Geoffrey went swinging along as if he had all the work in the world upon his shoulders, till he became aware of a figure coming in his direction by another track – one which evidently joined his a little on ahead – and he noted that the figure carried a fly-rod over his shoulder.
“Why, it’s the doctor off fishing!” said Geoffrey to himself, as he recognised the fresh-coloured face surmounting the light tweeds. “What a horribly healthy place this must be. Morning, doctor!”
“Good-morning. Did you get your lodgings all right?” said the new-comer, scanning Geoffrey’s face as if in search of the seeds of disease, and looking disappointed.
“Yes, thanks.”
“Well, don’t fall in love with Madge Mullion, or old Mr Paul will be setting me to work to poison you.”
“Confound it all!” cried Geoffrey, facing round as he stopped short. “Do you people here think of nothing else but falling in love?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the doctor, dreamily, as he pushed his soft hat on one side, and gave his head a rub. “Fortunately for me they do think a great deal of that sort of thing.”
“So it seems. I’ve heard enough of it during the past four-and-twenty hours to make it seem as if your people thought young women were gunpowder, and I was a match.”
“Ah, yes!” said the doctor, sadly. “It’s the old story, you know – marrying and giving in marriage. What should we do for our population without?”
“Population don’t seem to keep you very busy, doctor.”
“Pretty well,” he said quietly: “pretty well; people have very large families about here, but they emigrate.”
“Do they?” said Geoffrey.
“Yes, the mining trade has been bad. But people have very large families about here,” said the doctor, with a sigh. “I’ve got ten of them.”
“Fruitful vine and olive branches round the table, eh?” said Geoffrey.
“Ye-es,” said the doctor, making an imaginary cast with his fly-rod over the heather; “but when the vine is too fruitful it rather shades the table, you know.”
“So I should suppose,” replied Geoffrey, with a slight grimace. “Have you good fishing here?”
“No – oh no! Nothing but small trout in the little streams, and they are getting poisoned by the mining refuse.”
“I’ll try them some day,” said Geoffrey.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” said the doctor, nervously. “It isn’t worth your while, and it’s very hard work to get a dish now-a-days,” and he glanced with anxious eyes at his companion. For, on non-busy mornings, Mr James Rumsey, MRCSE – the “doctor” being a local degree – found it useful to take his rod and capture a dish of trout for the home dinner, if he did not go out in the bay, in a borrowed boat, in search of something more substantial.
“Ah well, we’ll see,” said Geoffrey. “Yonder’s Horton Friendship, is it not?”
“Yes, that’s it,” said the doctor, who seemed relieved. “That’s the manager’s office close by. They’ve got a manager there.”
“Oh! have they?” said Geoffrey, who was amused by the doctor’s subdued, weary way. “All right; I’m going to see it, though. Good-morning.”
“Good-morning,” said the doctor, and making dreamy casts with his rod, he went on over the heather.
“Looks dull, and as if he had lived too much in the shade – of the vine and olive branches,” said Geoffrey, as he strode along. “Well, ten branches would keep off a good deal of the sun of a man’s life. What a row those stamps make!”
The rattling noise was caused by a row of iron-faced piles, which were being raised and let fall by a great cogged barrel upon a quantity of pieces of tin ore, with which they were fed, and as he drew nearer to watch them, the noise was almost deafening; but all the same he stopped to watch them curiously, and evidently dissatisfied with the primitive nature of the machine.
Farther on he paused to watch where a dozen women and boys were busy directing the flow of a stream of muddy water over a series of sloping boards, so as to wash the crushed ore free from earthy particles and powdered stone, till it fell of its own gravity into a trough prepared for its reception, where it looked like so much coffee-grounds waiting to be taken out and dried.
“Very, very primitive, and full of waste,” muttered Geoffrey then, as he noted the ruddy, healthy look of the people who ceased working to stare at the stranger, an example followed by a couple of men whose clothes seemed reddened by some mineral.
The manager welcomed the visitor in the most civil manner, and furnished him with a rough suit of flannel for the descent, as well as a stiff, solid kind of hat, which did duty for helmet, to protect his head from falling stones, and also for holder of a large tallow candle, which was stuck in front, so as to leave his hands at liberty.
The necessity for this was shown as soon as they reached the great square shaft, which was divided by a stout wooden partition into two. Up one of these came and went, by means of a rusty iron chain running over a wheel, a couple of long iron skeps or buckets, one of which, full of tin ore mingled with quartz rock and the ruddy mineral which Geoffrey had noted, came to the surface as they reached the pit.
“We go down here,” said Geoffrey’s companion, as a man lifted a heavy trap-door in a framework of planks, worn by many feet, and disclosing a dark hole up which came a hot, steaming vapour, which floated away in a thin cloud.
Geoffrey was as brave as most men, but he could not avoid a feeling of shrinking, as he saw what he had undertaken to do. He had expected to step into a cage such as was in use at coalpits, or perhaps have had to make use of the peculiar machine which lowered the miners from platform to platform ten or a dozen feet at a time; but here, as he gazed down into the dark, misty heat, he found that he would have to trust entirely to his own nerve and strength, for the descent was by a series of wet, greasy, nearly perpendicular ladders, placed zigzag from platform to platform, and with very little to save him from a fall too awful to contemplate.
The manager watched him narrowly before asking if he was ready, and on receiving an answer in the affirmative, he went down to the first wet, rotten-looking platform, where he stopped, and on being joined by Geoffrey he struck a match, and lit the candles in their caps.
“How deep is the mine?” asked Geoffrey.
“Two hundred fathom,” was the reply.
“Twelve hundred feet!” said Geoffrey. “A good long descent by ladders. How is it you have no chain and cage?”
“Money!” was the abrupt reply, and after a warning to him to hold tight, the manager, a rough-spoken Cornishman, continued the descent, Geoffrey following, and finding every thing of the most primitive character. The ladders were clumsily made, splashed with candle grease, and terribly worn; the platforms so old and rotten that they seemed unsafe; and yet down for twelve hundred feet stretched these ladders, one after the other, in apparently interminable length.
Geoffrey Trethick’s nerves were strong, but they were well put to the test, for every now and then a step of the ladder gave, or rattled beneath his weight. Now he would find a round so greasy that his foot would slip, while his candle sputtered, and several times nearly became extinguished, as they passed some shower of water that forced itself out of a vein in the rock.
“Rather rough work,” said the manager, and his voice sounded echoing and strange in the gloomy shaft, seeming to whisper past him, and die away amidst the maze of ladders overhead.
“Rather!” replied Geoffrey, who was beginning to be drenched with perspiration. “How much farther?” he continued.
“Farther! Oh, we are not half-way down yet, sir – nothing like it,” was the reply. “Like to rest?”
“No.