_ CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT. DOWN IN THE DEPTHS
"You lead with the lanthorn, Hardock," said the Colonel, as the man and his companions stepped out of the second skep and had to wade knee-deep for a few yards from the bottom of the shaft, the road lying low beneath the high, cavernous entrance to the mine, at one side of which a tiny stream of clear water was trickling. There the bottom began to rise at the same rate as the roof grew lower; and soon they were, if not on dry land, walking over a floor of damp, slimy rock.
"Keep straight on, sir?" said the captain.
"Yes, right on. They would not have entered the side gallery, or we should have met them as we came out."
The first side gallery, a turning off to the left, was reached, and, but for the fact that the Colonel's party had strayed into that part by accident, it would have been passed unseen, as it was by the boys and Dinass, for the entrance was so like the rock on either side, and it turned off at such an acute angle, that it might have been passed a hundred times without its existence being known.
The men were very silent, but they kept on raising their lanthorns and glancing at the roof and sides as they tramped on behind the Colonel.
"There's good stuff here," whispered Vores to his nearest companion.
"Yes, I've been noticing," was the reply. "It's a fine mine, and there's ore enough to keep any number of us going without travelling far."
"Yes," said Vores. "Worked as they used to do it in the old days, when they only got out the richest stuff."
Just then Hardock stopped, and, upon the others closing up, they found themselves at an opening on the right--one which struck right back, and, like the other, almost invisible to anyone passing with a dim light.
"Shall we give a good shout here, sir?" said Hardock.
"Yes," was the reply; and the men hailed as with one voice, sending a volume of sound rolling and echoing down the passage of the main road and along its tributary.
Then all stood silent, listening to the echoes which died away in the distance, making some of the experienced miners, accustomed as they were to such underground journeys, shiver and look strange.
"Vasty place, mate," whispered Vores to Hardock, after they had all hailed again and listened vainly for a reply.
"Vasty?" said Hardock. "Ay! The gashly place is like a great net, and seems to have no end."
"Forward," said the Colonel. "No, stop. We have plenty of candles, have we not?"
"Yes, sir, heaps," was the reply.
"Light one, then, and stick it in a crevice of the rock here at the corner."
While the man was busily executing the order, the Colonel took out his pocket-book, wrote largely on a leaf, "Gone in search of you. Wait till we return," and tore it out to place it close to the candle where the light could shine on the white scrap of paper.
Then on they went again, with the experienced miners talking to one another in whispers, as with wondering eyes they took note of the value of the traces they kept on seeing in the rugged walls of the main gallery they traversed--tokens hardly heeded by the two boys in their anxiety to gain tidings of their fathers.
"It's going to be a grand place, my son," whispered Vores; "and only to think of it, for such a mine to have lain untouched ever since the time of our great-great-gaffers--great-great-great-great, ever so many great-gaffers, and nobody thinking it worth trying."
"Ay, but there must have been some reason," said the other.
"Bah! Old women's tales about goblin sprites and things that live underground. We never saw anything uglier than ourselves, though, did we, all the years we worked in mines?"
"Nay, I never did," said the man who walked beside Vores; "but still there's no knowing what may be, my lad, and it seems better to hold one's tongue when one's going along in the dark in just such a place as strange things might be living in."
Hardock stopped where another branch went off at a sharp angle, his experienced eyes accustomed to mines and dense darkness, making them plain directly; and here another shout was sent volleying down between the wet gleaming walls, to echo and vibrate in a way which sounded awful; but when the men shouted again the echoes died away into whispers, and then rose again more wildly, but only to die finally into silence.
Without waiting for an order, Hardock lit and fixed another candle against the glittering wall of the mine passage, the Colonel wrote on a slip of paper, and this too was placed where it must be seen; but the Colonel hesitated as if about to alter the wording.
"No," he said, "I dare not tell them to make for the sumph, they might lose their way. You feel sure that you can bring us back by here, Hardock?"
The man was silent for a few moments, and then he spoke in a husky voice.
"No, sir," he said, "I can't say I am. I think I can, but I thought so this morning. The place is all a puzzle of confusion, and it's so big. Next time we come down I'll have a pail of paint and a brush, and paint arrows pointing to the foot of the shaft at every turn. But I'll try my best."
"Ay, we'll all try, sir," said Harry Vores.
"Forward!" cried the Colonel, abruptly; and once more they went on till all at once, after leaving candle after candle burning, they reached a part where the main lode seemed to have suddenly broken up into half-a-dozen, each running in a different direction, and spreading widely, the two outer going off at very obtuse angles.
Here they paused, unconscious of the fact that they had passed the spot, only a couple of hundred yards back, where the boys had made their heroic resolve to go on.
"Let me see," said the Colonel, excitedly; "it was the third passage from the left that we took this morning."
Hardock raised his lanthorn and stared vacantly in his employer's face.
"No, sir, no," he cried breathlessly; "the third coming from the right."
"No, no, you are wrong. The third from the left; I counted them this morning--six of these branches. Why, Hardock, there are seven of them now."
"Yes, sir, seven, and that one running from the right-hand one makes eight. I did not see those two this morning by our one lanthorn. There are--yes--eight."
"What are we all to do? My head is growing hopelessly confused."
He gazed piteously at Hardock, who seemed to be in a like hopeless plight, suffering as they both were from exhaustion.
"I--I'm not sure, sir, now. We went in and out of so many galleries, all ending just the same, that I'm afraid I've lost count."
"Oh, Hardock! Hardock!" groaned the Colonel, "this is horrible. We must not break down, man. Try and think; oh, try and think. Remember that those two boys are lost, and they are wandering helplessly in search of us. They will go on and on into the farther recesses of this awful place, and lie down at last to die--giving their lives for ours. There, there, I am babbling like some idiot. Forward, my men; there is no time to lose. We must find them."
"Yes, sir; we must find them," cried Hardock; "which passage shall we take?"
"Stop a moment," said the Colonel, in a voice which seemed to have suddenly grown feeble; and he signed to the mining captain to light a candle and place it where they stood, while he tremblingly wrote on another leaf of his pocket-book,--
"Make for the pit-shaft."
He tore out the leaf, and the men noticed how his hand trembled; and he stood waiting for it to be taken by Hardock, who had sunk on his knees and was holding the candle sidewise, so that a little of the grease might drip into a crack where he meant to stick the candle close to the side.
Hardock groaned as he rose and took the paper, staggering as he stooped again to place it by the candle. But he recovered his steadiness again directly, and looked, to the Colonel for orders.
"Which branch, sir?" he said.
"The largest," said the Colonel in a hollow voice; "it is the most likely because it goes nearly straight. Forward then."
They obeyed in silence, and for another couple of hours they went on, finding the gallery they had taken branch and branch again and again; but though they sent shout after shout, there was no reply but those given by the echoes, and they went on again, still leaving burning candles at each division of the way.
Then all at once, as the Colonel was writing his directions on the pocket-book leaf, Vores saw the pencil drop from his hand; the book followed, and he reeled and would have fallen had not the miner caught him and lowered him gently to the rocky floor.
"I knew it, I knew it," groaned Hardock. "He was dead beat when we got back, for we've had an awful day. It's only been his spirit which has kept him up. And now I'm dead beat, too, for I had to almost carry the Major when we were nearly back. It's like killing him to rouse him to go on again. Harry Vores, you're a man who can think and help when one's in trouble. There's miles and miles of this place, and the more we go on the more tangled up it gets. Which way are we going now:-- east, west, north, or south? Of course, nobody knows."
"What's that?" cried Vores, for a low deep murmur came upon their ears, and was repeated time after time. "I know; water falling a long way off. Then that's how it was so much had to be pumped out."
"Yes," said Hardock; "that's water, sure enough. I thought I heard it this morning. But look here, what shall, we do--carry the Colonel forward or go back?"
There was no reply; but the murmur, as of water falling heavily at a great distance, came once more to their ears. _