"You thought, and you thought; you should not think such stupid things."
The Duke recovered the use of his tongue.
"But do you know, my good fellows, that you were playing a very rough and ready joke on your fellow workmen! Making them fancy they were rushing to their death!"
"Their death!" echoed the miner who had first spoken.
"No, Señor Duque," said the manager, "if they had not put the breaks on we should only have been up to our waists in water."
"Is that all?"
"Would you have liked a bath in dirty water?"
"Well, of course it would not have been a pleasant dip. But to see you in such a state of frenzy made us all think we were being killed outright. What do you say, ladies?"
The ladies were relieving their minds by exclamations; some crying and some laughing. Two who had fainted received every attention, their temples were bathed with cold water, and the Condesa de Cotorraso's salts were brought into requisition. At last they recovered their senses, and the rest congratulated themselves on having escaped from such fearful peril, for they could not bear to think that there had been none. They looked forward to exciting the sympathy of their friends at home by the narrative of this horrible adventure, and believed themselves the heroines of a story in the style of Jules Verne.
The spectacle which presented itself to their eyes when they could bring themselves to look at it, was not less grand than fantastic. Huge vaulted arches diverged in every direction, lighted only by the pale light of a few candles placed at wide intervals. To and fro in these galleries, with incessant toil, a crowd of labourers were constantly moving, their gigantic shadows dancing in the dim, flickering light. Their shouts echoed to the accompaniment of creaking trolley-wheels, and they seemed possessed with the idea of accomplishing some mysterious task in a very short time. In some of the galleries the walls were lined with crystals of native mercury, glittering as though they were covered with silver. On the other side of these walls, dull regular blows might be heard, and on going a few yards into the openings which had been formed here and there, they could see at the end, in an illuminated cavern, four or five pale, melancholy men hewing out the ore with their pick-axes. Whenever they stopped to rest it could be seen that their limbs shook with the palsy, characteristic of mercurial poisoning.