Sappers and Miners Part 49

"Bah! he is of no use now. Hah! You have candles ready, I see. How many will the skep take?"

"Six on us, sir," said Vores.

"Follow me, then, some of you," said the Colonel. "Hardock, you're f.a.gged out, and had better stay."

"What! and leave them boys down there lost, sir?" cried Hardock, sharply. "Not me."

"Then head a second party; I'll go on with five."

"Right you are, sir," said Hardock. "Down with you, then; and we'll soon be after you. Will someone give me a tin o' water?"

Two men started up to supply his wants, as the Colonel and his party stepped into the skep to stand closely packed--too closely for Grip to find footing; and as the great bucket descended, the dog threw up his muzzle and uttered a dismal howl.

"Quickly as you can," shouted the Colonel, as the skep went down; but the engineer shook his head.

"Nay," he said to the remaining men present; "none o' that, my lads: slow and steady's my motter for this job. One reg'lar rate and no other."

In due time the other skep came to the surface, and Hardock, with a lump of bread in his hand and a fresh supply of candles and matches, stepped in, to be followed by five more, ready to dare anything in the search for the two lads; but once more poor Grip was left behind howling dismally, while Tom Dina.s.s nursed his leg and glared at him with an evil eye.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

DOWN IN THE DEPTHS.

"You lead with the lanthorn, Hardock," said the Colonel, as the man and his companions stepped out of the second skep and had to wade knee-deep for a few yards from the bottom of the shaft, the road lying low beneath the high, cavernous entrance to the mine, at one side of which a tiny stream of clear water was trickling. There the bottom began to rise at the same rate as the roof grew lower; and soon they were, if not on dry land, walking over a floor of damp, slimy rock.

"Keep straight on, sir?" said the captain.

"Yes, right on. They would not have entered the side gallery, or we should have met them as we came out."

The first side gallery, a turning off to the left, was reached, and, but for the fact that the Colonel's party had strayed into that part by accident, it would have been pa.s.sed unseen, as it was by the boys and Dina.s.s, for the entrance was so like the rock on either side, and it turned off at such an acute angle, that it might have been pa.s.sed a hundred times without its existence being known.

The men were very silent, but they kept on raising their lanthorns and glancing at the roof and sides as they tramped on behind the Colonel.

"There's good stuff here," whispered Vores to his nearest companion.

"Yes, I've been noticing," was the reply. "It's a fine mine, and there's ore enough to keep any number of us going without travelling far."

"Yes," said Vores. "Worked as they used to do it in the old days, when they only got out the richest stuff."

Just then Hardock stopped, and, upon the others closing up, they found themselves at an opening on the right--one which struck right back, and, like the other, almost invisible to anyone pa.s.sing with a dim light.

"Shall we give a good shout here, sir?" said Hardock.

"Yes," was the reply; and the men hailed as with one voice, sending a volume of sound rolling and echoing down the pa.s.sage of the main road and along its tributary.

Then all stood silent, listening to the echoes which died away in the distance, making some of the experienced miners, accustomed as they were to such underground journeys, s.h.i.+ver and look strange.

"Vasty place, mate," whispered Vores to Hardock, after they had all hailed again and listened vainly for a reply.

"Vasty?" said Hardock. "Ay! The gashly place is like a great net, and seems to have no end."

"Forward," said the Colonel. "No, stop. We have plenty of candles, have we not?"

"Yes, sir, heaps," was the reply.

"Light one, then, and stick it in a crevice of the rock here at the corner."

While the man was busily executing the order, the Colonel took out his pocket-book, wrote largely on a leaf, "Gone in search of you. Wait till we return," and tore it out to place it close to the candle where the light could s.h.i.+ne on the white sc.r.a.p of paper.

Then on they went again, with the experienced miners talking to one another in whispers, as with wondering eyes they took note of the value of the traces they kept on seeing in the rugged walls of the main gallery they traversed--tokens hardly heeded by the two boys in their anxiety to gain tidings of their fathers.

"It's going to be a grand place, my son," whispered Vores; "and only to think of it, for such a mine to have lain untouched ever since the time of our great-great-gaffers--great-great-great-great, ever so many great-gaffers, and n.o.body thinking it worth trying."

"Ay, but there must have been some reason," said the other.

"Bah! Old women's tales about goblin sprites and things that live underground. We never saw anything uglier than ourselves, though, did we, all the years we worked in mines?"

"Nay, I never did," said the man who walked beside Vores; "but still there's no knowing what may be, my lad, and it seems better to hold one's tongue when one's going along in the dark in just such a place as strange things might be living in."

Hardock stopped where another branch went off at a sharp angle, his experienced eyes accustomed to mines and dense darkness, making them plain directly; and here another shout was sent volleying down between the wet gleaming walls, to echo and vibrate in a way which sounded awful; but when the men shouted again the echoes died away into whispers, and then rose again more wildly, but only to die finally into silence.

Without waiting for an order, Hardock lit and fixed another candle against the glittering wall of the mine pa.s.sage, the Colonel wrote on a slip of paper, and this too was placed where it must be seen; but the Colonel hesitated as if about to alter the wording.

"No," he said, "I dare not tell them to make for the sumph, they might lose their way. You feel sure that you can bring us back by here, Hardock?"

The man was silent for a few moments, and then he spoke in a husky voice.

"No, sir," he said, "I can't say I am. I think I can, but I thought so this morning. The place is all a puzzle of confusion, and it's so big.

Next time we come down I'll have a pail of paint and a brush, and paint arrows pointing to the foot of the shaft at every turn. But I'll try my best."

"Ay, we'll all try, sir," said Harry Vores.

"Forward!" cried the Colonel, abruptly; and once more they went on till all at once, after leaving candle after candle burning, they reached a part where the main lode seemed to have suddenly broken up into half-a-dozen, each running in a different direction, and spreading widely, the two outer going off at very obtuse angles.

Here they paused, unconscious of the fact that they had pa.s.sed the spot, only a couple of hundred yards back, where the boys had made their heroic resolve to go on.

"Let me see," said the Colonel, excitedly; "it was the third pa.s.sage from the left that we took this morning."

Hardock raised his lanthorn and stared vacantly in his employer's face.

"No, sir, no," he cried breathlessly; "the third coming from the right."

"No, no, you are wrong. The third from the left; I counted them this morning--six of these branches. Why, Hardock, there are seven of them now."

"Yes, sir, seven, and that one running from the right-hand one makes eight. I did not see those two this morning by our one lanthorn. There are--yes--eight."

"What are we all to do? My head is growing hopelessly confused."