Part 11 (2/2)

And so he toiled, early and late, and knew no weariness.

His tunnel, in places not more than three and four feet high and between two and three feet wide, extended now several hundred feet under the sea, and was fitted at the gallery end with the usual raised iron door.

It was hot work in there, in the dim-lighted darkness, in spite of the fact that the sea was close above his head. Fortunately, here and there, he had come upon curious little chambers like empty bubbles in one-time molten rock, ten feet across and as much in height, some of them, and curiously whorled and wrought, and these allowed him breathing s.p.a.ces and welcome relief from the crampings of the pa.s.sage.

When he had broken into such a chamber it needed, at times, no little labour to rediscover his vein on the opposite side. But he always found it in time, and broke through the farther wall with unusual difficulty, and went on.

The men generally worked in pairs, but old Tom would have no one with him. He did all the work, picking and hauling the refuse single-handed.

The work should be his alone, his alone the glory of the great and ultimate discovery.

The rocks above him sweated and dripped at times, but that was only to be expected and gave him no anxiety. Alone with his eager hopes he chipped and picked, and felt no loneliness because of the flame of hope that burned within him. Above him he could hear the long roll and growl of the wave-tormented boulders--now a dull, heavy fall like the blow of a gigantic mallet, and again a long-drawn crash like s.h.i.+ngle grinding down a hillside. But these things he had heard before and had grown accustomed to.

And so it was fated that, one day, after patiently picking round a great piece of rock till it was loosened from its ages-old bed, he felt it tremble under his hand, and leaning his weight against it, it disappeared into s.p.a.ce beyond.

That had happened before when he struck one of the chambers, and he felt no uneasiness. If there had been water beyond, it would have given him notice by oozing round the rock as he loosened it. The brief rush of foul gas, which always followed the opening of one of these hollows, he avoided by lying flat on the ground until he felt the air about him sweeter again.

Then, enlarging the aperture with his pick, he scrambled through into this chamber now first opened since time began.

It was like many he had seen before, but considerably larger. Holding his light at arm's length, above his head, a million little eyes twinkled back at him as the rays shot to and fro on the pointed facets of the rock crystals which hung from the roof and started out of the walls and ground.

The gleaming fingers seemed all pointed straight at him. Was it in mockery or in acknowledgment of his prowess?

For, in among the pointing fingers, it seemed to him that the silver-bearing veins ran thick as the setting of an ancient jewel, twisted and curling and winding in and out so that his eyes were dazzled with the wonder of it all.

”A man! A man at last! Since time began we have awaited him, and this is he at last!” so those myriad eyes and pointing fingers seemed to cry to him.

And up above, the roar and growl of the sea sounded closer than ever before.

But he had found his treasure and he heeded nought beside. Here, of a surety, he said to himself, was the silver heart from which the scattered veins had been projected. He had found what he had sought with such labours and persistency. What else mattered?

And then, without a moment's warning--the end.

No signal crackings, no thin jets or streams from the green immensity beyond.

Just one universal collapse, one chaotic climacteric, begun and ended in the same instant, as the crust of the chamber, no longer supported by the in-pent air, dissolved under the irresistible pressure of the sea.

Where the sparkling chamber had been was a whirling vortex of bubbling green water, in which tumbled grotesquely the body of a man.

The water boiled furiously along the tunnel and foamed into the gallery.

The wooden supports of the iron door gave way; the door sank slowly into its appointed place.

Old Tom Hamon was dead and buried.

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