different chaps this time. Got enough tackle?”
“Oh, yes, sir; ropes, hammer, spikes, and crowbar.”
“Lanthorn?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Shouldn’t come on a job like this without a light.”
“Then come along.”
He led the way through the narrow entrance, where the rock had once upon a time been picked away to allow room for the passage of horses or rough trucks, but now all covered with lichen and the marks of the eroding tooth of Time; and then up and down and in and out along the side of the chasm, which grew more gloomy at every step, deeper into the mountain-side, while the bottom of the gully grew narrower and closer, till it resembled the dried-up bed of a stream which had become half blocked up with the great masses of stone, which had fallen from above.
Clive Reed’s eyes were everywhere as they went on – now noticing spots where the sloping walls of rock had been worked for ore, others where trials had been made, honeycombing the rock with shallow cells, but always suggesting that this working must have been ages ago, and in a very superficial primitive fashion. This suggested plenty of prospect for the engineer who would attack the ancient mine with the modern appliances and forces which compel Nature to yield up her hidden treasures, buried away since the beginning of the world.
Clive Reed saw pretty well everything on his way to the dark end, and, after making a few short, sharp, business-like remarks, he said suddenly —
“The plans say there is no way out whatever, beside the entrance.”
He turned to Sturgess as he spoke, and a curious look came over the countenance of the guardian of the mine, but before he could speak one of the men behind said —
“Man as didn’t mind breaking his neck might get up yonder,” and he nodded towards the precipitous side.
“Which means that a rough staircase might easily be made if wanted, and – ”
He did not finish speaking, but sprang up on to a block of stone, climbed to another, drew himself on to a third, and extricated something from a niche which had caught his observant eye, and with which he sprang down.
It was a fine cambric handkerchief, which he turned over as Sturgess looked on stolidly and with the same peculiar look in his countenance.
“Here, somebody may make inquiries about this. You had better take it, Sturgess. Visitors to the old mine perhaps, but they have no business here now. You will keep the place quite private for the present.”
The man took the handkerchief, and a keen observer would have thought that he put it out of sight rather hurriedly.
“Blowed in,” said one of the others with a laugh. “Wonderful windy up here sometimes.”
Reed had started again, and plunging farther and farther into the natural cutting in the mountain-side, soon after reached the end of the cul de sac, where, partly obliterated by time, there were abundant traces of the old workings, notably the shafts with their crumbling sides, one going down perpendicularly, and into which the young engineer pushed over a stone. This fell down and down for some time before it struck against a projection with such force that it sent up a hollow reverberating roar, and directly after came the dull, sullen sound of its plunge into the water which had gathered in the huge well-like place.
“She’s pretty deep, sir,” said one of the men, with a laugh.
“Yes,” said Reed, with a nod, and he went on climbing over the blocks of stone fallen from above, and which cumbered the place, to one of the other two shafts, both of which had been made following a lode running raggedly down at an angle of about seventy degrees.
“We’ll try this,” said Reed sharply.
“Want me to go down and chip off a few bits that seem most likely?” said Sturgess roughly.
“No. Now, my lads, drive the crowbar well in here,” said the engineer, indicating a rift close to where they stood, a crevice between two immense blocks of limestone.
“This here one’s handier,” said one of the men, pointing to a crack close to the opening.
“Yes, and when you have loosened it by driving in that bar, more likely to be pulled down into the shaft. In here, please.”
The man inserted the sharp edge of the bar, and his companion made the great chasm echo as he began to drive the iron in with strokes of the heavy hammer he carried, till it was deemed safe.
“Hold a ridgement o’ sojers now, sir,” said the hammerman.
“Yes, that’s safe enough,” said Reed; and after carefully examining the ropes, he knotted two together, and formed a loop at the end of one.
“Shall we two go down, sir?”
“No; I am going,” replied Reed quietly.
“Find it precious dirty and wet, sir. Best let us.”
“No, thank you. Let me down. How far is it to the first level?”
“’Bout two hundred foot, I should say, p’raps more; but I dare say it don’t go down so straight far, but works out’ard like. I d’know, though. I’ve never been down, and nobody as I ever heard of ever did go.”
“No,” said the other with a laugh, “and strikes me as you won’t find nothing worth your while when you do go. The old folks got out all the good stuff from here hundreds o’ years ago.”
“You will be ready to haul up when I signal,” said Reed quietly.
“Oh, yes, sir. You may trust us. We don’t want to make an inquess on you.”
“Light the lanthorn,” said Reed to Sturgess, and taking off the flat tin case he carried slung under his left arm, he took from it a cold chisel and a geologist’s hammer; stripped off his coat, rolled up his sleeves over his white muscular arms, and then secured the lanthorn to his waist with the strap of his binocular.
“You’ll be careful about the loose stones, my men,” he said in quick, decisive tones. “You, Sturgess, will follow me as soon as I have sent up the rope.”
The men nodded as Reed slipped the loop over his head, and then sat in it, and without a moment’s hesitation, after the men had passed the rope round the upright bar, he lowered himself over the rugged side of the shaft, and was rapidly allowed to descend past the rough stones which formed the bottom of the slope, and showed traces still of how it had been ground away for ages by the passage over it of the freshly extracted ore.
It was a primitive way of descending, but in all probability the old manner had been as rough, and there was little to trouble a cool man with plenty of nerve, one accustomed to depend upon mine folk, and make explorations in shaft, tunnel, and boring, deep down in the earth. Besides, Clive Reed’s brain was too busy as he looked around him, noting some fifty feet down that a great vein of lead ore had been extracted from the solid rock, leaving a narrow passage going off at right angles. Another ran in an opposite direction, and soon after he passed another, just as if they were branches of some great root which he was tracing to its end.
About a hundred feet down, where the light shone now clearly, he dislodged a loose stone, which went on before him with a rushing, rumbling sound, ending in a sullen plunge into the water far below.
