LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

of tongues, they climbed flight after flight of wooden stairs to the uppermost floor of the tall shaft-house.

      An empty cage that had just deposited its load of copper conglomerate was again ready to descend into the black depths, and, hurrying Peveril forward, Mark Trefethen, with half a dozen other miners, entered it. An iron gate closed behind them and a gong clanged in the engine-house.

      "Hold fast, lad, and remember there's no danger," was all that the timber boss had time to say. Then the bottom seemed to drop out of everything, and Peveril, experiencing the sickening sensation of having left his stomach at the top of the shaft, found himself rushing downward with horrible velocity through utter blackness. Instinctively reaching out for something by which to hold on, he clutched a rough-coated arm, but his grasp was rudely shaken off, and a gruff voice bade him keep his hands to himself.

      He could not frame an answer, for his brain was in a whirl, his ears were filled with a dull roaring, and a whistling rush of air caught away his breath. The motion of the cage was so smooth and noiseless that after a while he could not tell whether it were going up or down, though it seemed to be doing both, as though poised on a gigantic spring. At length faint glimmers of light began to flash past as it shot by the mouths of working levels, and finally it stopped with a jerk that threw its passengers into a confused huddle.

      A gate was flung open, and as Peveril stumbled out of the cage he was only conscious of dancing lights, a crashing rumble of iron against iron, and a medley of shouting voices. At the same time all these sounds seemed far away and unreal.

      CHAPTER VI

      A MILE BENEATH THE SURFACE

      "Swallow, lad!"

      Mark Trefethen uttered the words, and Peveril, dimly comprehending him, instinctively obeyed. The effect of that simple muscular action was marvellous. His brain was instantly cleared of its weight, the ringing in his ears ceased, and his hearing was restored to its normal keenness. At the same time he was happily conscious that his stomach had been restored to its proper position.

      "This is plat of bottom level, and we're a mile underground," continued Mark. "They put us down in one-thirty this time, but often they do it ten seconds better."

      "I wonder how much longer it would take to drop from a balloon one mile above the earth?" reflected Peveril, at the same time gazing about him with a lively interest.

      The place in which he stood was a spacious room, hewn from solid rock. Lighted by several lanterns and little, flaring mine-lamps, it was also smoothly floored with iron plates, and from it a narrow-gauge railway led away into the blackness. Articles of clothing and dinner-pails were hung about the walls, and on the side opposite the shaft was a bench of rude workmanship.

      Every few minutes an iron car holding several tons of copper rock was run into the plat with a tremendous clatter from the little railway that penetrated to every "drift" and "stope" of the level. Each of these cars was pushed by a team of three wild-looking men, who were stripped naked to the waist. Their haggard faces and naked bodies were begrimed with powder-smoke, stained red with ore-dust, and gleamed in the fitful lamp-light with trickling rivulets of perspiration. The car-pushers were all foreigners – Italians, Bohemians, Hungarians, or Poles – and the uncouth jargon of their shouts intensified the wildness of their appearance. Theirs was the very lowest form of mine drudgery, and but few of them were possessed of intelligence or ambition sufficient to raise them above it.

      One, who was accounted somewhat brighter than his fellows, by whom he was regarded as a leader, had indeed been promoted on trial by the timber boss to a position in his own gang. He was a perfect brute for strength, but so densely ignorant and of such sullen disposition that when a better man was offered, in the person of Dick Peveril, the boss was only too glad to return him to his hated task of car-pushing and accept the new-comer in his place. His sentence of degradation, pronounced only the day before, had been received as a personal affront by every wild-eyed car-pusher of the mine. All knew that some one must fill the place from which their leader had been ousted, and all were prepared to hate him the moment his identity should be disclosed.

      Thus, as Peveril stumbled awkwardly out of the cage in which he had just made that breathless, mile-deep descent, he was instantly spotted as being a new man, and a team of car-pushers, slaking their thirst at a water-barrel in one corner of the plat, gazed at him with scowling intentness, that they might minutely describe his appearance to their fellows. As he knew nothing of the circumstances through which a place had been made for him, he paid no attention to these men, other than to note their savage appearance as a feature of his novel surroundings.

      In fact, he had barely time to take a single comprehensive glance around the plat before a man who had been one of his fellow-passengers in the cage remarked, sneeringly:

      "Pretty well scared, wasn't you, young feller?"

      "Yes, I was," replied Peveril, turning and facing his questioner. "But how did you know it?"

      "By the way you grabbed my arm. If you'd done it again I'd have punched your head; for I don't 'low no man to catch holt on me that way."

      Peveril had already recognized the speaker's face; but, without deigning a further reply, he turned to Mark Trefethen and said:

      "Will you kindly give me the name of this unpleasant person, as I wish to file it away in my memory for future reference?"

      "Person be blowed!" exclaimed the man, stepping forward with a menacing gesture. "What do you mean by calling me names, you damned – "

      "Shut up, Mike Connell, and go about your business," commanded the timber boss. "Come, lad, he's not worth noticing," and, thus saying, Mark Trefethen led Peveril away.

      Although the car-pushers had not caught the words of this brief conversation, they had readily understood Mike Connell's threatening gesture towards the new-comer, and several times during that day one or more of them might have been seen in low-voiced consultation with the scowling-faced Irishman.

      "Here, lad, fill lamp wi' sunlight," said the timber boss, as he and his protégé were leaving the plat. "First rule of mine is always have lamp in trim, and carry candle, besides plenty of matches in pocket."

      With this Mark scooped up in his hand a small quantity of a stiff, whitish substance from an open box beside them, and stuffed it into his lamp. The box was indeed marked "Sunlight," but when Peveril followed his companion's example he found its contents to be merely solidified paraffine.

      With their lamps well filled and flaring brightly, the two walked for half a mile through a dry and well-ventilated gallery, which had been driven by drill and blast through solid rock, and from which thousands of tons of copper had been taken. Now Peveril learned for the first time what "timbering" a mine meant, and realized the necessity for the huge piles of great logs that he had seen above ground in close proximity to the shaft. Not only had it been incased on all four sides by logs mortised together and laid up like the walls of a house, but the drift through which he now walked was timbered from end to end. Its roof was upheld by huge tree-trunks standing from ten to twenty feet apart, and occasionally in groups of three or four together. Supported by them, and pressing against the roof or "hanging," were other great timbers known as "wall plates," and behind these was a compactly laid sheathing of split timber spoken of as "lagging."

      As the two men advanced deeper into the drift, an occasional ore-car, pushed by its panting human team, rumbled heavily past, while every now and then came dull, tremulous shocks like those of an earthquake. These were blasts on other levels, or in other parts of the one on which they were.

      At sound of a confused shouting from somewhere ahead of them, they stood still until, with a crashing roar that bellowed and echoed through the galleries like a peal of loudest thunder, one of these blasts was fired close at hand. A minute later they were enveloped in a pungent smoke, through which twinkled dimly a score of lights. Brawny, half-naked forms were already wielding pick and shovel amid the masses of rock just loosened, a powerful air-drill was being placed in position for another attack upon the wall of tough rock, and a small timber gang was struggling to hoist a huge log that they called a "stull" into position.

      "Here's the place, lad. Take hold and give a lift. Now, boys, altogether"! shouted Mark Trefethen,

Скачать книгу