I go home late, and Nela will show you the way to the works."
"Many thanks, my little friend."
The tunnel had brought them out at a spot even more wonderful than that they had left. It was an enormous gulf or chasm in the earth, looking like the result of an earthquake; but it had not been rent by the fierce throbs of planetary fires, but slowly wrought by the laborious pick of the miner. It looked like the interior of a huge shipwrecked vessel, stranded on the shore, and broken across the waist by the breakers, so as to bend it at an obtuse angle. You could fancy you saw its ribs laid bare, and their ends standing up in an irregular file on one side. Within the hollow hull lay huge stones, like the relics of a cargo tossed about by the waves, and the deceptive light of the moon lent so much aid to the fancy that Golfin could have believed that he saw among the relics of a ship's fittings, corpses half devoured by fishes, mummies, skeletons—all dead, silent, half-destroyed and still, as if they had long been lying in the infinite sepulchre of the ocean. And the illusion was perfect when he presently heard a sound of waters, and a regular splash like the dash of ripples in the hollow of a rock, or through the skeleton timbers of a wrecked vessel.
"There is water hereabouts," he said to his guide.
"The noise you hear,"—replied the other, stopping,—"and which sounds like—what shall I say—like the gurgle you make when you gargle your throat?..."
"Exactly—and where is that gurgle? Is it some rivulet that runs near here?"
"No, Señor; over there to the left there is a slope, and beyond it a wide mouth opens in the ground, a cavern, an abyss without any known bottom. La Trascava they call it. Some say that it runs down to the sea at Ficóbriga, and others think that a river flows at the bottom of it which goes round and round, like a wheel, and never comes out anywhere. I fancy it must be like a whirlpool. Some again say that down there is a constant gust of air coming out of the interior of the earth—as we blow when we whistle—and that this blast meets a current of water; then they quarrel, and struggle, and fight, and produce that noise that we hear up here."
"And has no one ever been down into this cavern?"
"It can only be got into in one way."
"How?"
"By jumping into it. Those who have gone in have never come out again; and it is a great pity, for they might have told us what goes on in there. The other end of the cavern is a long way off from this, for two years ago, when some miners were working they came upon a rift in the rock where they heard the very same sound of water as you hear now. This rift must, no doubt, communicate with the inside galleries, out of which the blast blows and into which the water rushes. By daylight you can see it plainly, for you need only go a few steps to the left to reach the spot and there is a comfortable seat there. Some people are frightened to go there, but Nela and I sit there to listen to the voice down inside the cavern—for really, Señor, we can fancy we hear it talking. Nela declares and swears that she hears words, and can distinguish them quite plainly. I must confess I never heard any words; but it goes on murmuring like a soliloquy or a meditation, and sometimes it is sad and sometimes gay—sometimes angry, and sometimes good-humored and jolly."
"And yet I can make nothing of it but a gurgle," said the doctor laughing.
"It sounds so from this spot.—But we must not stop now, it is getting late. You must be prepared to go through another gallery."
"Another?"
"Yes—and this one branches off into two in the middle. Beyond that there is a labyrinth of turns and zigzags, because the miners have to make galleries which, when they are worked out, are deserted and left to their fate. Go on Choto."
Choto slipped into a little opening that looked scarcely bigger than a rabbit-hole, followed by the doctor and his guide, who felt his way along the dark, narrow, crooked passage with his stick. There could be no better evidence of the delicacy and subtlety of the sense of touch, extending beyond the skin of a human hand through a piece of senseless wood. They went forwards, at first in a curve, and then round corner after corner, and all the way between walls of damp, and half-rotten planking.
"Do you know what this reminds me of?" said the doctor, perceiving that his guide took pleasure in similes and comparisons. "Of nothing so much as the thoughts of perverse man. We represent the consciousness of evil, when he looks into his conscience and sees himself in all his vileness."
Golfin fancied that he had used a metaphor rather above his companion's comprehension; but the blind boy proved that he was mistaken, for he said at once:
"For those to whom that inner world looks dark and gloomy, these galleries must be dismal indeed; but I, who live in perpetual darkness, find here something which has an affinity with my own nature. I can walk here as you would in the broadest road. If it were not for the want of air in some parts and the excessive damp in others, I should prefer these subterranean passages to any place I know."
"That is an idea of brooding fancy."
"I feel as if there were in my brain a narrow passage—a rabbit-hole—like this that we are walking in, and there my ideas run riot grandly."
"Ah! what a pity that you should never have seen the azure vault of the sky at mid-day!" the doctor exclaimed involuntarily. "Tell me, does this dark hole—in which your ideas run riot so grandly—lead out anywhere?"
"Oh yes! we shall be outside quite soon now. The vault of the sky you said—I fancy it must be a perfect, equal curve, which looks as if we could touch it with our hands, but we cannot really."
As he spoke they got out of the tunnel; Golfin drawing a deep breath of relief, like a man who has cast off a burthen, exclaimed as he looked up at the heavens:
"Thank God that I see you once more stars of the firmament. Never have you seemed to me more beautiful than at this moment."
"As I was going along," said the blind boy, holding out his hand which held a stone, "I picked up this piece of crystal—now do you mean to say that these crystals, which to my touch are so sharply cut, so smooth and so neatly packed side by side, are not a very beautiful thing? They seem so to me at any rate." And as he spoke he broke off some of the crystals.
"My dear fellow," said the doctor with great feeling and compassion, "it is sad indeed that you should not be able to know that this stone is hardly worth looking at, while over our heads there hang the myriads of marvellous lamps that sparkle in the heavens." The boy threw back his head and said in a voice of deep regret:
"Is it true that you are there, you little stars?"
"God is infinitely great and merciful," said Golfin, laying his hand on his young companion's shoulder. "Who knows—who can say—much stranger things have happened—are happening every day." As he spoke, he looked close into his face, trying to see the lad's eyes by the dim light; fixed and sightless, he turned them in the direction in which he heard the speaker's voice.
"There is no hope," Golfin muttered.
They had come out on an open space. The moon, rising higher and higher, illuminated undulating meadows and high slopes, which looked like the ramparts of some immense fortification.—To the left, on a level plateau, the doctor saw a group of white houses crowning the slope.
"There, to the left," said the boy, "is my home—up at the top. Do you know that those three houses are what remain of the village of Aldeacorba de Suso. All the rest has been pulled down at different times in order to dig mines; all the soil underneath is
