The mill of silence

by Bernard Capes

When I came to the cupboard again the boom of water below had subsided to a mouthing murmur, and the spin of the wheel was lazily relaxed, so that before it had turned half its own circumference it stood still and dripping. The sight when I looked down now was not near so formidable, for only a band of water slid beneath me as I bent over. Still, my heart was up in my mouth for all that, now the moment had come for the essaying of my task.

Oiling such parts of the machine as were within reach, I next grasped the rope, which I had at the first noticed hanging from the darkness above down into the pit, just clear of the blades, and set to peering for the broader float my father had mentioned. Luckily, the last motion of the wheel had brought this very section opposite me, so that I had no difficulty in slipping in the rope and securing it by means of the button underneath.

Then, with a tingling of the flesh of my thighs and a mental prayer for early deliverance, I stepped upon the blade, with a foot on either side of the rope to which I clung grimly, and in a moment felt myself going down into blackness.

The wheel turned gently under my weight, giving forth no creak or scream; and the dark water below seemed to rise at me rather than to wait my sinking toward it. But though the drip and slime of the pit shut me in, there was action in all I was doing so matter-of-fact as to half-cure me for the moment of superstitious terror.

Suddenly the wheel stopped with a little jerk and thud of the float on which I stood against a bend in the tackle that passed through it.

Holding on thus—and, indeed, the tension necessary to the act spoke volumes for my father’s vigor of endurance—the light from the lantern flashed and glowed about the interior structure of the wheel before me. Then, looking between the blades—for the periphery of the great circle was not boxed in—I saw revealed to me in a moment the secret I had come to investigate. For, firmly set in a hole dug in the brick side of the chasm at a point so chosen within the sweep of the wheel that no spoke traversed it when it lay motionless, and at arm’s reach only from one standing on the paddle, was a vessel of ancient pottery about a foot in height, and so smeared and dank with slime as that a careless grasp on its rim might have sent the whole treasure clattering and raining through the wheel into the water below.

Cautiously I put out a hand, grasped and gently shook the jar. A dull jingle came from it, and so my task was accomplished.

By this time, however, I was so confident of my position that I got out the oil can and began to lubricate deliberately the further shaft end of the wheel. While I was in the very act, a metallic glint, struck by the lantern light from some object pinned on to the huge hub that crossed the channel almost directly in front of my line of vision, caught my eye and drove me to pause. I craned my neck to get a nearer view, and gave so great a start of wonder as to lose my hold of the oiler, which fell with clink and splash into the water underfoot.

Nailed to the great axle was something that looked like the miniature portrait of a man; but it was so stained and flaked by years of dark decay that the features were almost obliterated. The face had been painted in enamel on an oval of fluxed copper; yet even this had not been able to resist the long corrosion of the atmosphere in which it was held prisoner.

I could make out only that the portrait was that of a young man of fair complexion, thin, light-haired and dressed in the fashion of a bygone generation. More I had not time to observe; for, as I gazed, suddenly with a falling sway and a flicker the lantern at my waist went out.