The Black Tor: A Tale of the Reign of James the First by George Manville Fenn (best romance books of all time .txt) 📖

the entrance to the grotto where nature had effected all the mining, and at last the great abyss where the sound of the falling water filled the air was reached. Here Dummy seated himself, with his legs swinging over the edge, and looked down.

“That’s where the river water comes in,” he said, “through a big crack. Now let’s see where it goes, because it must go somewhere.”

“Right into the middle of the earth, perhaps,” said Mark, gazing down into the awful gulf, and listening to the rushing sound.

“Nay,” said Dummy; “water don’t go down into the earth without coming out again somewhere. Dessay if we keep on we shall come out to daylight.”

“Eh?” cried Mark; “then we had better find it and stop it up, for as I said the other day, we don’t want any one to find a back way into our mine.”

“That’s what I thought, Master Mark,” said Dummy quietly. “Wouldn’t do for Purlrose and his men to find it, and come in some day, would it?”

“No; that wouldn’t do at all, Dummy.”

“No, sir. But how’s your head?”

“My head? Oh, I’d forgotten all about it.”

“I know’d you would,” said the lad, grinning. “Don’t feel so tired, neither?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll light another candle, and we’ll get on: but don’t you get slipping while we are going round here, because I don’t know how deep it is, and I mightn’t be able to get you out.”

“You take care of yourself, and lead on,” said Mark shortly. “I dare say I can go where you do.”

Dummy nodded, and after handing the second candle to his master, he went along sidewise, and then lowered himself over the edge of the gulf, and dropped out of sight.

“Only ’bout a fathom, Master Mark,” he shouted, “and plenty of room.”

Mark did not hesitate, but lowered himself in turn, and dropped upon his feet, to find they were upon a rugged shelf, about four feet wide, sloping downward right by the side of the gulf; and passing along this, they soon reached the other side of the great chasm, to stand nearly opposite to the end of the passage where they had entered, but about twenty feet lower; and here they again looked down into the awesome depths. But nothing was to be seen. The water fell from somewhere beneath where they had entered; and as they judged, plunged deep down into a wide chasm, and from thence ran out and under the great crack, which the boy found out as the way they had to go.

“Stream runs right under that, Master Mark. I went along some way, and every now an’ then I could hear it, deep down. I say, did you bring anything to eat?”

“Some bread that I couldn’t manage at breakfast.”

“So did I,” said the boy. “P’r’aps we may want it by-and-by.”

“We want better lights, Dummy,” said Mark, after they had progressed some distance.

The boy turned round with a merry look, and was about to suggest torches once more, but at a glance from Mark’s eyes, he altered his mind and said:

“Yes, those don’t give much.”

But pitiful as the light was, it was sufficient for them to see walls covered with fossils, stalactites hanging from the roofs of chambers, others joined to the stalagmites on the floor, and forming columns, curtains, and veils of petrifaction, draping the walls as they went through passage, hall, and vast caverns whose roofs were invisible. And all the time, sometimes plainly, sometimes as the faintest gurgling whisper, they heard the sound of flowing water beneath their feet.

“Well, this is grand!” said Mark; “but it’s of no use.”

“Aren’t no lead,” said the boy quietly; “but it’s fine to have such a place, and be able to say it’s ours. May be some use.”

“But I say, how are you going to find your way back?”

“Oh, I dunno,” said the boy carelessly. “I’ve often been lost in the other parts, and I always found my way out.”

“Yes, but how?”

“Oh, I dunno, quite, Master Mark,” said the boy earnestly, “but it’s somehow like this. I turn about a bit till I feel which is the right way, and then I go straight on, and it always is.”

“Mean that, Dummy?”

“Oh yes, Master Mark; that’s right enough. But come along.”

There was a certain excitement in penetrating the dark region, with its hills and descents, passages and chambers, deep cracks and chasms, down in which water was running, and strange ways, formed either by the settling or opening of the rock, or literally cut away by the rushing water; and every step was made interesting by the weird shapes around, formed by the dripping of water from the roof.

Earth there was none, the stalactites and stalagmitic formations were of the cleanest stone, pale drab, cream, or ruddy from the solution of iron; and at last, when they must have been walking, climbing, forcing their way through narrow cracks, or crawling like lizards, for hours, the boy stooped by a little pool of crystal water in the floor, and said:

“Don’t you think a bit o’ bread and cheese would be nice, Master Mark?”

“Yes; that’s what’s the matter with me,” cried the lad. “I was beginning to feel poorly. It’s because I did not have a proper breakfast.”

The next minute they had stuck their twice renewed candles in a crack in the rock wall, and were seated upon a dry stalagmite looking like the top of a gigantic mushroom, eating ravenously, and moistening their dry food with copious draughts from the crystal pool. There was water, too, below them, a low rushing gurgle announcing that they were still following the course of the subterranean stream running through a wide crevice in the floor.

“How much farther does it go, Dummy?”

The boy shook his head.

“May be for miles; but we’ll see now, won’t we?”

“Let’s finish our eating first, and then see how we feel,” said Mark. “If we don’t now, we will some other time. I say, if that water was not running, how quiet it would be!”

“Yes,” said Dummy, with his mouth full. “I don’t think anybody was ever here before.”

“I suppose not,” said Mark, looking round.

“Here, have some more of my cheese,” said the boy. “You haven’t got none.”

Mark nodded, and took the piece cut by the boy’s pocket-knife, for it improved the dry bread.

“It’s some of yours,” said Dummy, with a grin. “They give it me in the kitchen.”

Mark was looking round, and listening to the water.

“I say, Dummy, suppose there was to be a storm outside, and this place filled up, we should be drowned.”

“Never been no water along here, only drips,” said the boy, examining the floor. “No, there’s never been any floods here.”

“How do you know?”

“Been some mud or sand left,” said the boy, scraping in a narrow chink in the floor. “All hard stone.”

“I suppose you’re right; but we must be very deep down.”

“No. I have been thinking, just as you have to when we’re looking for fresh lead, we’ve been down a deal, and we’ve been up a deal, ’bout as much one as t’other. I should say we’re just a little lower down than when we started from that big water-hole, but not much.”

“Made my back ache a bit, Dummy,” said Mark, with a groan, as he leaned himself against a column which was pleasantly smoothed and curved.

“Yes, we’ve come a good way,” replied Dummy, “and you didn’t have no sleep last night.”

The boy munched his last crust, and then lay flat down on his breast, with his mouth over the pool, lowered his lips, and took a long deep drink, after the fashion of a horse. After this, he rolled himself clear away, and lay upon his back, staring at the two candles stuck in the crack a few feet above his head.

“Does rest your back and lynes, Master Mark, to lie like this for a bit. You just try it.”

There was no reply.

“D’you hear, Master Mark? You try it.”

Still no response, and he turned his head, to see that his companion’s chin was resting upon his chest.

“Sleep!” said Dummy, with a little laugh. “Can’t stand being up all night like I can. Being on night-shifts, sometimes, I s’pose. Well, let him sleep for a few minutes, and then I’ll wake him.”

Then all was blank.