Without any more ado, he led me in and out the marshy places, to a great round hole or shaft, bratticed up with timber. I never had seen the like before, and wondered how they could want a well, with so much water on every side. Around the mouth were a few little heaps of stuff unused to the daylight; and I thought at once of the tales I had heard concerning mines in Cornwall, and the silver cup at Combe-Martin, sent to the Queen Elizabeth.
'We had a tree across it, John,' said Uncle Reuben, smiling grimly at my sudden shrink from it: 'but some rogue came spying here, just as one of our men went up.
He was frightened half out of his life, I believe, and never ventured to come again. But we put the blame of that upon you. And I see that we were wrong, John.'
Here he looked at me with keen eyes, though weak.
'You were altogether wrong,' I answered. 'Am I mean enough to spy upon any one dwelling with us? And more than that, Uncle Reuben, it was mean of you to suppose it.'
'All ideas are different,' replied the old man to my heat, like a little worn-out rill running down a smithy; 'you with your strength and youth, and all that, are inclined to be romantic. I take things as Ihave known them, going on for seventy years. Now will you come and meet the wizard, or does your courage fail you?'
'My courage must be none,' said I, 'if I would not go where you go, sir.'
He said no more, but signed to me to lift a heavy wooden corb with an iron loop across it, and sunk in a little pit of earth, a yard or so from the mouth of the shaft. I raised it, and by his direction dropped it into the throat of the shaft, where it hung and shook from a great cross-beam laid at the level of the earth.
A very stout thick rope was fastened to the handle of the corb, and ran across a pulley hanging from the centre of the beam, and thence out of sight in the nether places.
'I will first descend,' he said; 'your weight is too great for safety. When the bucket comes up again, follow me, if your heart is good.'
Then he whistled down, with a quick sharp noise, and a whistle from below replied; and he clomb into the vehicle, and the rope ran through the pulley, and Uncle Ben went merrily down, and was out of sight, before Ihad time to think of him.
Now being left on the bank like that, and in full sight of the goodly heaven, I wrestled hard with my flesh and blood, about going down into the pit-hole. And but for the pale shame of the thing, that a white-headed man should adventure so, and green youth doubt about it, never could I have made up my mind; for I do love air and heaven. However, at last up came the bucket; and with a short sad prayer I went into whatever might happen.
My teeth would chatter, do all I could; but the strength of my arms was with me; and by them I held on the grimy rope, and so eased the foot of the corb, which threatened to go away fathoms under me. Of course I should still have been safe enough, being like an egg in an egg-cup, too big to care for the bottom;still I wished that all should be done, in good order, without excitement.
The scoopings of the side grew black, and the patch of sky above more blue, as with many thoughts of Lorna, a long way underground I sank. Then I was fetched up at the bottom with a jerk and rattle; and but for holding by the rope so, must have tumbled over. Two great torches of bale-resin showed me all the darkness, one being held by Uncle Ben and the other by a short square man with a face which seemed well-known to me.
'Hail to the world of gold, John Ridd,' said Master Huckaback, smiling in the old dry manner; 'bigger coward never came down the shaft, now did he, Carfax?'
'They be all alike,' said the short square man, 'fust time as they doos it.'
'May I go to heaven,' I cried, 'which is a thing quite out of sight'--for I always have a vein of humour, too small to be followed by any one--'if ever again of my own accord I go so far away from it!' Uncle Ben grinned less at this than at the way I knocked my shin in getting out of the bucket; and as for Master Carfax, he would not even deign to smile. And he seemed to look upon my entrance as an interloping.
For my part, I had nought to do, after rubbing my bruised leg, except to look about me, so far as the dullness of light would help. And herein I seemed, like a mouse in a trap, able no more than to run to and fro, and knock himself, and stare at things. For here was a little channel grooved with posts on either side of it, and ending with a heap of darkness, whence the sight came back again; and there was a scooped place, like a funnel, but pouring only to darkness. So Iwaited for somebody to speak first, not seeing my way to anything.'
'You seem to be disappointed, John,' said Uncle Reuben, looking blue by the light of the flambeaux; 'did you expect to see the roof of gold, and the sides of gold, and the floor of gold, John Ridd?'
'Ha, ha!' cried Master Carfax; 'I reckon her did; no doubt her did.'
'You are wrong,' I replied; 'but I did expect to see something better than dirt and darkness.'
'Come on then, my lad; and we will show you some-thing better. We want your great arm on here, for a job that has beaten the whole of us.'
With these words, Uncle Ben led the way along a narrow passage, roofed with rock and floored with slate-coloured shale and shingle, and winding in and out, until we stopped at a great stone block or boulder, lying across the floor, and as large as my mother's best oaken wardrobe. Beside it were several sledge-hammers, battered, and some with broken helves.