, and the other to descend empty.

"What's that?" exclaimed Oliver.

"It's only the kibbles," replied Captain Dan.

Before the captain could explain what kibbles were, these reckless buckets met, with a bang, close to Oliver's cheek, and rebounded on the beams that protected him from their fury. Naturally the young man shrank a little from a noise so loud and so near. He was at once scraped down on the other side by the pump-rod! Drawing himself together as much as possible, and feeling for once the disadvantage of being a large man, he followed his leader down, down, ever down, into the profounder depths below.

All this time they had not met with a miner, or with any sign of human life--unless the pump and kibbles could be regarded as such--for they had been hitherto traversing the old levels and workings of the mine, but at last, during one of their pauses, they heard the faint sound of chip, chip, chip, in the far distance.

"Miners?" inquired Oliver.

Captain Dan nodded, and said they would now leave the shaft and go to where the men were at work. He cautioned his companion again to have regard to his head, and to mind his feet. As they proceeded, he stopped ever and anon to point out some object of peculiar interest.

"There's a considerable space above and below you here, sir," said the captain, stopping suddenly in a level which was not more than three feet wide.

Oliver had been so intent on his feet, and mindful of the winzes, that he had failed to observe the immense black opening overhead. It extended so high above him, and so far forward and backward in the direction of the level, that its boundaries were lost in an immensity of profoundly dark space. The rocky path was also lost to view, both before and behind them, so that the glare of their lights on the metallic walls rendered the spot on which they stood a point of brilliancy in the midst of darkness. Only part of a great beam was visible here and there above them, as if suspended in the gloom to render its profundity more apparent.

This, Captain Dan explained, was the space that had once been occupied by a rich lode of ore, all of which had been removed years ago, to the great commercial advantage of a past generation.

Soon after passing this the captain paused at a