The White Virgin. Fenn George Manville
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.
“All right?” came from above, the words descending the shaft, and sounding like a strange whisper magnified and uttered close to his ear.
“Yes; lower away.”
The rope glided on round the bar; and Reed went on down and down, noting the differences in the formations as well as the crumbling, dripping stone would allow, and mentally planning out fresh drifts here and there, where he expected to find paying ore, till he found himself opposite to a great cavernous opening, black and forbidding-looking enough to repel any one wanting in nerve, while from far below came a gleam of light, apparently reflected from the water.
“Hold hard! Haul up four feet!”
Reed’s words went echoing to the surface, and were promptly attended to.
“Now hold fast!”
The next minute he gave himself a swing, and obtained foothold in the great cave whose bottom was worn hollow by the trickling of a tiny stream which drained into the lower part of the shaft, and after throwing off the rope and shouting to the men to haul up, he stood holding the light above his head, examining the roof and sides, while he waited for the descent of his companion; but here the ore seemed to have been chipped and picked out to the last fragment.
Sturgess joined him at the end of a few minutes, took the lanthorn, opened it so as to get as much light as possible, and then turned to Reed.
“Same way again, sir?”
“No; we’ll try that gallery off to the left. That third one I noticed last time.”
“Why, that’s right half a mile away, and goes to nowhere. That’s never been worked.”
Reed faced round to him sharply.
“Do you object to your job, my man?” he said; “because if so, speak at once, and send down one of the others.”
“Oh, I don’t object,” said the man surlily. “I’ll go where you won’t get them to venture. I was thinking about you.”
“Then don’t think about me, but about your duties.”
“That’s all right enough, sir; only if a regular consulting engineer came down, he’d chip off a bit here, and a bit there, and know directly what a mine’s worth. I took stock of this old place last time, and can tell you now without your troubling yourself to go a step farther. ’Sides, I’ve been down since.”
“Indeed!”
“Oh yes. I’d nothing to do, so it was natural I should come down and have a look of the property I was to take care of.”
“Well, and what estimate did you set on it – as to value?” said Reed, with a smile.
“Oh, about the usual figure,” said the man, with a peculiar laugh. “It’s worth just as much as you can get out of your shareholders.”
“Yes?”
“That’s it, sir; I’ve not been busy over mines ten years for nothing. Not a penny more. The old folks cleared it out clean enough, all but the patch to the right down yonder.”
“Then you think the whole thing is a swindle, Mr Sturgess, eh?”
“Oh no, sir. I don’t say that,” replied the man, with a chuckle. “I only say it’s a mine as will show up well when it has got all its new machinery. Ought to make a good job for a couple of years for a few people. Shall I show you where you can get a few good specimens? I know of some bits as are pretty rich.”
“No, thank you,” said Reed quietly. “I’m not a regular consulting engineer, my man, and we came down to do a good day’s exploring. I want to see the whole of the workings.”
“Then it’ll take you a week, sir.”
“Very well, then, let it take me a week. Now, then, let’s waste no more time.”
Michael Sturgess uttered a sound something like a grunt, and holding the lantern before him led on along the rocky cavernous passage, which was wonderfully free from fallen stones, the rock having formed endless pillar buttresses and arch-like processes of stalactitic growth, cementing and holding all firmly together.
But there was a wonderful sameness as they went on, following the course of what had once been a lode of ore, which had finally been cleared out, leaving its shape in the rock, and forming a tunnel as the ancient miners worked their way.
Far down the main gallery of the mine Sturgess paused by a narrow rift four or five feet across, and running up to nothing some fifteen feet overhead. The rock was different here, being a mass of cemented together fragments of the old geological stone lilies, and looked as if some modern shock had riven the place in two, for the lines on either side suggested that if compressed they would still fit together.
“Mean to go along here, sir?” said Sturgess, holding up the lanthorn, so as to display the stone of which the sides were formed.
“Yes; go on,” said Reed shortly.
“There’s been no working here, sir; this is all natural split in the rock.”
“I am perfectly aware of that, and we are wasting time.”
“Oh, all right, sir,” said the man surlily, and he strode in through the opening, walking as fast as he could, like a sulky, offended schoolboy, for a few dozen yards; but this soon came to an end, for in place of a regular beaten well-used way, they were now compelled to pick their path over broken marble, loose angular masses, and the accumulated débris which had fallen from above, while in places they had to stride from side to side of a narrow crevice which ran straight down.
But the place attracted Clive Reed as they went on and on, with the rift they traversed growing wider, and opening out into a cavern now, or contracting again, till in places their passage was so narrow that they had to squeeze through into curious-looking chambers in the rock. Then the way split and branched off into different passages, suggestive of endless labyrinths leading right away through the untrodden bowels of the earth. Below them in one place ran