“Why, sir, it only shows as there was oysters there once, and that somebody came and dredged them, opened ’em, and ate ’em, and left the shells behind. Here’s the shell, plain enough; but the old Tyre and Sidems, as you call ’em, took away all the gold, sure enough. Trust ’em!”
“What!” cried Denham, laughing. “Is it likely? Here’s a gold-mine, sure enough; but if there’s one here, don’t you think there must be plenty more places in this country where people could dig down and get gold?”
“May be, sir,” said Briggs, scratching his ear.
“Is there only one tin-mine in Cornwall, Sergeant?” I said.
“Only one tin-mine in Cornwall!” cried Briggs in disgust. “Whatcher talking about? Why, the country’s full of ’em. You find tin wherever you like to cut down to one kind o’ rock as is what they call quartz, and where there’s tin in it there’s a lot o’ red powder as well; and when you break a bit there’s the tin, all in pretty little black shiny grains. Oh, there’s plenty o’ tin in Cornwall, only it costs a lot to dig and blast it out o’ the mine.”
“So you may depend upon it there’s plenty of gold here, sergeant,” said Denham, taking the piece of stone I had picked up and holding it out to the sergeant. “There’s a specimen of the ore, and I’ll be bound to say there’s tons of it to be found.”
“Humph!” said the Sergeant, examining the piece of stone; “p’r’aps them bits o’ threads and them scrappy bits may be gold; but if you broke that up and melted it, the gold you’d get would be such a tiny bead that it wouldn’t be worth taking away.”
“Perhaps not,” said Denham, giving me a look; “but there’d be a good-sized bead out of a ton. The ancient miners didn’t work for nothing, I’ll be bound. But come along; we’ve found what we were looking for, and—”
He stopped short, for just then a shot was fired, which made us start on our return along the narrow passage.
“Mind the hole,” I shouted to Denham, who was first.