He retreated into the cave, took up his candle, which he relighted, saying to himself, “I’ll go and explore that passage behind the Organ Loft, and see if it leads to the outer world. In case I get shut in here, like a rat in a hole, it’s just as well for me to know my burrow thoroughly.”
Groping his way up a slippery ascent where his feet continually stumbled over the uneven surface of the encrusted floor, he climbed to the Organ Loft, where, screened behind a delicate, white tracery which hung from roof to floor of the gallery and assumed the shape of an organ, pipes and panels complete, he could see his candle’s flame shoot long fingers of light into the vast Nave below.
However, he spent but little time in contemplation of the weird scene, but turning sharply to the right he followed a narrow, winding passage which led into the heart of the limestone mountain. His progress was both slow and difficult, for the encrusting carbonate had, in many places, all but filled up the passage, and, in many others, the floor was so broken as to make it almost impossible for him to press onwards. Now he would squeeze himself between the converging sides of the passage, now he would crawl on hands and knees through a hole which would barely receive his shoulders; and thus, sweating, panting, bruised, and even bleeding where his hands and arms had been grazed by rasping and projecting rocks, he at length sat down to rest in a place where the tunnel broadened into a small chamber. How far he had pushed his way into the bowels of the earth he could not tell, neither was he thoughtful of the distance. What he was looking and hoping for, was a gleam of light ahead, but whenever he blew out his candle the inky blackness was so intense as to be painful to his eyes.
“My God! Supposing a man got in here, and couldn’t get back? Suppose I got stuck between two rocks?—I’d have to stop here till I grew thin enough to squeeze out.”
Quickly he re-lit his candle.
“That’s better,” he exclaimed. “There is after all some company in a lighted candle. We’ll now go on; we’ll press forward; we’ll see whither this intricate path leadeth. ‘Vorwarts’ is the word: no turning back till the goal is reached.”
He crept through a low aperture, and with difficulty he rose to his feet; a few steps further on he stumbled; the candle fell from his hand, and dropped, and dropped, and dropped, in fact he never heard it reach the bottom.
Feeling in his pocket for his matches as he lay prone, he struck a light, and held the burning taper beyond him as far as he could reach. All that he saw was a dark and horrible abyss. He struck another match with the same result. He seized a piece of loose rock, rolled it over the edge, and waited for the sound of its lodgment at the bottom. He heard it bumping as it fell, but its falling seemed interminable, till at length the sound of its passage to the nether regions died away in sheer depth.
Tresco drew a long breath.
“Never,” he said, “never, in the course of his two score years and ten has Benjamin been so near Hades. The best thing he can do is to ‘git,’ deliberately and with circumspection. And the candle has gone: happy candle to preserve the life of such a man as B.T.”