Chapter Eight.
Down, Down, Down

Before descending the mine Captain Dan led Oliver to the counting-house, where he bade him undress and put on miner’s clothing.

“I’ll need a biggish suit,” observed Oliver.

“True,” said Captain Dan; “we are obliged usually to give visitors our smallest suits. You are an exception to the rule. Indeed, I’m not sure that I have a pair of trousers big enough for—ah yes, by the way, here is a pair belonging to one of our captains who is unusually stout and tall; I dare say you’ll be able to squeeze into ’em.”

“All right,” said Oliver, laughing, as he pulled on the red garments; “they are wide enough round the waist, at all events. Now for a hat.”

“There,” said the captain, handing him a white cotton skull-cap, “put that on.”

“Why, what’s this for?” said Oliver.

“To keep that from dirtying your head,” replied the other, as he handed his companion 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 débris.—“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 deep cutting in the rock, and, looking sadly at it for a few minutes, said,—“It was here that poor Trevool lost his life. He was a good lad, but careless, and used to go rattling along the levels with his light in his hat and his thoughts among the stars, instead of carrying the light in his hand and looking to his feet. He fell down that winze and broke his back. When we got him up to grass he was alive, but he never spoke another word, and died the same night.”

“Poor fellow!” said Oliver; “I suppose your men have narrow escapes sometimes.”

“They have, sir, but it’s most always owin’ to carelessness. There was a cousin of that very lad Trevool who was buried with a comrade by the falling in of a shaft and came out alive. I was there at the time and helped to dig him out.”

Captain Dan here stopped, and, sticking his candle against the wet wall of the mine, sat down on a piece of rock, while our hero stood beside him. “You see,” said he, “we were sinking a shaft, or rather reopening an old one, at the time, and Harvey, that was the man’s name, was down working with a comrade. They came to a soft bit o’ ground, an’ as they cut through it they boarded it up with timbers across to prevent it slipping, but they did the work hastily. After they had cut down some fathoms below it, the boarding gave way, and down the whole thing went, boards, timbers, stones, and rubbish, on their heads. We made sure they were dead, but set to, nevertheless, to dig them out as fast as possible—turning as many hands to the work as could get at it. At last we came on them, and both were alive, and not very much hurt! The timbers and planks had fallen over them in such a way as to keep the stones and rubbish off. I had a talk with old Harvey the other day on this very subject. He told me that he was squeezed flat against the side of the shaft by the rubbish which buried him, and that he did not lose consciousness for a moment. A large stone had stuck right above his head, and this probably saved him. He heard us digging down to him, he said, and when we got close he sang out to hold on, as the shovel was touching him. Sure enough this was the case, for the next shovelful of rubbish that was lifted revealed the top of his head! We cleared the way to his mouth as carefully as we could, and then gave him a drop of brandy before going on with the work of excavation. His comrade was found in a stooping position, and was more severely bruised than old Harvey, but both of them lived to tell the tale of their burial, and to thank God for their deliverance. Yes,” continued the captain, detaching his candle from the wall and resuming his walk, “we have narrow escapes sometimes.—Look here, doctor, did you ever see a rock like that?”

Captain Dan pointed to a place in the side of the rocky wall which was grooved and cut as if with a huge gouge or chisel, and highly polished. “It was never cut by man in that fashion; we found it as you see it, and there’s many of ’em in the mine. We call ’em slinking slides.”

“The marks must have been caused when the rocks were in a state of partial fusion,” observed Oliver, examining the place with much curiosity.

“I don’t know as to that, sir,” said the captain, moving on, “but there they are, and some of ’em polished to that extent you could almost see your face in ’em.”

On turning the corner of a jutting rock a light suddenly appeared, revealing a pair of large eyes and a double row of teeth, as it were gleaming out of the darkness. On drawing nearer, this was discovered to be a miner, whose candle was at some little distance, and only shone on him partially.

“Well, Jack, what’s doing?” asked the captain.

The man cast a disconsolate look on a large mass of rock which lay in the middle of the path at his feet. He had been only too successful in his last blasting, and had detached a mass so large that he could not move it.

“It’s too hard for to break, Captain Dan.”

“Better get it into the truck,” said the captain.

“Can’t lift it, sur,” said the man, who grudged to go through the tedious process of boring it for a second blast.

“You must get it out o’ that, Jack, at all events. It won’t do to let it lie there,” said the captain, passing on, and leaving the miner to get out of his difficulty as best he might.

A few minutes more and they came on a “pare” of men (in other words, a band of two or more men working together) who were “stopeing-in the back of the level,” as they termed the process of cutting upwards into the roof.

“There’s a fellow in a curious place!” said Oliver, peering up through an irregular hole, in which a man was seen at work standing on a plank supported by a ladder. He was chiselling with great vigour at the rock over his head, and immediately beyond him another man stood on a plank supported by a beam of timber, and busily engaged in a similar occupation. Both men were stripped to the waist, and panted at their toil. The little chamber or cavern in which they worked was brilliantly illuminated by their two candles, and their athletic figures stood out, dark and picturesque, against the light glistering walls.

“A curious place, and a singular man!” observed the captain; “that fellow’s family is not a small one.—Hallo! James Martin.”

“Hallo! Captain Dan,” replied the miner, looking down.

“How many children have you had?”

“How many child’n say ’ee?”

“Ay, how many?”

“I’ve had nineteen, sur, an’ there’s eight of ’em alive. Seven of ’em came in three year an six months, sur—three doubles an’ a single, but them uns are all gone dead, sur.”

“How old are you, Jim?”

“Forty-seven, sur.”

“Your brother Tom is at work here, isn’t he?”

“Iss, in the south level, drivin’ the end.”

“How many children has Tom had, Jim?”

“Seventeen, sur, an’ seven of ’em’s alive; but Tom’s only thirty-eight years old, sur.”³

“Good-morning, Jim.”

“Good-morning, Captain Dan,” replied the sturdy miner, resuming his work.

“Good specimens of men these,” said the captain, with a quiet smile, to Oliver. “Of course I don’t mean to say that all the miners hereabouts are possessed of such large families—nevertheless there are, as I dare say you have observed, a good many children in and about St. Just!”

Proceeding onward they diverged into a branch level, where a number of men were working overhead; boring holes into the roof and burrowing upwards. They all drove onwards through flinty rock by the same slow and toilsome process that has already been described—namely, by chipping with the pick, driving holes with the borer, and blasting with gunpowder.

As the Captain and Oliver traversed this part of the mine they had occasionally to squeeze past small iron trucks which stood below holes in the sides of the level, down which ever and anon masses of ore and débris came from the workings above with a hard crashing noise. The ore was rich with tin, but the metal was invisible to any but trained eyes. To Oliver Trembath the whole stuff appeared like wet rubbish.

Suddenly a low muffled report echoed through the cavernous place. It was followed by five or six similar reports in succession.

“They are blasting,” said Captain Dan.

As he spoke, the thick muddy shoes and brick-dust legs of a man appeared coming down the hole that had previously discharged ore. The man himself followed his legs, and, alighting thereon, saluted Captain Dan with a free-and-easy “Good-morning.” Another man followed him; from a different part of the surrounding darkness a third made his appearance, and others came trooping in, until upwards of a dozen of them were collected in the narrow tunnel, each with his tallow candle in his hand or hat, so that the place was lighted brilliantly. They were all clad in loose, patched, and ragged clothes. All were of a uniform rusty-red colour, each with his broad bosom bared, and perspiration trickling down his besmeared countenance.