Part 31 (1/2)
”Is--is this a silver mine, father?” I faltered.
”Yes, my lad, silver-lead. Doesn't look very attractive, does it?”
I shook my head.
”But is it going to be worth a great deal of money?”
”Yes, my boy; only wait and you'll see. But I suppose you expected to see a hole in the earth leading down into quite an enchanted cave--eh?-- a sort of Aladdin's palace, with walls sparkling with native silver?”
”Well, not quite so much as that, father,” I replied; ”but I did expect to find something different to this.”
”So do most people when they go to see a mine, Sep, and they are horribly disappointed to find that they have not used their common sense. They know that if they dig down into the earth to make a well, in twenty feet or so, perhaps less, they come to water; and it has never occurred to them that if they dig down to form a mine, it must naturally be a wet dark muddy hole just like this one upon which you look with so much disgust. But wait a bit, my boy. We shall soon have furnaces at work and be smelting our ore and converting some of it into silver.
There'll be more to see then. You don't care to go down?” he said, leaning his hand upon a windla.s.s over the trap-doors.
”Is there anything to see, father?” I said rather dolefully.
”To see! Well, there are the sides of a big well-like hole which you can see from here. Look!”
He threw open a trap-door, and I gazed into a well-like place with a couple of ropes hanging down it, and I noted that the walls were made of the stone that had been dug and broken out. The place looked dark and damp, and there was the trickling of dripping water. That was all.
”Well, Sep, what do you say?--will you go?”
”Is it all like this, father?” I said.
”Yes, precisely, my lad. Shall I have you let down?”
”No, thank you,” I said; ”I think I'll stop up.”
He nodded and smiled, and after staying with him for a time while he examined some of the ore that the man was breaking up he set me free, but not till I had asked him how many men he had at work, and been told that at present there were only six.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
WE HAVE A LITTLE FIs.h.i.+NG.
I went away to see if I could find Bigley, feeling very much put out, and full of hope that Bob Chowne, when he came, would not ask me to take him to see the mine.
For, truth to tell, I had made rather a fuss about that mine, talking about silver-lead in a very important way at school; and, as I recalled my words, I felt quite a shudder of horror as I thought of all the boys in my cla.s.s coming and standing at the mouth of the mine, and bursting into a roar of laughter at this being the silver cavern in the earth.
There was no likelihood of any of them coming save Bob Chowne; but there was no knowing what he would say when we got back if I offended him and he was in one of his teasing fits.
I walked down to the end of the Gap, past the cottage, and was just going to ask if Bigley had come back, when I saw old Jonas and Binnacle Bill, with another man, putting off in the lugger, which was lying by a buoy about a quarter of a mile from the sh.o.r.e.
After five months at school it seemed such a pretty sight to see the red sails hoisted and fill out, and the lugger begin to move slowly over the smooth water, that I sat down on a stone and watched the boat, wis.h.i.+ng I were in her, till she gradually grew more distant, and there was a dull thud close beside me.
I looked round but saw nothing, and I was turning to watch the lugger again, when I heard a fresh pat on the slate rubbish by me, and soon after a piece of flat, thin shale struck the clatter stream behind me.
”Some one throwing,” I said to myself, and looking up, there, about six hundred feet above me on the cliff path, were Bigley and Bob Chowne.
I shouted to them, and they ran to the nearest clatter stream and began to slide down standing. Sometimes they came swiftly for a few yards; sometimes they stopped and each had a check, a fall, and a roll over, but they were up again directly, and in less than half the time it would have taken them to walk they were down by my side.