Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines by R. M. Ballantyne (readnow txt) 📖

Maggot’s home was a disordered one when he reached it, for his youngest baby, a fat little boy, had been seized with convulsions, and his wife and little daughter Grace, and son Zackey, and brother-in-law David Trevarrow, besides his next neighbour Mrs Penrose, with her sixteen children, were all in the room, doing their best by means of useless or hurtful applications, equally useless advice, and intolerable noise and confusion, to cure, if not to kill, the baby.

Maggot’s cottage was a poor one, his furniture was mean, and there was not much of it; nevertheless its inmates were proud of it, for they lived in comparative comfort there. Mrs Maggot was a kind-hearted, active woman, and her husband—despite his smuggling propensities—was an affectionate father. Usually the cottage was kept in a most orderly condition; but on the present occasion it was, as we have said, in a state of great confusion.

“Fetch me a bit of rag, Grace,” cried Mrs Maggot, just as her husband entered.

“Here’s a bit, old ’ooman,” said Maggot, handing her the linen cloth in which the jewels had been wrapped up, and which he had unconsciously retained in his hands on quitting Mr Donnithorne— “Run, my dear man,” he added, turning to John Cock, “an’ fetch the noo doctor.”

John darted away, and in a quarter of an hour returned with Oliver Trembath, who found that the baby had weathered the storm by the force of its own constitution, despite the adverse influences that were around it. He therefore contented himself with clearing the place of intruders, and prescribing some simple medicine.

“Are you going to work?” inquired Oliver of David Trevarrow, observing that the man was about to quit the cottage.

“Iss, sur—to Botallack.”

“Then I will accompany you. Captain Dan is going to show me over part of the mine to-day. Good-morning, Mrs Maggot, and remember my directions if this should happen to the little fellow again.”

Leaving the cottage the two proceeded through the town to the north end of it, accompanied by Maggot, who said he was going to the forge to do a bit of work, and who parted from them at the outskirts of the town.

“Times are bad with you at the mines just now, I find,” said Oliver as they walked along.

“Iss sur, they are,” replied Trevarrow, in the quiet tone that was peculiar to him; “but, thank God, we do manage to live, though there are some of us with a lot o’ child’n as finds it hard work. The Bal (The mine) ain’t so good as she once was.”

“I suppose that you have frequent changes of fortune?” said Oliver.

The miner admitted that this was the case, for that sometimes a man worked underground for several weeks without getting enough to keep his family, while at other times he might come on a bunch of copper or tin which would enable him to clear 50 pounds or more in a month.

“If report says truly,” observed Oliver, “you have hit upon a ‘keenly lode,’ as you call it, not many days ago.”

“A do look very well now, sur,” replied the miner, “but wan can never tell. I did work for weeks in the level under the say without success, so I guv it up an went to Wheal Hazard, and on the back o’ the fifty-fathom level I did strike ’pon a small lode of tin ’bout so thick as my finger. It may get better, or it may take the bit in its teeth and disappear; we cannot tell.”

“Well, I wish you good luck,” said Oliver; “and here comes Captain Dan, so I’ll bid you good-morning.”

“Good-morning, sur,” said the stout-limbed and stout-hearted man, with a smile and a nod, as he turned off towards the moor-house to put on his mining garments.

Towards this house a number of men had been converging while Oliver and his companion approached it, and the former observed, that whatever colour the men might be on entering it, they invariably came out light red, like lobsters emerging from a boiling pot.

In Botallack mine a large quantity of iron is mingled with the tin ore. This colours everything in and around the mine, including men’s clothes, hands, and faces, with a light rusty-red. The streams, of course, are also coloured with it, and the various pits and ponds for collecting the fluid mud of tin ore seem as if filled with that nauseous compound known by the name of “Gregory’s Mixture.”

In the moor-house there were rows of pegs with red garments hung thereon to dry, and there were numerous broad-shouldered men dressing and undressing—in every stage of the process; while in a corner two or three were washing their bodies in a tank of water. These last were men who had been at work all night, and were cleansing themselves before putting on what we may term their home-going clothes.

The mining dress is a very simple, and often a very ragged affair. It consists of a flannel shirt, a pair of linen trousers, a short coat of the same, and a hat in the form of a stiff wide-awake, but made so thick as to serve the purpose of a helmet to guard the head from the rocks, etcetera. Clumsy ankle-boots complete the costume. As each man issued from the house, he went to a group of wooden chests which lay scattered about outside, and, opening his own, took from it a bag of powder, some blasting fuse, several iron tools, which he tied to a rope so as to be slung over his shoulder, a small wooden canteen of water, and a bunch of tallow candles. These last he fastened to a button on his breast, having previously affixed one of them to the front of his hat.

Thus accoutred, they proceeded to a small platform close at hand, with a square hole in it, out of which protruded the head of a ladder. This was the “ladder road.” Through the hole these red men descended one by one, chatting and laughing as they went, and disappeared, leaving the moor-house and all around it a place of solitude.

Captain Dan now prepared to descend this ladder road with Oliver Trembath.