Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
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.
“Thou great villain!” cried Uncle Ben, giving the boulder a little kick;
“I believe thy time is come at last. Now, John, give us a sample of the
things they tell of thee. Take the biggest of them sledge-hammers and
crack this rogue in two for us. We have tried at him for a fortnight,
and he is a nut worth cracking. But we have no man who can swing that
hammer, though all in the mine have handled it.”
“I will do my very best,” said I, pulling off my coat and waistcoat, as
if I were going to wrestle; “but I fear he will prove too tough for me.”
“Ay, that her wull,” grunted Master Carfax; “lack'th a Carnishman, and
a beg one too, not a little charp such as I be. There be no man outside
Carnwall, as can crack that boolder.”
“Bless my heart,” I answered; “but I know something of you, my friend,
or at any rate of your family. Well, I have beaten most of your Cornish
men, though not my place to talk of it. But mind, if I crack this rock
for you, I must have some of the gold inside it.”
“Dost think to see the gold come tumbling out like the kernel of a nut,
thou zany?” asked Uncle Reuben pettishly; “now wilt thou crack it or
wilt thou not? For I believe thou canst do it, though only a lad of
Somerset.”
Uncle Reuben showed by saying this, and by his glance at Carfax, that he
was proud of his county, and would be disappointed for it if I failed to
crack the boulder. So I begged him to stoop his torch a little, that
I might examine my subject. To me there appeared to be nothing at all
remarkable about it, except that it sparkled here and there, when the
flash of the flame fell upon it. A great obstinate, oblong, sullen
stone; how could it be worth the breaking, except for making roads with?
Nevertheless, I took up the hammer, and swinging it far behind my head,
fetched it down, with all my power, upon the middle of the rock. The
roof above rang mightily, and the echo went down delven galleries, so
that all the miners flocked to know what might be doing. But Master
Carfax only smiled, although the blow shook him where he stood, for
behold the stone was still unbroken, and as firm as ever. Then I smote
it again, with no better fortune, and Uncle Ben looked vexed and angry,
but all the miners grinned with triumph.
“This little tool is too light,” I cried; “one of you give me a piece of
strong cord.”
Then I took two more of the weightiest hammers, and lashed them fast to
the back of mine, not so as to strike, but to burden the fall. Having
made this firm, and with room to grasp the handle of the largest one
only--for the helves of the others were shorter--I smiled at Uncle Ben,
and whirled the mighty implement round my head, just to try whether I
could manage it. Upon that the miners gave a cheer, being honest men,
and desirous of seeing fair play between this “shameless stone” (as Dan
Homer calls it) and me with my hammer hammering.
Then I swung me on high to the swing of the sledge, as a thresher
bends back to the rise of his flail, and with all my power descending
delivered the ponderous onset. Crashing and crushed the great stone fell
over, and threads of sparkling gold appeared in the jagged sides of the
breakage.
“How now, Simon Carfax?” cried Uncle Ben triumphantly; “wilt thou find a
man in Cornwall can do the like of that?”
“Ay, and more,” he answered; “however, it be pretty fair for a lad of
these outlandish parts. Get your rollers, my lads, and lead it to the
crushing engine.”
I was glad to have been of some service to them; for it seems that this
great boulder had been too large to be drawn along the gallery and too
hard to crack. But now they moved it very easily, taking piece by piece,
and carefully picking up the fragments.
“Thou hast done us a good turn, my lad,” said Uncle Reuben, as the
others passed out of sight at the corner; “and now I will show thee the
bottom of a very wondrous mystery. But we must not do it more than once,
for the time of day is the wrong one.”
The whole affair being a mystery to me, and far beyond my understanding,
I followed him softly, without a word, yet thinking very heavily, and
longing to be above ground again. He led me through small passages, to a
hollow place near the descending shaft, where I saw a most extraordinary
monster fitted up. In form it was like a great coffee-mill, such as
I had seen in London, only a thousand times larger, and with heavy
windlass to work it.
“Put in a barrow-load of the smoulder,” said Uncle Ben to Carfax, “and
let them work the crank, for John to understand a thing or two.”
“At this time of day!” cried Simon Carfax; “and the watching as has been
o' late!”
However, he did it without more remonstrance; pouring into the scuttle
at the top of the machine about a basketful of broken rock; and then a
dozen men went to the wheel, and forced it round, as sailors do. Upon
that such a hideous noise arose, as I never should have believed any
creature capable of making, and I ran to the well of the mine for air,
and to ease my ears, if possible.
“Enough, enough!” shouted Uncle Ben by the time I was nearly deafened;
“we will digest our goodly boulder after the devil is come abroad for
his evening work. Now, John, not a word about what you have learned; but
henceforth you will not be frightened by the noise we make at dusk.”
I could not deny but what this was very clever management. If they could
not keep the echoes of the upper air from moving, the wisest plan was to
open their valves during the discouragement of the falling evening;
when folk would rather be driven away, than drawn into the wilds and
quagmires, by a sound so deep and awful, coming through the darkness.
CHAPTER LIX
LORNA GONE AWAY
Although there are very ancient tales of gold being found upon Exmoor,
in lumps and solid hummocks, and of men who slew one another for it,
this deep digging and great labour seemed to me a dangerous and unholy
enterprise. And Master Huckaback confessed that up to the present time
his two partners and himself (for they proved to be three adventurers)
had put into the earth more gold than they had taken out of it.
Nevertheless he felt quite sure that it must in a very short time
succeed, and pay them back an hundredfold; and he pressed me with great
earnestness to join them, and work there as much as I could, without
moving my mother's suspicions. I asked him how they had managed so long
to carry on without discovery; and he said that this was partly through
the wildness of the neighbourhood, and the legends that frightened
people of a superstitious turn; partly through their own great caution,
and the manner of fetching both supplies and implements by night;
but most of all, they had to thank the troubles of the period, the
suspicions of rebellion, and the terror of the Doones, which (like the
wizard I was speaking of) kept folk from being too inquisitive where
they had no business. The slough, moreover, had helped them well,
both by making their access dark, and yet more by swallowing up and
concealing all that was cast from the mouth of the pit. Once, before
the attack on Glen Doone, they had a narrow escape from the King's
Commissioner; for Captain Stickles having heard no doubt the story of
John Fry, went with half a dozen troopers, on purpose to search the
neighbourhood. Now if he had ridden alone, most likely he would have
discovered everything; but he feared to venture so, having suspicion of
a trap. Coming as they did in a company, all mounted and conspicuous,
the watchman (who was posted now on the top of the hill, almost every
day since John Fry's appearance) could not help espying them, miles
distant, over the moorland. He watched them under the shade of his hand,
and presently ran down the hill, and raised a great commotion. Then
Simon Carfax and all his men came up, and made things natural, removing
every sign of work; and finally, sinking underground, drew across the
mouth of the pit a hurdle thatched with sedge and heather. Only Simon
himself was left behind, ensconced in a hole of the crags, to observe
the doings of the enemy.
Captain Stickles rode very bravely, with all his men clattering after
him, down the rocky pass, and even to the margin of the slough. And
there they stopped, and held council; for it was a perilous thing to
risk the passage upon horseback, between the treacherous brink and
the cliff, unless one knew it thoroughly. Stickles, however, and one
follower, carefully felt the way along, having their horses well in
hand, and bearing a rope to draw them out, in case of being foundered.
Then they spurred across the rough boggy land, farther away than the
shaft was. Here the ground lay jagged and shaggy, wrought up with high
tufts of reed, or scragged with stunted brushwood. And between the ups
and downs (which met anybody anyhow) green-covered places tempted the
foot, and black bog-holes discouraged it. It is not to be marvelled at
that amid such place as this, for the first time visited, the horses
were a little skeary; and their riders partook of the feeling, as all
good riders do. In and out of the tufts they went, with their eyes
dilating, wishing to be out of harm, if conscience were but satisfied.
And of this tufty flaggy ground, pocked with bogs and boglets, one
especial nature is that it will not hold impressions.
Seeing thus no track of men, nor anything but marsh-work, and stormwork,
and of the seasons, these two honest men rode back, and were glad to do
so. For above them hung the mountains, cowled with fog, and seamed with
storm; and around them desolation; and below their feet the grave. Hence
they went, with all goodwill; and vowed for ever afterwards that fear of
a simple place like that was only too ridiculous. So they all rode
home with mutual praises, and their courage well-approved; and the only
result of the expedition was to confirm John Fry's repute as a bigger
liar than ever.
Now I had enough of that underground work, as before related, to last me
for a year to come; neither would I, for sake of gold, have ever stepped
into that bucket, of my own goodwill again. But when I told Lorna--whom
I could trust in any matter of secrecy, as if she had never been a
woman--all about my great descent, and the honeycombing of the earth,
and the mournful noise at eventide, when the gold was under the crusher
and bewailing the mischief it must do, then Lorna's chief desire was to
know more about Simon Carfax.
“It must be our Gwenny's father,” she cried; “the man who disappeared
underground, and whom she has ever been seeking. How grieved the poor
little thing will be, if it should turn out, after all, that he left his
child on purpose! I can hardly believe it; can you, John?”