Part 6 (1/2)

A reference to his map rea.s.sured him, and he went on. But now a fresh doubt a.s.sailed him. Suppose his lamp should go out: how would it be possible to get back?

If he had been ready to give way to them there were hundreds of such fear-engendered thoughts ready to oppress him; but he fought against them steadily, and was the master as he plodded on, with his faintly marked shadow, distorted and broken as it fell upon the walls, forming his only companion in his quest.

”Poor mother!” he thought once; ”how alarmed she would be if she could see me now!”

”But it must be done,” he added, half aloud. ”Ours is notoriously a fiery mine. Ah! it is foul here.”

For the lamp began to sputter and burn dimly within the gauze for a few minutes, till he reached a more open place, thinking--”If I can get this task done, I shall have made the mine comparatively safe, and who knows but the old workings may not prove, with our modern appliances, well worthy of carrying on?”

He was so elated by these thoughts that the remainder of his dark subterranean journey seemed not one-half as difficult; and at last he seated himself on a block of stone fallen from the roof to consult his map.

”Let me see,” he said, half aloud, as, with the map spread upon his knees, he held his lamp so that the dim light might the better fall upon the canvas-backed paper; ”I must be about here; and if so, according to this plan the old mine workings might be reached through this gallery, or this, or this.”

He ran his finger along the different lines drawn in red ink, and was studiously considering how it would be best to proceed if he could win his father, and, through him, the other proprietors, to his plans, when all at once he started up, listening attentively, for it seemed to him that he could hear a sound as of some one working with pick or bar away ahead of the place where he was seated, and not back in the yielding seams of the pit.

_Tap_, _tap_, _tap_! Yes, there it was plainly enough, and from a part of the pit where there could be no working going on.

What could it be? n.o.body would be in that end of the mine. It was completely deserted. He did not believe anyone had been in that part of the great maze for months; there was nothing to bring a pitman there.

”Now if I were a superst.i.tious fellow,” said Philip to himself, ”and ready to believe in ghosts and goblins, I should run back and spread the news that this part of the pit is haunted by the restless spirit of some poor pitman who lost his life here years ago, and comes back to work.

But I don't believe in that sort of story, and I'm going to see what it means.”

All the same he felt very much startled; for it seemed so unaccountable for anyone to be there. The men would be in the regular seams. There was nothing to bring them here; and as they toiled at piece-work, they would not lift a pick except to hew out coal. No overman would be here without his knowledge; and try how he would to find some reason for the sound, he was still at fault. The only possibility was that, in some peculiar way the echo of a hewer's pick ran along the silent galleries, to be reverberated from this distant wall.

”Impossible!” he said, doubling up his map and replacing it in his breast, as he rose and took up his lamp.

”It is impossible!” he said again, as _tap_, _tap_, _tap_, the regular stroke as of a pick was heard, and with no small feeling of trepidation he went to search out the cause of the unusual sound.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

PARKS'S MARK.

Before he had gone far he became aware that the noise came from the old gallery that he had marked down as being the most likely to lead nearest to the workings of the ancient pit, and, after carefully peering down it, he held his lamp above his head to gaze in farther. But he could see nothing; and suddenly the noise ceased.

With a quick motion Philip thrust the tall, thin lamp inside his flannel mine-coat and b.u.t.toned it up, for the thought suddenly struck him that if anyone was at work there he would be sure to have a light.

It turned out as he expected, for there, upon a ledge of rock about fifty yards ahead, stood a Davy-lamp, shedding its soft dull rays around, so that some fell upon a wall of coal, which glistened in the light as if it had been newly cut.

”It is very strange,” thought Philip. ”Why should anyone be at work here? It is dangerous, too. The old mine full of water must be close behind.”

”Well,” he said, ”Davy-lamps are not at all ghost-like things, so let us see what it all means;” and going cautiously forward, with his own lamp hidden, he crept near enough to see that there was a heavy iron bar lying upon the flooring of the wide chamber, for the gallery had been opened out here, and beside it a heap of newly-chipped coal, the result of an effort evidently being made to bore through into the ancient pit.

”Why, it is treachery!” exclaimed Philip mentally. ”Someone is trying to flood--Ah!”

A tremendous blow fell upon his head, and he dropped to the ground, motionless, stunned as it were in body; but with every faculty of his mind quickened, and, with his eyes half-closed, he saw a dark figure stride across him, a short iron bar in his hand, pick up the lamp and hold it down.

”Yes, I ar'n't made no mistake, Muster Hex'on. I said I'd mak' my mark on yo, and yo've got it this time. How came he here?”

The man stood in a listening att.i.tude for a few moments, and then, apparently satisfied, raised his bar to strike again.