Pigeon Post. Arthur Ransome
Between your fingers. That’s right. Palm up, wrist up, and fingers forward, so that your hand shields it from behind. Hold it low, so that the grease doesn’t splash over you. Like this.”
“Better get inside before lighting up,” said John, who had had two matches blown out by little gusts of wind.
“And we’d better leave our shoes here,” said Nancy. “It’s called the Old Level, but it isn’t as level as all that and there’s one place where you have to paddle.”
“No adders?” said Roger.
“None in there.”
Eight pairs of shoes were left in a row outside the entrance to the level.
“Now then,” said Nancy. “I’ll go first. Only room for one at a time. Look here, Peg. You’re the other one who knows it. You’d better come last, just in case.”
“In case of what?” whispered Roger.
Nobody answered him. One by one they went into the tunnel. Candles were lit.
“Everybody ready?” called Nancy, and her cheerful voice sounded strange and hollow though she was only a dozen yards into the hill.
They moved slowly forward in the narrow tunnel, each with a splash of candle-light.
“Hoo! … Hoo! … Hooo!” said Roger, listening to his own voice.
“Look,” said Dick. “They must have blasted with gunpowder. You can see one side of the hole they bored for their charge.”
“Where?” said Roger. “Oh, yes. I see it,” and he ran his finger along a smooth and narrow furrow in the rock.
“Get along,” said Peggy. “Don’t let’s get left behind.”
“Look out for the water splash.”
A shout came from ahead.
“It’s only about an inch deep.”
That was Susan’s voice. They hurried on, and a moment later the lights far ahead of them disappeared. A faint glimmer on a damp wall of rock showed that the leaders had turned a corner.
“Let’s run,” said Roger.
“No,” said Dick, but walked as fast as he could along the uneven damp ground between the narrow trolley lines. “No good running if you can’t see. You’ll only catch a toe in a sleeper.”
Dorothea, Titty and Peggy hurried after them, their candles dribbling warm wax on their fingers.
“Why, it’s nothing of a water splash,” said Roger, as he wriggled his toes in the puddle between the trolley lines.
“Dry summer,” said Dick. “Perhaps it’s deeper other times.”
“Last look at daylight,” said Peggy. “That’s the end of the straight bit.”
They looked back. The walls of the tunnel disappeared into darkness but, far away behind them, the entrance showed like a pinprick in a sheet of black paper.
“We must be right in the middle of the mountain,” said Titty.
“Not nearly yet,” said Peggy.
They turned the corner. That far away pinprick of light was gone. For a moment they saw a flicker ahead of them. It disappeared. The tunnel had twisted again, and John, Nancy and Susan were already out of sight. Just for a half second Titty hesitated. She looked back at Peggy. But Peggy was close behind her and showed no signs of stopping. Oh well, if Peggy did not mind it, Peggy who was afraid of thunder-storms, it must be all right. Titty looked down at her wavering candle. Was her hand shaky or was it not? Anyhow, everybody else’s candle was flickering too.
“Listen,” said Dick.
Faint and far away they could hear a steady thudding noise.
“Slater Bob,” said Peggy. “Good. He’s there. I was a bit afraid he wasn’t, with the trolley being left outside.”
Barefoot on rock and damp ground, they hurried on. Round another corner, and then another, and still the leaders were not in sight. The thudding noise ahead of them grew louder. It stopped, and began again on a different note.
“Doesn’t sound like stone,” said Dick.
“Have you read A Journey to the Centre of the Earth?” Dorothea asked over her shoulder.
“About Hans Sterk and the hot water spouting out of the rock?” said Titty.
“About the mastodons,” said Dorothea. “It’s a whole herd of them, stamping.”
“Hurry up,” said Peggy.
At last, far ahead of them, they saw a group of shadowy figures with flickering candles held low.
The noise grew louder and louder. The tunnel opened out a little wider and higher at a sort of cross-roads where other tunnels joined it right and left.
“Nearly there now,” said Nancy. “Had to wait for you, just in case Peggy forgot and you went straight on by mistake.”
“I’d remembered all right,” said Peggy.
“We might have gone on for ever,” said Dorothea.
“Might have been a job to find you,” said Nancy. “Anyway, port your helm and head to starboard …”
Close together now, the whole party turned one by one into a tunnel that led to the right out of the main level. It twisted this way and that, and when they had gone forty or fifty yards along it, they were suddenly almost blinded by a bright light that made their candle-flames seem dim.
“Douse candles,” said Nancy, blowing out her own. “So that they’ll last out for the way back. We shan’t want them now. Hullo, Bob. We’ve brought some friends …”
They were at the mouth of a lofty chamber in the rock. The dazzling light of the acetylene lamp, that hung from an iron spike driven into a crack in the rock, showed them a short, broad-shouldered old man leaning on a baulk of timber that he had been shaping with an axe. A ladder went up into the darkness overhead beside a wide smooth wall of green slate.
“Come in,” said Slater Bob. “Come in and welcome. I’m nobbut shaping two-three props to put where there’s some gone a bit weak. Wouldn’t do for me to be shut out. Not likely. Eh, Miss Nancy, but there’s scarce room for t’ lot o’ ye. And no seats …”
“We don’t want to sit down,” said Nancy. “Look here, Bob, mother says you know something about gold in the fells, and we want to know where to look for it, if there is any really.”
“Gold,” said the old man, shading his eyes and looking at her through the dazzle of the light. “Of course there’s gold. There’s everything in these fells if only a man knew where. Slate for your roofs and slates for your schools and slate pencils too, though you don’t use ’em as we did when I were young. And copper, too, for your kettles and your saucepans, though that new aluminy come in that soaks away wi’ a drop o’ soda and makes food taste funny to me. And you never know what you’ll happen on. ’Twasn’t slate they was wanting, the folk that cut this level. Copper they was after, and they got a fair doing of it too, out of yon pocket on far side of the level where you turned to come in here. They were still getting copper out o’ that when I were a lad in the mines nigh sixty year since. And then they found no more and gave up, and I found the slate for myself just chipping about like. Slate’s not copper, but it’s right good stuff, and it’ll keep my belly full and a fire o’ nights, so long as folk build houses and set roofs on ’em to keep t’ rain out …”
“But you don’t burn slate,” said Roger almost to himself.
“Or eat it, you donk,” said Peggy.
Roger pretended he had not heard. As if he had not understood. And anyway, he had not meant to say it aloud. It was just