Nicanor - Teller of Tales : A Story of Roman Britain

by C. Bryson Taylor

The gallery, pitch-black and narrow, was dotted with moving lights which wandered here and there, each a restless will-o'-the-wisp. It was very damp, and from somewhere came a monotonous drip of water. The tapping of picks sounded incessantly out of the darkness, and occasionally there were hoarse voices raised in wanton curses or harsh commands. Shores of heavy timbers supported the sides and roof of the tunnel, looming grotesquely gigantic as some passing light touched them; this was the newest of the workings, and so far the richest.

A light and a clanking of chains drew near down the tunnel; and eight men, chained like mules, and loaded with baskets of ore, came painfully over the uneven ground to the chamber of the main shaft, where a second gang waited to unload them. Each party was in charge of its own overseer, who carried a whip and went armed to the teeth. It was easier to use men than to lower animals into the galleries for the work; besides, the superintendent wished to save his horses.

The shaft, through which men ascended and descended by means of long series of ladders, opened out into a chamber, roughly circular in shape, from which the galleries branched off in all directions. It ran through four different levels, the top one, and the oldest, something over fifteen feet underground, the lowest not quite seventy. On each level the ore was handled in the same way; brought to the central shaft in baskets by men, and carried to the surface by other men who spent their lives toiling up and down the endless ladders, with baskets strapped upon their backs. It was primitive work, and barbarous, but it at least served the purpose of getting rid, in short order, of insubordinate slaves. Earth from the tunnellings was treated in like fashion; and every timber used for building up the walls was lowered from level to level by ropes. Accidents were many and appalling. Sometimes a huge stick slipped from its lashings and crashed downward into the bowels of the earth, knocking men off the ladders in its course as though they had been flies. Sometimes a ladder gave way, hurling screaming wretches into eternity; sometimes men were buried in sudden falls of earth. Also the ladder men, who necessarily went unchained, died like rats from heart trouble brought on by their constant climbing; and others were to be driven into their places.

The overseer of the second gang watched the loading of the baskets strapped to his men's backs, noted the time on his clepsydra, which stood on a near-by ledge, and started the men one by one, in quick succession. He knew to a fraction of time how long the trip to the surface should take, but to make assurance more sure, each carrier, on his return, brought a check stamped with the exact minute of arrival by the overseer who had received the ore above. If this check showed that more time had been consumed than was necessary for the ascent and descent, there was punishment swift and sure for that luckless one who had lingered.

The chained slaves, with their empty baskets, filed off again into the gallery from which they had come.

The shaft chamber, the centre of its floor pierced by the black hole leading down to the next and lowest level, was lighted dimly by lamps and candles standing upon shelves which jutted from the earthen walls. From all the galleries radiating from it, files of men, staggering under weighted baskets, kept coming to be relieved of their loads by their unchained fellow-workers. Every moment a man started up the ladder, clawing his way at top speed out of sight in the darkness of the shaft, like a grotesque, huge monkey. No lashing, no punishment, could get more than four such round trips out of a man without a period of rest equal to at least two trips. When it came to this point, he would merely lose his hold from sheer exhaustion and fall from the ladder. And when picked up by the crew at the bottom of the shaft, he was fit for nothing but to be thrown like carrion into the nearest unused pit, walled in with a half-dozen shovelfuls of earth, and left at last to rest.

The overseer by the shaft glanced at his water-clock, raised a reed to his lips, and blew a shrill whistle. From level to level and from gallery to gallery this was taken up and repeated in fainter cadences, and with it the insistent tapping of the picks ceased. One by one men began to hurry forth from the galleries, making for the ladders which led to the world of air and sunlight.

Nicanor came from one of the branching tunnels, a pick over his shoulder, stripped to the waist and grimed with sweat and dirt, his lean chest and arms thrown out against the murky candle-light. He was all bone and skin and muscle, hard as nails; but it was the dead, springless hardness which comes to an athlete badly overtrained, not the resilient firmness which denotes good condition. He laid his pick on the ground near the entrance of the tunnel and went to the ladder. Even his tread had lost something of its cat-like lightness; he walked wearily, his shoulders bowed. He gave his number to the overseer, who barely waited to record it in his tablet, with the time he had stopped work, before starting up the ladder for his half-hour's intermission. Nicanor, suddenly alert, ran back into the tunnel, reappeared with a bag, which he held carefully, and started up the ladder also. But at the next level, thirty feet above, he stopped, instead of keeping on to the surface.

In the shaft-chamber here were a dozen and odd men gathered, but there seemed to be no overseer among them. A ring had formed about a space on the floor under one of the lamps; men craned over the shoulders of those in front of them. One saw Nicanor and shouted at him.

"Well come, friend! We wait for you and that pretty pet of yours!"