Pisky-Led
I stopped the gig at the main adit level and with my hand cupped over my torch so that it showed only a glimmer of red light, I hurried down the gallery. The air was very still. No wind blew up from the sea. There was no sound of waves. The only sound was the drip of water. The quiet of the place magnified the sound. The drip of water and the stillness both seemed merged. It was as though night had seeped down into the galleries and the mine slept.
The adit seemed longer than when I had come down it with Captain Manack. I was almost running. I was afraid I had missed the old man. But when I reached the bend that brought me in sight of the bottom of the shaft he used, there was his lamp glowing yellow against the walls of the gallery. I stopped then. The old man was going down the gallery towards the sea. I followed. I had switched off my torch. I could see the shape of the gallery against the distant light of his lamp.
A ghostly glimmer of moonlight filtered down into the gallery as I went past the shaft by which he had descended. Glancing up, I could see the ladders snaking up over the dripping rock walls. Ahead of me the light of his lamp disappeared. He had turned off to the right. The gallery was suddenly dark. I switched on my torch and almost ran to the point where his light had disappeared. He had turned up a cross-cut. I thought he must be going down to the Mermaid. But when I turned into the crosscut and reached the shaft leading to the Mermaid, it was just a black hole with the rungs of a ladder sticking up out of it. I switched off my torch and stood there in the darkness, listening. All about me was the drip and gush of water. Behind was the sigh and gurgle of the sea in the adit. And ahead the rhythmic suck of the pump. The unearthly stillness of the mine was full of sound. No chance of hearing a man's movements.
The cross-cut forked just beyond the open hole of the shaft. I chose the right-hand one. It was little more than a cleft in the rock, about the height and width of a man. It sloped sharply down and then levelled off with ochre-coloured water ankle deep. My boots were full of it. The roof came gradually lower until I was bending almost double. I hit my head on a protruding rock and cursed. I uncupped my torch and shone the powerful beam ahead of me. The tunnel straightened out until I could see at least fifty yards along it. No sign of Manack. I knew then I had taken the wrong turning, for I had not been that far behind him.
I turned and hurried back. The left-hand fork was no wider than the other and it, too, sloped down. My water-logged boots squelched in the thick ooze that formed the floor. The sound of the pump grew louder till its rhythmic thump and suck filled my ears to the exclusion of anything else. With it was the gush of rushing water. The tunnel levelled off, heightened and broadened and, round a bend, I came upon the pump. A giant waterwheel turned slowly in a deep cleft. Water poured with the force of a small fall from the roof of the cleft. It fell with its full weight on the rear of the wheel, turned it and then disappeared into a black abyss below, sucking and gurgling in its haste to get to the sea. From the side of the wheel a big arm thrust up and down working the bob of the pump. The bob was a great beam, as big as a tree, pivoted at the centre. It rocked up and down like a see-saw, the farther end attached to a long rod which disappeared into the pump shaft. At each thrust there was a great gurgling and sucking. Then it would rise and a mass of water would surge into a narrow adit cut through the rock beyond.
It was a monstrous piece of mechanism. Groaning and sucking down there in the depths of the mine, it was like a prehistoric monster. It was part of the mine itself. It went on working night and day, automatically, without ceasing. It was the sort of contraption the old Cornish miners had used before the days of steam. I'd seen pictures of them in old mining books. But I'd never actually seen one before.
I took all this in at a glance as I dodged under the bobbing beam and hurried on along the tunnel. The rhythmic thumping of the giant pump became muffled and resonant as the roof of the tunnel closed down on me. At one place I had to crawl on my hands and knees through cold ochre-coloured water. Then the passage broadened out and the roof rose up and suddenly vanished. I shone my torch upwards. I was no longer in a tunnel, but in a great gap where a tin bearing seam had been ripped out leaving the bare rock on either side. Sloping all the way they must have cleared to a height of almost two hundred feet. The beam of my torch could just pick out the roof. It seemed as though the rock, which sloped up at an angle, must grind together at any moment, closing the two-foot gap.
A little farther on the roof came down again and I was bending low in a narrow, stuffy passage with the water round my ankles. Twenty yards or so farther on the tunnel ran out into a wider gallery that crossed it like a T-join. I switched my torch off as I looked out into this larger gallery. It was well that I did so, for not fifty yards up the straight, broad gallery to the right the light of a lamp showed the rock walls of a bend.
It surprised me that Manack hadn't got farther. But I didn't stop to think about that. I turned into the gallery and hurried after the subdued glow of his lamp. The floor of this gallery was much drier and sloped gently upwards. It was easy going, my mind had time to wonder what the hell Manack was up to. I would have expected him to go down to the Mermaid. That was the natural thing for him to do. That was where his precious lode was. But this way could only lead into the old part of the mine. I had kept my bearings — it was an entirely automatic reaction. And I knew that we were now going inland to the north of the main shaft. If he had kept straight on he would soon be in that part of Wheal Garth that narrowed and squeezed between Botallack and Come Lucky. At the thought of Come Lucky the hair prickled along my scalp. Come Lucky was full of water. Suppose the old man were going to blow a hole in Come Lucky?
All that weight of water would come flooding into Wheal Garth. That would stop his son's little scheme of letting the sea into the Mermaid.
I began to run. I had to keep close to him now. I had to see what he was up to. For all I knew he might have his charges fixed. He might be going to fuse them tonight. He'd do it at night. If he did it during the day, his son and Slim and Friar might be caught and overwhelmed in the Mermaid.
The gallery ahead suddenly became dark. I switched my torch on, shielding the beam with my hand. Round the next bend I found a narrow winze going off to the right. A feint gleam of light shone on the wet floor of it. The winze sloped down to a drift, which narrowed till it was no wider than my body. The roof came right down till I was bent low. Twice I cracked my head against the rock roof. I could have done with a helmet in these low runnels. It got wetter as we descended until the water splashed around my calves. The passage twisted and turned, following the haphazard line of some old seam that had been worked. Round a bend I suddenly came upon him, not twenty feet away from me. He was standing with his lamp in his hand, looking straight towards me. It was almost as though he were waiting for me. I froze, wondering whether he had seen me. But apparently not, for he shone his lamp towards the roof. It was quite high where he stood and a ledge of rock ran up to a hole that looked no bigger than a rabbit's burrow. A stream of dirty liquid gushed from it. He fixed his lamp to his helmet, climbed the ledge and disappeared head-first into the hole.
I waited a moment and then followed. The hole was about three feet high and two wide. The air in it was stale. It smelt dank and rotten. I crawled on hands and knees for perhaps twenty feet through filthy water. Then the roof rose and I could stand upright again. The old man's lamp bobbed ahead of me like a will-o'-the-wisp. We turned right at a fork, climbed along a narrow ledge that dropped away to nothing, and then turned right, into another gallery.
I was beginning to lose my sense of direction in this maze. The tunnel curved away to the left. The light of his lamp grew brighter. He had stopped. I, too, stood still. He could not be more than twenty feet ahead of me. Then the light grew fainter. I followed. My torch was switched off. I was going forward by the diffused light of the lamp ahead.
Suddenly my right foot met nothing. I flung the weight of my body back as I fell. It was the only thing that saved me. I fell back with my left leg twisted under me and my hands braced against the rock on either side. I felt about with my right foot as I sat there. The floor of the tunnel dropped away. There was no floor there.
Manack's light was fading. Shielding my torch, I switched it on. I was sitting on the lip of a hole about two foot six across. I thrust the naked beam of the torch into the hole. It was a narrow shaft. Its aged rock walls were covered with slime and glistened with the water that seeped out of every crevice. It went down and down. I could not see the bottom of it, but I heard the faint sound of the sea above the steady drip of the water. There was a corresponding hole in the roof. It was an old shaft. Perhaps two hundred years old. Probably it had been cut when the mine was first being developed.
I was in a cold sweat. But for the fact that I had instinctively fallen back on to my other leg, I should now have been lying at the bottom of that black funnel, broken and crushed with the sea sucking at my body.
I got to my feet and stepped across the yawning circle of the shaft. It needed an effort of will to go on. It had been a near thing and I was badly shaken. I'd never been in an old mine before. At the next bend I had to stop, for Manack was standing by the entrance to another narrow gallery, his head cocked on one side as though listening. I could see his eyes glittering in the light of his lamp which was reflected from the streaming walls. Again I had the feeling that he was waiting for me.
This feeling became an obsession. I started to wonder whether he had deliberately chosen a gallery that led across an old shaft. But it seemed ridiculous. Why should the man think any one was following him? With the sound of water all round he couldn't possibly have heard me falling.
He disappeared into the dark cleft. Again I was following his lamp as it led me like a will-o' — the-wisp along a twisting corridor in the rock. I went more carefully now, using my torch where possible, and where not, testing in front of me with my feet at each step.
The light ahead suddenly vanished completely as though it had been blown out. I waited a second in the darkness, listening. I could hear nothing but the sound of water and a distant whispering that might have been the sea or a gush of water. It was an eerie sensation, standing there in the complete darkness, listening for the sound of a footstep that I could not possibly hear.
At length I switched on my torch and went forward by the red gleam that shone between my fingers. A few steps farther on I caught quite definitely the sound of the sea. It was a whispering murmur, like the sound of wind in trees. The gallery opened and the floor of it vanished again, sloping in wet rock into an abyss of watery sound. A whole seam had been hewn out here, leaving a blank space between the rock walls. And high above me a little circle of moonlit sky showed. It was a long way away, like a pin-point of light. It was hard to believe that up there was a world of gorse and heather with the lights of farmsteads shining out. Maybe at this very moment the girl and boy I'd seen earlier in the day were leaning against the circular wall that marked the shaft, gazing out across the sea to the silver of the moon track. It didn't seem there could be any world, but this nightmare maze of tunnels creeping tortuously through dripping, slime-covered rock.
The floor of the gallery didn't vanish like it had done before. It continued across the sloping surface of the rock in a wooden platform. Most of the lagging had decayed and fallen away. But the bare stulls, driven into holes in the rock, remained. They were green and rotten with age. I tested the nearest with my boot, clinging to a hand-hold on the rock before trusting my full weight on it. The wood broke with a soft crunch and I could hear it bouncing down against the rock walls until the sound of it was drowned by the sound of the water.
It was no use trusting my weight to those wooden stumps. Yet Manack had gone ahead of me. I shone my torch across the gap. It was about twenty feet and on the other side there was the dark cleft of the gallery continuing. For a wild moment I thought I was what old Cornish miners would have called pisky-led. Suppose that light I had been following wasn't Manack's at all? The old stories of the Knockers and the Hand of Dorcas came to me. And then I bent down and shone my torch along the line of the stulls.
Iron staples had been driven into crevices in the rock. That was how Manack had got across. No goblins. No piskies. Just solid iron staples. They seemed to bring a breath of sanity into that dank place. I went across then, holding my torch in my mouth and clutching to hand-holds with my belly flat against the slimy rock as my feet sought and found each staple, testing it before venturing my full weight on it.
But I was very thankful when I was across that gap and in the gallery beyond. I went on then. There was no light ahead now. A piece of rock fell out of the wall as I steadied myself against it. I shone my torch on the roof. The rock was no longer granite. It was softer and there were great gaps in it and crevices. More and more often my feet stumbled against broken chunks of it. It was a piece of bad country. Shortly afterwards I came to a fall, blocking the gallery. It was an old fall and the rock was so soft that the water pouring over it had moulded it into one slimy mass. The roof was higher here and a ledge in the left-hand wall ran back and up to a dark cleft. I climbed this and instantly saw Manack's lamp shining on the walls. Again I had the feeling he had been waiting for me The rock was granite again now and so low that I was bent almost double. It led to a place where several galleries met. They were all of them little wider than clefts. I plunged on after Manack's light. I was scared now of losing touch with it. This part of the mine seemed honeycombed. Every now and then I was passing openings in the rock — cross-cuts, winzes, raises, galleries — all higgledy-piggledy, the way the ore had been ripped out of the mine. And they all looked so much alike.
Twice I took a wrong tunnel, turned back and found Manack's lamp still quite near to the point where I had mislaid my way. I became obsessed with this idea that he was waiting for me, that he wanted me to follow him. And every time I thought of having to find my own way back, I broke out into a sweat of fear. I tried desperately to retain in my mind a mental impression of each new gallery, each turn and twist. But there were so many of them. It was utterly impossible. Not only that. I had to concentrate on following the dim light of the lamp ahead. And whilst hurrying, at the same time to test the ground under each foot.
I crawled through a long tunnel not three feet high. I was then only a few yards behind Manack. Some trick of the mine brought a fresh wind blowing up this tunnel and with it came the sound of the sea. The tunnel emerged into a narrow gallery. It was so narrow that at times I had to edge along it sideways. A part of the roof had come away in one place. And when I had scrambled over the fall, black darkness faced me. I switched on my torch and hurried after Manack. The tunnel climbed steadily, twisting and turning. There was no light ahead. All I had was the red glow from between my fingers. Here and there cross-cuts shot off at right angles. I kept on, going faster, becoming less cautious of the ground underfoot. I had to catch up with Manack.
Then suddenly the gallery ended. It was a fall. A bad one by the look of it. I shone my torch into the hole in the ceiling, blinking in the sudden glare of the naked beam. There seemed to be a dark hole. I scrambled up, thrusting myself right into the jaws of the fallen roof. But there was no opening. It had only been a shadow etching the face of the rock black. There was no way on along that gallery. A rock gave beneath my weight and I slid down the face of the fall, dropping my torch and skinning my hands.
In the sudden darkness I searched feverishly for my torch. All my hands encountered were cold rock and thick, clinging mud. God, I mustn't lose my torch. Supposing the bulb had broken. Why hadn't I brought a miner's lamp? A miner's lamp would last longer than a torch. It couldn't get broken. I knelt down on the floor, cursing, almost crying, whilst my hands searched frantically. Then I remembered my matches. Of course, I'd got my matches. Hell, what was I panicking for? I got a grip of myself. I felt the conscious power of my will loose the tension of my nerves. I realised that I was practically sobbing for breath as I put my hand in my jacket pocket. The matches rattled comfortingly in the box.
I struck one. The little yellow flare of light was like a beacon of safety. The torch had rolled farther down the gallery than the spot at which I had been searching. Its chromium-plated case twinkled as though hugging itself with laughter. I picked it up and thrust forward the switch. The beam shone out as bright as ever. I gave a gasp of relief.
Then I turned in sudden renewed fear and hurried back down that twisting, sloping gallery. I had to find Manack. I didn't know my way out. I knew I couldn't remember the twists and turns I'd come. I didn't even know what part of the mine I was in. All I knew was that I was in the old workings. I might wander here for days. Surely Manack would wait for me? He'd waited each time before. Or had I been wrong? Perhaps he hadn't any idea I was behind him. I rammed my head against a buttress of rock and cried out with the blinding pain. But I didn't stop. I peered up each narrow cleft that led off the gallery I was in. Some were cross-cuts. Others were just clefts that finished in nothing. In none of them did I catch sight of the friendly glow of Manack's lamp. I came to a fork. I couldn't remember it. I took the right-hand gallery. Before I'd gone twenty paces I was certain I hadn't come that way. I went back and tried the left. Again I was certain it wasn't the one I had come down. I stopped then. I was panting heavily. I must get a grip on myself. I had been wrong about Manack. He hadn't been waiting for me. It was all imagination. Why the hell had I come? And then a new thought struck me. Suppose Manack had known I was following him? Suppose he had led me up into these old workings on purpose? What a way to finish a man! What a perfect way to kill me — to lead me up here into this rabbit warren and then abandon me! Those stories I'd heard of the Roman catacombs. I remembered the priest who had taken me over the Santo Calisto — thirty-nine miles of underground passages, tier on tier of them, and all along the walls the niches where Rome's Christians had been buried in the early days of the persecution. I could see that priest, the lighted taper shining on his dark, foreign face and upstarting, wiry hair, as he backed away from us down gallery after gallery. He had told us that there were still galleries the monks had not explored, that Germans seeking escape after the fall of Rome had forced their way into the catacombs and never come out. That priest had scared me. And when at the top I had asked what nationality he was, for he did not speak with an Italian accent, he had smiled and said German.
I cursed out loud. I must stop myself thinking of things like that. I must get a grip on myself. I took a deep breath and held it, stopping my panting. Manack must be about here somewhere. I called him by name. I shouted at the top of my voice. But all that happened was that the sound of my voice came back to me as a hollow, muffled echo. I tried again. Again I heard my voice come whispering back along the galleries long after I had ceased to call. And then something like a laugh sounded. But it was just a trick of my imagination. It came again, a rustling, cackling noise. With it came a draught of air. Probably it was the sound of the sea wandering along the galleries.
The sea! I pulled myself together then and switched off my torch. I had to conserve the battery. No use wasting it whilst I stood still, thinking. And I must think. I must reason this out. I mustn't panic. I was a miner, not a kid going underground for the first time.
I turned about in the darkness, searching for the direction of that faint breath of air that stirred along the gallery. It took me back towards the fall of rock. I followed it into a cross-cut. The cross-cut was low. I had to crawl through on hands and knees. The breeze was stronger in this narrow tunnel. I could feel it cool on my face. It smelt dank and salt. The tunnel opened out again and then descended steeply. Soon I was scrambling over fallen rock down an almost vertical funnel with water pouring between my legs, soaking me to the waist. It levelled out again I could hear the sea now. The feint gurgle and lap of water came to me on the breeze which was strong and fresh.
Then suddenly the gallery ended. It wasn't a fall of rock that faced me. It was just empty space. I raked that space with the beam of my torch. It was a great cavern, whether natural or not I don't know. The sea slopped about in the bottom of it. I thought I could dimly see the black surface of the water on the edge of my torch's visibility.
There was no exit that way. The sides of the cavern fell away sheer. Even if I could have got down, there was no indication that there was a way out below. Water cascaded in little falls down the smooth, weed-grown rock. I scrambled back then, up the funnel and along the tunnel and back to the gallery from which I had started.
No good following the wind. I switched my torch out and tried to remember the way I had come. If I could just retrace my steps. I faced the gallery again and started walking. I took the left-hand fork. I went on, following my nose, selecting passages at random. Pretty soon I knew I was lost. There were falls I had not seen before, drifts knee-deep in ochre-coloured water, nothing I recognised. I found a weed-grown shaft that went up vertically and disappeared beyond the range of my torch without any circle of moonlight showing its pin-point light of hope at the top. Probably one of the old shafts that had been blasted in. Water became more evident. It poured from every crevice and ran knee-deep along a gallery I walked down. The roof of that gallery gradually lowered until the gallery was no more than a pipe down which the water poured, gurgling.
I went back again and tried another. This led me upwards, passing me from level to level. It had a plan. I could understand it. Then it suddenly petered out for no apparent reason except, of course, that the tinners had come to the end of the lode in that particular spot. I went back again, working my way down through the mine. If I could get within earshot of the pump — that would act as a guide for me. I followed the run of the water. The galleries were like narrow Gothic passages. And then suddenly they would open out into cathedral-like spaces where a broad seam had been worked, I worked my way down deep into the mine and the lower I went, the wetter it became. The black walls poured water. The air was dank and stale. There was no sound of the pump. No sound of the sea. Only the whispering trickle of water running over rock surfaces. A narrow winze took me down into a broader gallery. Here the water was almost up to my waist.
I struggled along it. I knew I should go back. I was too deep. But I couldn't face the thought of failure. The light of the torch was beginning to dim. For a time I refused to admit it. But down here in this swamped gallery with the dark surface of the water curving ahead of me I knew the battery was fading. The beam was no longer a white shaft of light. It had yellowed and lost its power. The change had been so gradual as to be almost imperceptible.
I forced my body forward through the weight of the cold water. Ahead the dark, polished surface was broken with water pouring in from the roof. And as I reached this point, my foot slipped from under me and I plunged forward, the water closing over my head. I came up gasping, holding the torch above my head and feeling about with my feet for the muddy floor of the gallery. I found it and climbed out of the hole, cold and dripping. One glance at the roof told me that I had stepped into a shaft for there was a gaping hole there out of which water poured in a steady stream.
I knew then that I was down to the water level of the mine. Below me were miles and miles of workings, all flooded. There was nothing for it, but to go back. I was scared now. Really scared. It was the yellowing beam of my torch that scared me. The battery had been stored too long. It might last five minutes. It might last an hour. But my time was limited. I had to find a way out.
I glanced at my watch as I waded back along that flooded gallery. The luminous hands showed five minutes to eleven. I'd been underground about an hour. I turned up a steep raise, dragging my mud-filled boots out of the water. My haste was almost frantic now. I must get as near to the surface as possible before the torch gave out. If I could find a shaft that ran up to a gleaming circle of moonlight — I could try and climb it. At any rate I could stay there until daylight and then start calling for help. There wouldn't be much chance of any one hearing me. But at least it would give me some hope. Or if I could find one of the galleries that led out on to the face of the cliffs.
As I climbed, I began to search about with my face for a sign of a breeze that would indicate the direction of the sea or shaft. But the air was still and lifeless. The galleries were like a tomb. I began to think of the catacombs of Rome again. No, I mustn't think of that. I'd lose my head if I thought of that. There was that story by Edgar Allan Poe. What was it? The Cask of Amontillado. Damn Poe. He was the last writer I ought to be thinking of if I was to preserve my wits.
Then suddenly I stopped. A gentle throbbing sound was in my ears. Was it my blood beating in my temples? I was panting like a lunatic. Was it the blood, or was it the sound of the pump? I tried to forget the beating of my heart and listen. But I couldn't be sure. Fear and the still, damp air could play all sorts of tricks.
I went forward slowly, concentrating all my energies on listening. The gallery roof rose. A rock ledge ran up to a dark hole. The sound seemed to come from there. Or was it my imagination? It was so ephemeral. I climbed the ledge and crawled into a narrow tunnel that was comparatively dry. God, how dim my torch was getting. The tunnel broadened and lifted to a gallery. The throbbing sound became louder and sharper and turned to a dripping. The rock was softer here. Part of the floor had caved in. Water dripped there resonantly. That was the sound I had heard.
I switched the dimming torch off and leaned against the wall, closing my eyes so that the darkness would not be so apparent. That sudden spark of hope had vanished. I felt exhausted. I put the torch in my pocket and leaned my whole tired weight against the wall. I had to think. I hadn't long now before I should be in darkness. The gallery was utterly still. The only sound was the steady drip of the water. There was no breath of air to guide me.
And then suddenly I realised that my hands were touching, not granite, but a softer rock. I got my torch out again. Yes, it was softer rock. That was why the floor had caved in. This was the same sort of rock that I had encountered shortly after Manack had led me across that sloping. Of course, this bad bit of country might extend over a wide area of the mine. But it was unlikely. The mine was predominantly granite. Soft stone would be only likely to fill in a fissure in the granite country.
I went on again. I came to a winze and peered down it. My torch barely showed me the outline of the walls. But a breath of cool air seemed to caress my face. I went down the winze and turned left into a narrower gallery, following the air. The walls were granite here and the roof was low. At the next bend the gallery finished in nothingness. I stood in the gap and looked out into what at first appeared to be a cavern. But I could just make out a wall of rock rising opposite me.
And then with a gasp of joy I saw a ledge running down to a fall of rock. The rock of the fall was soft and the water pouring over it had welded it into a solid mass. I slid down on to it. Surely this was the way Manack had led me? Surely I wouldn't be mistaken? There couldn't be two falls so identical. As I went down the gallery I became more and more convinced that I had stumbled on to the track by which I had come. The rock walls were soft. The roof was full of crevices and great cracks. Lumps of broken rock lay on the slime-covered floor.
And then I was suddenly at the sloping. I could hear the water pouring down the slope of the rocks to the sea far below. And right above me was that little pin-point of light that marked the top of a shaft.
The relief made me feel weak at the knees. I stood there for a moment, steadying myself and gazing up at that distant circle of light. What a difference it made to feel that I was in contact with the world above ground! It made even the darkness bearable.
Then I switched on the torch again and felt with my boot for the first of the iron staples. I found the wooden stump of the sloping timber. The staple was just above it, but I couldn't seem to find it. Perhaps in my excitement I was feeling in the wrong place. I took a firm grip at the handhold I had and felt farther out. But there was nothing, only the rotten stump of timber. I stepped back into the arch of the gallery then and leaned out with my torch glowing dimly against the rock above the stull.
There was no staple. Nor was there a staple above the next baulk of timber.
At first I thought this sloping must be different to the one I had crossed before. But there was the tiny pin-point of light high up above me and the slopping of the sea below. The rock formation was the same, too. I might be in the same cutting, but higher or lower than when I'd crossed before. Bui surely that fall of rock would not have been duplicated with the ledge running back and up to the narrow cleft that ran into granite country? I went back down the gallery to see. It was the same fall all right. When I returned to the slope I knell down and leaned out, shining my torch on to the place in the rock where I thought a staple should have been.
A ragged hole showed in a cleft. The iron of the staple had marked the rock and dirt was pressed back on either side. The staple had been knocked back and forth until it had fallen out.
It was then that my torch began to flicker. It hardly gave any light at all. I switched it off. Here, thank God, was not complete darkness. I could look up to that little circle of moonlight. Remote though it was, I derived some comfort from it.
I got a match from my pocket, struck it and leant far out. Its flickering light showed me that the next staple was also missing, and the next after that. They had been there when I had followed Manack across the slope. Now they had been prised out. It could mean only one thing. Manack had known I was following him. He had been waiting for me at each bend. He had deliberately taken me up into the old part of the mine. Then he had doubled back and crossed the stoping, knocking the staples out behind him. My God, what a devil! That was murder. It wouldn't seem like it. But that's what it was. And I remember thinking again — a man who would cold-bloodedly throw a dog down a shaft would do anything. I sat down on the floor of the gallery with my legs dangling over the abyss and considered what to do. I was quite calm now. I wasn't lost any more. I knew my way back to the pump and the main shaft from here. All I had to do was get across that twenty foot gap. That was a problem I could understand. I wasn't scared any more. There was nothing to frighten me about it. I wasn't facing the unknown now. This was a reality, something I could understand. Manack had tried to kill me. Indirectly he had attempted to murder me. And all that stood between me and safety was twenty feet of bare, sloping rock. It was my wits against his.
When I had rested a while I started out to do the only thing possible. I switched my torch on, I found a foothold and a handhold and swung out of the gallery on to the rock face, the torch gripped in my mouth. The rock was not quite sheer — an angle of about eighty degrees, I should say — and pressing my body close to the wet face of it, I was able to relieve the strain on my limbs. The trouble was that the rock was slimy with water and fingers and boots were inclined to slip. Below me the sea slopped about noisily as though licking its lips in expectation of my fall.
I worked steadily out across the gap from handhold to handhold. Sometimes my feet were firmly set in a crevice or on a jutting rock, sometimes they dangled uselessly. At the fifth handhold I could find no place for my foot to grip. I hung there by my hands, searching in the dim flickerings of the torch for the next hold. But I couldn't see one. I searched about with my feet. There was nothing but smooth rock. I hung by one hand and felt out with the left. There was no handhold and no foothold, just the slimy surface of the rock. I had to go back then.
I tried climbing up. I got a little way and nearly stuck. My elbow joints were quivering with the strain by the time I regained the gallery. I sat down then with my back against the rock wall of the gallery. I'd try again later. But first I had to rest. I felt utterly exhausted. I seemed to have been stumbling through the workings of this mine for a lifetime. Yet it was only half-past eleven.
I tried to relax. My clothes were wet and uncomfortable. I wasn't cold. The air, though dark, was quite warm. I just felt dirty, wet and tired. Damn that blasted old man! What was the idea? Why had he wanted to kill me? What was he afraid of?
My limbs soon began to grow stiff. My clothes clung to me in a sodden mass. I began to shiver. I wasn't consciously cold, just wet. I got to my feet. I had to get across that gap. I tried climbing down and along under the stoping. But again I reached a point where there were no hand or footholds. Coming back my foot slipped and the sudden strain on my hands caused one of them to slide on the wet rock. I hung for a moment by one hand and only just managed to find a crevice with my boot. It was with great difficulty that I climbed back into the gallery.
After that I knew it was no use. I had to find a way round. But my torch was finished now. The pale glimmer of light was only sufficient to reveal the rock face when held a few inches from it. I felt my way back to the fall of soft rock, from the ledge, climbed it, crawled into the tunnel and took the first crosscut to the left. Creeping along with my hands on either wall, I took another turning to the left. It sloped down and a moment later the floor fell away from under my feet. I risked one of my precious matches here. The gallery dropped almost sheer for about fifteen feet and then levelled out again. I scrambled down and went on. The gallery forked and I took the left and was brought up in a few yards by a fall. I struck another match. There was no way through. I went back and tried the right fork. Again a fall and at the cost of still another match I discovered the gallery was completely blocked.
I went back, scrambling up the steep part in the dark. I tried another gallery and another. One ended in a shaft, the other in a blank wall of rock. I had only five matches left now. And suddenly I got scared I wouldn't find my way back to the sloping. At least there was a gleam of hope there. I took a wrong turning first time. I tried again in a sweat of fear. This time I came out through the tunnel on to the fall of soft rock. And so back to the sloping with that little pin-point of light high, high above me.
I sat there, shivering and listening to the sound of water. Perhaps daylight would show a gleam of light on the sea water below. If not… That didn't bear thinking about. Nobody knew I was down here. I could just stay here and rot.
And then suddenly I sat up. I thought I heard a voice, very faint and distant. There it was again. A long, echoing call. I must be going mad. It was like a woman's voice. I listened, but it didn't come again. I sat back. It was possible to imagine all sorts of sounds in the dripping of the water. I thought of the stories old tinners had told up in my father's shack in the Rockies, stories of goblins working underground, of the spirit of Gathon and sudden flares and lights. 'Wherever there do be a lode o' tin, thee's sure to hear strange noises,' I remember one grizzled old miner saying. But they never spoke of a woman's voice.
Then suddenly I sat up, my nerves stretched taut to a stifled scream. There was a light in the gallery beyond the sloping.
I tried to tell myself I was seeing things, that the darkness was playing tricks on my eyes. But I could see the cleft quite plainly, like an old doorway and it was all yellow with light. I stood up. Perhaps it was Manack coming back. The light seemed to be getting stronger. Then a long-drawn out cry curdled my blood. It was a soft wailing sound that dragged itself through the galleries and came echoing back in wail after wail, growing fainter each time. It came again. It was a woman's cry — a mad, wailing, echoing cry. And slowly the light grew brighter in the shaft beyond the sloping.