Chapter the Fifteenth Across the Pit
All unconscious of what was happening behind them, the boys, on reaching the foot of the well, passed through the open doorway into the narrow passage.
“These be rare doings,” began Sam; but Dick silenced him.
“Don’t speak, Sam,” he whispered. “We don’t know who is here, or how near.”
They passed on their left the passage where Dick had been checked by the landfall on his first approach from the cave. Moving slowly and with great caution, stopping every now and then to listen, they uttered never a word until they arrived at the point where the transverse gallery struck off to the right. Here they halted. It was necessary to decide whether to go straight on, and come by-and-by to the seal cave, or to turn into the passage, which they had never as yet traversed. A moment sufficed for coming to a decision. The light from Dick’s candle showed that this passage was strutted, like that along which they had already come.
“This must be the way,” whispered Dick, and low as was his tone, the words echoed and re-echoed strangely in the narrow gallery.
They advanced, picking their way still more carefully than before, peering into the darkness ahead, occasionally turning to look behind them. The floor of the adit at first sloped slightly downwards, but at length appeared to become level. The air was close and stuffy. Sam, following his young master, and seeing the weird shadows cast on the walls by the smoking flame, was soon in a cold sweat, not so much of fear as of nervous anticipation. His dread of ghosts had disappeared with knowledge; but it was knowledge of a negative kind. He knew there were no ghosts, but his imagination conjured up nameless terrors. More than once he was tempted to retreat, but he was too apprehensive even to halt long enough to strike a light and kindle his own candle, and the sight of Dick’s tall form moving steadily on in front of him helped him to pluck up courage.
When they had been walking for a few minutes, Sam suddenly hurried forward and caught Dick by the arm.
“I heerd summat!” he whispered hoarsely.
Dick stopped. Far from comfortable himself, the touch of Sam’s hand made him jump, and the thumping of his heart was almost audible. They listened intently; no sound struck upon their ears.
“It must have been a falling stone,” said Dick.
“Suppose the roof fell on us, same as it did in the cave!” murmured Sam.
“’Tis not likely. Don’t get jumpy, Sam. Let us go on.”
Again they advanced; a few steps brought them to another adit branching to the right; but a glance at this revealing no struts, Dick decided not to change his course until he had thoroughly explored the passage in which he was. In a few minutes he came to another adit, this time on the left, and this also he passed by for the same reason, and because it was narrower than any of those he had hitherto seen. Now the floor seemed to ascend gradually, and shortly afterwards became much more uneven. At length he stopped short, and waited until Sam came up with him.
“Look at this,” he whispered.
Sam looked, and saw a narrow plank bridge, about seventeen feet long, spanning a black, yawning chasm.
“’Tis an old mine shaft,” said Dick. “We must cross the bridge.”
“Will it bear us, think ’ee?” said Sam timorously.
“It will, if it bears smugglers carrying tubs. We must try.”
Dick leant forward and probed the planks with the muzzle of his fowling-piece.
“’Tis firm and steady,” he said. “I will go first. Don’t start until I get across. The candle will give you more light than it gives me.”
“I don’t like to see ’ee do it,” said Sam, almost whimpering. “If ye fall, ’twill be yer grave.”
But Dick had already set his foot on the bridge. He trod warily, moving almost by inches until he reached the middle. Then he quickened his pace, and covered the second half in three swift strides.
“’Tis quite safe,” he whispered, turning at the end.
“Didn’ it wamble?”
“No.”
“Not a little teeny bit?”
“Come, come, I am heavier than you.”
“Well, I woll.”
He moistened his lips, pressed his hat firmly on his head, then started forward and crossed the whole bridge at a run.
“Here I be!” he panted. “Name it all! I’ll never do it again.”
“Then I shall leave you behind. My word! ’tis close and stuffy here.”
They went on. In a minute or two the passage widened, and looking round, they discovered that they were in what appeared to be the entrance to a huge cavern. Still advancing, they were brought up within a few yards by a rough and irregular wall, not wholly of granite, like the wall of the seal cave, but partly of rock, partly of earth. There were small heaps of soil and stones of different sizes on the uneven floor, and the wall was not perpendicular, but inclined like the eaves of a house.
Dick gazed about him in search of a further opening. There was none. The way was blocked, just as it had been in the offshoot of the passage from the seal cave to the well. The general appearance of the place indicated that at some time or other the upper earth had fallen in. To make sure that there was not even the smallest orifice in the wall, Dick moved close along it, carefully examining it by the light of his candle. When about half-way round, he stopped, and placed his hand on something that protruded from the wall, which was here earthen. But this projecting object was neither earth nor rock. In shape it was convex and regular. He passed his hand over it, brushing off some adhering particles of soil.
“Why, Sam,” he said wonderingly, “’tis part of a tub.”
“Do ’ee tell o’t?” said Sam, moving his palm over the surface. “So ’tis, and be-dazed if there bean’t a rope on it.”
He tugged at the rope, and fell backwards, almost upsetting Dick.
“Rot it all!” he exclaimed.
“’Tis rotted already,” said Dick smiling. “It must have been there a long time.”
“Cansta pull un out, Maister?” said Sam. “Maybe there’s summat inside, and I do be most tarrible dry.”
“We’ll see; but you shan’t drink neat spirit, Sam, so you needn’t think it. Lend a hand here.”
Between them the boys soon succeeded in working the tub from the loose earth in which it was imbedded. It was a small barrel about fourteen inches in diameter, bound with wooden hoops, exactly similar to those which the smugglers were wont to use. The broken rope, or “sling stuff,” as it was called, attached to it proved that it had once formed part of a run cargo. Sam shook it; there was no “glug” of liquor.
“’Tis spiled, sure enough,” he said, “but the hoops bean’t broke.”
“Here’s another, Sam,” said Dick, who had been looking into the hole left by the removal of the tub. “I can’t help thinking we have come to an old haunt of the smugglers; yes, I understand it now. You know there was a landslip hundreds of years ago, just beyond the cove. The earth must have fallen in on a cargo before it could be removed.”
“But why didn’ they dig ’em out arterwards? And why be the tub as empty as a drum?”
“Yes, ’tis strange they did not dig them out, but the emptiness is easy to understand. The spirit has run away.”
“Run away! How could it with the tub sound, not a hole in it? Besides, there bean’t no smell, and I don’t care who the man is, but if sperits run out, you can smell ’em anywhere.”
“I suppose——” began Dick, but his answer was suddenly cut short. From the direction of the passage through which they had come there fell upon their ears a dull rumbling sound, which reverberated for a few seconds, then died away into silence.
The boys stood for a moment in silent bewilderment; then, with a foreboding of evil, Dick hastened back from the cavern along the gallery. In a minute the astounding cause of the noise was explained. The bridge by which they had crossed the shaft was gone. Only the jagged end of it jutted out from the further brink of the chasm. By the flickering light of the candle Dick thought he saw a figure moving backwards through the gallery on the opposite side. He shouted, his voice coming back to him in a hundred echoes. The figure disappeared, if indeed it were not an hallucination: Dick’s state of horrified amazement might well predispose him to see visions. He stood on the brink, bathed in chill and clammy perspiration. He realised to the full the situation of himself and his companion. They were trapped in the gallery. Before them was a shaft perhaps hundreds of feet deep; behind, an impenetrable wall.
“I said I’d never do it again, and I never will,” sobbed Sam.
“Hoy! hoy!” shouted Dick.
“Yo-hoy, hoy!” Sam repeated in his rougher tones.
But there was no reply; only the mocking, receding echoes.
Dick leant against the wall in dull stupefaction. He had said nothing to his parents about the expedition; he had expressly charged Sam not to speak of it to Reuben. His very caution had proved his undoing. So common was it for him to be all day away from home with Sam that their absence would scarcely be remarked until night, and then, even if it caused alarm, no one would dream of looking for them at the well, still less in one of the passages below. But if Dick’s suspicions and inferences were well founded, at some time during the day or night there would be smugglers in one or other of the galleries, and they would surely come within sound of his voice, and not be so base as to refuse to help him. Then it struck him that perhaps such a cry might merely terrify them; that they might believe it to be the utterance of the disembodied spirits that were said to haunt the place. But no; as his first terrors subsided, and he regained his thinking power, a sudden light dawned upon him. The ghosts were the invention of the smugglers themselves! They had taken advantage of ancient tradition and floating rumour for their own purposes, encouraged the credulity of the many in order that the few might preserve the secret of their hiding-place. And then it flashed upon him that his presence near their jealously-guarded lair had been discovered, and that his return had been deliberately cut off, so that they might carry out undisturbed the important operation of which Trevanion and Doubledick had spoken. In that case his incarceration would be temporary, like Penwarden’s. As soon as the run had been accomplished, he, like the old exciseman, would be liberated, and the smugglers would gloat over their triumphant strategy.
“How many candles have you got?” he asked suddenly.
Sam rummaged in his pocket, and produced five stumps varying in length.
“They will last about twelve hours,” said Dick. “There is no wind here to make them gutter.”
“But they won’t make us a bridge,” groaned Sam.
“Listen to me,” said Dick.
Speaking calmly, he told Sam the conclusions to which he had come.
“Now, Sam, you see what we have to do. It was about nine o’clock when we came down the well. It will be twelve hours or more before they attempt the run. We have twelve hours before us; we must get across the shaft and dish them—I don’t know how, but we must do it.”
“How can we? Rake it all, we shall have no dinner!”
“Don’t talk like that,” said Dick sternly. “We want all our wits and determination. ’Tis mere folly to think about dinner, or groan and moan because we are hungry. I tell you, young Sam, you must do your best to help, and be cheerful, or you and I will split.”
“Well, I’ll keep my solemn thoughts to myself and spake out nothing but merry ones, if I can think ’em.”
Dick considered for a few moments; then he took from his pocket a knife and a long piece of string, knotted the latter about the haft, and stuck the blade into a lighted candle. This he lowered into the chasm, lying at full length to make the most of the string. But the flame revealed no bottom to the shaft. Even had they seen a floor it seemed impossible to get there, or, getting there, to be in any way profited. At one time, no doubt, there had been a means of ascending and descending the shaft; but the very existence of the bridge showed that the machinery had long since disappeared, and the passage-way by which they had made their entrance was the only exit.
“We had better blow out the candle,” said Dick. “We don’t know how long we may be here, and you may be glad to eat it before we get out of this.”
“That I never could; but ’tis wisdom to save it, when we can’t see anything nice to look at, and you can allers meditate better in the dark.”
They reclined against the wall of the gallery. For a time they were silent except for sighs that now and then escaped Sam’s heaving breast. After one prolonged expiration Dick asked sharply what he was grunting about.
“Don’t ’ee laugh, now, if I tell o’t,” said Sam pleadingly. “My simple thought was, what would Maidy Susan say if she knowed o’ this horrible place o’ torment? ‘There shall be weepin’ and gnashin’ o’ teeth,’ says pa’son; ’twill come to that afore long wi’ me. There now, ’nation take it! I said I’d spake merry thoughts. Maybe you could put one into my mizzy-mazy head, Maister Dick.”
“I’ll break it for you if you can’t talk sense—— There! Did you hear that?”
“’Twas like the whisk of a rabbit’s scut among the furze. Hoy! Yo-hoy! Come and help two poor boys in misery.”
“Hoy! hoy!” shouted Dick.
The echoes crossed and clashed, but there was no answer.
Another period of silence. It seemed to last for hours. At length Dick relit the candle and once more scanned the shaft. Could he jump it? He measured it with his eye. He had never been to school; jumping as a sport was unknown to him. In the ordinary course of his outdoor adventures he had sometimes leapt across a stream or from rock to rock, but never a space so wide as this. Realising the impossibility of the feat, he blew out the candle and returned to his place beside Sam.
“I seed yer thought,” said the boy, “but Sir Bevil fox-hunting never took a gap like that. A hoss med do it, but not a two-legged body.”
Again there was silence. Presently Sam fell asleep, snoring vigorously. Dick pondered and puzzled; to him sleep was impossible. All at once he remembered the barrel he had found in the wall of the cave. A faint hope stirred within him. He wakened Sam, relit the candle, and hurried back through the passage.
“What be goin’ to do?” asked Sam.
“To see how many tubs there are,” he said.
“If there be a million they bean’t no good wi’ all the sperits gone a-lost,” said Sam. “Howsomever, ’twill be summat to do to count ’em, and keep us from the squitchems.”
They regained the cave. Dick, bending so that the light of the candle shone full into the hole in the wall, began to scrape away with his knife the earth that partially concealed the second barrel. Not to be backward, Sam set to work in the same way a little to the right. The second tub was soon unearthed, then a third.
“We must be careful not to disturb the earth above,” said Dick, “or we shall have the rest covered up again. I believe there are a good number here.”
“All leery,” said Sam with a sigh. “But I don’t care who the man is, they bean’t leerier nor I.... There’s my tongue runnin’ to vittals again; I reckon ’tis because I hain’t done growin’.”
After resting a while, they resumed their work. In course of time, they had a row of ten or twelve barrels standing against the wall.
“I wish there was something else,” said Dick.
“What yer manin’ be ’tis not for me to say,” said Sam, “but my feelings be just the same. Why, dash my bones, here be summat else; a box, Maister; look at un.”
He drew forth a long flat box, which he shook as he had shaken the barrels.
“Ah! ’tis full o’ nothing, seemingly. If ’twas only tay, now, or bacca that we med chaw; but ’tis a’most as light as a feather.”
He prised up the lid of the box with his knife. The wood was thin, and crumbled away at the touch of the steel. There was something pink beneath, and the removal of the lid disclosed a quantity of silk, which, when it was unfolded, proved to be many yards in length.
“Only think o’t!” said Sam. “Don’t it feel plum! Oh! what a noble garment ’t’ud make for Maidy Susan!”
“’Tis much too good for her,” said Dick. “It would suit Mother better.”
“True, ’tis fit for queens and other high females, but the Mistress be gettin’ a old ancient person, and ’t’ud look more fitty on a nesh young frame. Ah me! it bean’t no good for high or low, this side o’ that dark fearsome hole in the ground.”
“Let us see if there are any more boxes,” said Dick. “And let me tell you, Mother is only forty-five, so mind what you say, Sam.”
“Well, forty-five is more ’n double twenty, can ’ee deny it? When I be forty-five, I shall be a old aged feller with a beard and a shiny sconce like Feyther, and he don’t care a cuss what raiment he do wear.”
Further search brought to light several boxes like the first, containing silks of various hue, and laces which even to Dick’s inexperience appeared valuable. The materials seemed to be in as good a condition as when they left Lyons or Nice, and without doubt represented a considerable sum of money. But to Dick, as he contemplated them, they suggested a more immediate and urgent use than the turning into money. The wood of the barrels appeared to be sound; it had been preserved from rotting by their spirituous contents. By breaking them up into their separate staves, he would have at his disposal enough timber to make a bridge. The staves were two feet long and about five inches broad; ten or twelve lengths would be required to span the gap, and allow sufficient grip. The “sling-stuff” round the barrels, as he had already proved, was too friable to be of any value for lashing, but the silk, torn into strips, might answer this purpose.
“Take hold of the end of this,” he said to Sam, handing him a length of the material, “and pull as hard as you can.”
The test proved that the silk was capable of enduring a heavy direct strain, and if this were so in the piece, it would be still stronger when wound many times about the wood.
Dick explained his plan.
“Drown it all!” cried Sam. “What a tarrible deed o’ wickedness! Can ’ee abear to think o’ this noble shinin’ stuff tore to strents and lippets?”
“’Tis a pity, of course, but ’tis more important that we should get over the gap than that any woman, matron or maid, should flaunt it in fine array. We’ll set to work at once. Time must be getting on. The candle has nearly gone: that means three hours or so. Light another, Sam.”
Dick tore the silk carefully into even strips, while Sam knocked the ends off the tubs, and broke the staves apart. Every now and then the boy paused, heaving a deep sigh.
“’Tis like a knife goin’ through my soul every time I hear the hoosh ye do make,” he said. “There, I says to myself, there goes the sleeve, and that’s the petticoat, and there’s this part and that I don’t know the true name of. Ah well, Maidy Susan will never know from me, that’s one comfort. She’d be cryin’ her pretty eyes out, that ’a would, if she did see the deed o’ destruction.”
When nine or ten barrels had been broken up, and the floor was strewn with strips of silk, pink, blue, green, and other colours, Dick began to arrange the materials for constructing the bridge. It was to be about twenty feet long, to allow for a sufficient overlapping at each end of the gap. When he came to consider the actual details of construction he saw that his first idea, a bridge to cross on foot, was not feasible. The staves were too narrow to afford a secure foothold, and if placed side by side, the risk of their breaking apart was very great. He resolved, therefore, to concentrate his energies on a single pole, formed by binding three layers of staves together, and by means of this, work his way across the gap hand over hand, his legs dangling in the shaft. It would be a ticklish feat; indeed, he was by no means confident of its possibility; but he had the strongest motives for making the attempt, as well as a native doggedness that forbade him to sit idle in the face of difficulty.
The short staves had little curvature. He laid a number of them end to end to form a length of twenty-two feet, placing them alternately so that one had its convex, the other its concave, side to the ground, and with overlapping ends. These he bound very firmly together. Then he laid a second set on the first, in such a way that their joins occurred at different spots. Then he wound the strips of silk as tightly as possible round this double pole, carrying the windings several inches on each side of the joints. When four or five feet of the double pole were finished, he tested its rigidity by endeavouring to snap it across his knee; but though the thin wood bent slightly, the lashings held firmly, and he was well satisfied.
“’Tis very good so far, Sam,” he said; “now we must put on a third layer.”
“‘Nation take it, we shall never be done,” cried Sam, stretching his aching body. “I be mortal tired, and hungry!—there now, Maister Dick, spake yer mind like a simple honest feller, wi’out any tongue-twistin’, and fine deceivin’ language. Bean’t ’ee most achin’ hungry? Now, tell me true.”
“I own I am, but ’tis no good thinking of it.”
“No more do I want. You’ve said it. I reckon you be just as famished as I, if not more, only too proud to own it. Be-jowned if there be any sech lofty pride in me.”
They proceeded with the work, lashing the third layer firmly to the other two, and employing, for greater security, the flexible wooden hoops which had held the barrels together. At last the bridge was complete. It had been a long and laborious task: neither of the boys had any idea how many hours it had occupied; they had lighted successive candle-ends mechanically, without taking count of them. The close air of the cave was now impregnated with smoke and tallow fumes, and both longed for a breath of fresh air.
All this time they had neither seen nor heard any person or thing. Indeed, they had been so fully occupied, as scarcely to bestow a thought on what might be going on beyond the gap. It did cross Dick’s mind that the noise made by Sam in breaking the barrels might have been heard; but it was a considerable distance from the cave to the gap, and the passage between them was not straight. Nobody could have seen them at work; the sound, if it travelled beyond the gap, could only be a faint, indistinguishable murmur then; and the absence of a bridge was an effectual preventive of interference. It now remained to throw the suspension bridge across the gap. They carried it through the passage, stood it on one end, and lowered it over the opening, Sam holding the bottom end steady while Dick let the structure down by means of a silken rope.
“’Tis too crazy a thing to bear a cat’s weight,” said Sam gloomily, when it rested in place.
“I don’t believe you. At any rate we can’t make anything better. I’ll go first, being the heavier. If I get safe across you can come after. Hold your end firmly as I go.”
“You don’t want me to look at ’ee?”
“Why not?”
“Because—because—drown it all!” said the boy, dashing tears from his eyes. “Do ’ee think I could bear it if I seed ’ee drop into this everlastin’ pit?”
“You’re a good fellow, young Sam; but I shan’t drop, please God!”
He took his boots off, so that he could get a firmer grip if he had to scramble up the opposite side. Then, while Sam lay flat on the ground across the end of the pole, Dick swung himself over the shaft, gripping the bridge with both hands extended above his head. He remained motionless for a few moments, testing the strength of his support; then, realising that the quicker he moved the better, since the strain both upon the pole and his own endurance would be less than if he went slowly, he began to advance hand over hand, but as smoothly as possible, towards the other side. As he approached the middle, he saw by the light of the candle in his hatband that the pole was sagging alarmingly, and he felt it sway with his every movement. The further end of it was no longer flat on the floor of the passage, but tilted up at an angle of 30 degrees. Dick shivered as he felt his support apparently slipping downwards into the shaft. But he did not pause, and in a moment he was relieved to find that the downward movement ceased.
Arriving within a foot or two of the wall, he saw that he was some little distance below the level of the passage, and the free end of the pole, now almost perpendicular, was swaying terribly. How was he to get up? There was no projection from the side of the shaft which he could grasp, and it seemed that at any moment the pole might slip off into the gulf, carrying him with it. His arms were aching with the unaccustomed strain; not much longer could they sustain the weight of his body. Groping with his toes on the sheer face of the shaft, he managed to get a slight purchase with one foot. In another moment he obtained a little better grip with the other, though in so doing he had to spread-eagle himself. Now, with his double purchase on the wall, he was able to relieve the weight on his hands, and take breath for the final effort.
The lessening of the strain on the pole reduced the angle of inclination of its free portion to the floor. Dick worked his way inch by inch along; then, drawing his body upwards, he swung his leg over the pole, gripping it firmly with his hands, and in a few moments was able to reach out and grasp the free portion above the brink and haul himself on to the floor.
He flung himself face downward to rest, gasping a murmur of thankfulness. Sam at the other end, though he had at first closed his eyes, opened them almost immediately, unable to resist the fascination of that perilous crossing. He shuddered when he saw the pole bend and sway under Dick’s weight, and pressed his lips hard together so that he should not cry out as the further end rose higher and higher from the level. When Dick had safely landed, Sam was too much overcome with emotion to utter a sound. He rubbed the chill moisture from his face and waited.
Presently Dick got up, rekindled the candle, which had been extinguished when he threw himself down, and called across.
“Now ’tis your turn, Sam. You will have an easier passage than I. Drive a couple of staves into the ground and lash the pole to them. I’ll hold it firm on this side, so that it will not sway so much as when I crossed.”
“No; I can’t do it; I’m all of a sweat,” said Sam.
“Come, come! you’ll not give in, surely.”
“Iss, I woll, cheerful. Never could I sink my legs into that gashly hole. It do put me in mind of poor fellers dangling on the drop in Bodmin jail. No; there bean’t meat enough in my inside to give me sperit for it, and here I’ll bide—I don’t care who the man is—till you finds a gangway.”
“But you’ll be left in the dark. This is the last candle.”
“You won’t make me afeard if you try. Here I be safe; not a soul can get to me across this hole; and dark or light, I bean’t the man for sech a deed. I be truly sorry to leave ’ee, Maister Dick, but you’d rayther see me sound in all my members than here a bit, there a bit.”
“Very well. You’ve lost your nerve, that’s clear. Shy over my boots, will you?”
Sam lifted one and cast it; but he was apparently too much shaken to take good aim. The boot fell into the shaft.
“See now! ’Tis plain!” he said forlornly. “My poor wambling arm! Even as yer boot fell, so——”
“Hush!” cried Dick.
There had been no sound of the boot striking on the bottom. After what seemed a long time—it was in fact no more than two or three seconds—from the depths came rumbling reverberations of a splash. The water must have been nearly two hundred feet below. Both the boys were silent as they thought of the terrible fate Dick would have met with if he had fallen.
“Well, good-bye, Sam!” said Dick at last, rousing himself. “One boot is no good without the other, so you can keep it. I’ll come back for you as soon as I can.”
“I wish ’ee well, Maister.”
He stood near the brink, with a piteous expression upon his rugged face, watching Dick’s gradually receding form. When a bend in the passage hid his master and comrade from view, he leant against the wall, and buried his face in his hands.